Chapter POOJAH to CIVILIAN of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

CIVILIAN, s. A term which came into use about 1750–1770, as a designation of the covenanted European servants of the E. I. Company, not in military employ. It is not used by Grose, c. 1760, who was himself of such service at Bombay. [The earliest quotation in the N.E.D. is of 1766 from Malcolm’s L. of Clive, 54.] In Anglo-Indian parlance it is still appropriated to members of the covenanted Civil Service [see COVENANTED SERVANTS]. The Civil Service is mentioned in Carraccioli’s L. of Clive, (c. 1785), iii. 164. From an early date in the Company’s history up to 1833, the members of the Civil Service were classified during the first five years as Writers (q.v.), then to the 8th year as Factors (q.v.); in the 9th and 11th as Junior Merchants; and thenceforward as Senior Merchants. These names were relics of the original commercial character of the E. I. Company’s transactions, and had long ceased to have any practical meaning at the time of their abolition in 1833, when the Charter Act (3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 85), removed the last traces of the Company’s commercial existence.

1848.—(Lady O’Dowd’s) “quarrel with Lady Smith, wife of Minos Smith the puisne Judge, is still remembered by some at Madras, when the Colonel’s lady snapped her fingers in the Judge’s lady’s face, and said she’d never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian.”—Vanity Fair, ed. 1867, ii. 85.

1872.—“You bloated civilians are never satisfied, retorted the other.”—A True Reformer, i. 4.