John Hyde (14 January 1738 – 8 July 1796) was a Puisne Judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal from 1774 to his death.

Hyde gained a reputation as a morally upright judge in a time of general corruption in the British East India Company.

While Chief Justice Elijah Impey and puisne judge Sir Robert Chambers both accepted bribes from Governor-General of Bengal Warren Hastings in return for compromising their judicial positions, Hyde refused offers.

They can be divided as follows: Approximately 40 pages of the notebooks are written in shorthand, which Hyde used to conceal thoughts and record his fellow judges accepting bribes.

[7] After Hyde's death the notebooks passed to Chief Justice Sir Robert Chambers who continued writing them till his retirement in 1798.

[4] In 2014 and 2015, the Victoria Memorial in conjunction with Jadavpur University's School of Cultural Texts and Records digitized the notebooks, including the remains of volumes 1-3.

The notebooks (volumes 1-3) from 1775 to 1777, which contained the important Nanda Kumar trial were mostly destroyed due to unknown reasons at some point in the 18th or 19th century.

The records from the first term of 1780 have disappeared, as well as a small volume with a brass clasp which contained Hyde's detailed notes on some particularly controversial trials.