John W. Tyler

CIE (c. 1840 – 12 May 1913) was a British surgeon and superintendent of the central prison in Agra, India, a position he held for 14 years.

Tyler was initially posted to the civil surgeoncy in the North-Western Provinces, before being appointed as superintendent of the prison at Meerut, and thereafter at Agra.

[2][4] He donated one such Persian carpet to British civil servant and scholar Frederic Growse for the Catholic church at Mathura, built in the 1870s.

[7] At the end of 1886 he was appointed to special duty in Dholpur and returned to London under the staff of the Maharaja of Bharatpur,[2] taking his clerk Abdul Karim, with him.

[3] Karim noted in his memoirs of his first meeting with the Queen that "Dr Tyler and I were instructed to take our station near the dining room and wait her Majesty's coming."

After presenting to her some gifts "the Queen was thereafter pleased to speak to Dr Tyler a few words, and so ended my first interview with the Empress of India.

[2] Margaret Villiers, Countess of Jersey, recollected in her memoirs the time she stayed with Sir John Tyler, superintendent of the jail at Agra, and his "friend" Abdul Karim who was on leave from London.