Pigot Diamond
It remained in Europe for half a century, changing hands several times until it was sold to the ruler of Egypt in the 1820s.
[6] Pigot brought it to London, probably in June 1764 when he returned to England aboard the East Indiaman Plassey[7] after his first term as governor of Madras (1755–1763).
[8] It has been characterised as having a large table (the largest central facet of the crown) and girdle, but it is relatively shallow in depth giving it poor brilliance.
[5] On Pigot's death in 1777, he bequeathed it to his brothers, Robert (1721–1796), who commanded the left flank of the British forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill and Hugh (1722–1792), Commander-in-Chief of the West Indies fleet of the Royal Navy, and his widowed sister Margaret, the wife of Thomas Fisher.
The joint owners attempted to sell the diamond but were unsuccessful as the perceived intrinsic value was so high and no reasonable offers were made.
[9] A plan was conceived to conduct a lottery so that the Pigot family could receive full value without a single buyer willing and able to pay such an amount.
[4][12] Parker may have been acting on behalf of the famous London jewellers, Rundell and Bridge who in 1804 had obtained part ownership.
Parker was anxious to obtain his share of the stone and contemplated a lawsuit which might have resulted in the diamond being divided into pieces, thus greatly reducing its value.
[12] An alternate report is that Parker filed a lawsuit to determine the value of his share of the diamond, resulting in the buyout.
Rundell had to flee Paris, returning again after the final defeat of Napoleon in June 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo.
[12] Rundell and Bridge continued trying to sell the diamond, sending models to all the crowned heads of Europe.
[9] An 1830 account details that the diamond was purchased in London by an agent of Muhammad Ali for Mahmud, and then taken by a British admiral in his coat pocket to the Royal Navy's naval port in Portsmouth, from where he was to depart for the Mediterranean.
[12] There are also sources that say the confusion is in the opposite direction and Ali Pasha of Tepelena actually bought the diamond.
[1] The November 1804 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine, a London periodical, published that the Pigot diamond was purchased by or for Madam Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother, for a necklace.
[2] In 1840, a British scholastic book said the Pigot diamond, after having been sold to Mohammed Ali, somehow came to be an ornament on Bonaparte's sword of state and in 1840 was in the possession of the King of France.
In an 1862 publication, the diamond's history was accurately recounted to the possession of Rundell & Bridge, but said it then went to a Portuguese Prince.
[3] Dr. George Frederick Kunz, American mineralogist, wrote about the mysterious Pigot Diamond in 1897 for the Century Magazine.
