One of the first official ceremonies he presided over was the presentation of the Vidyodaya Pirivena Awards, named after a famous Buddhist university in Colombo.

The soldiers, policemen and auxiliaries were authorised by Chalmers, Malcolm and Dowbiggin to summarily execute anyone they deemed to be a rioter.

After the riots, Ceylonese barrister E. W. Perera travelled to the United Kingdom to inform the British government of what had occurred in Ceylon.

[6][3] In 1882, when he began his career as a civil servant in Her Majesty's Treasury, he continued to pursue classical studies in the hopes of perfecting his knowledge of ancient languages.

He attended the Pāli classes of Thomas William Rhys Davids, whose enthusiasm won him over, and became a member of the Pali Text Society.

From 1891 he published numerous articles in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JRAS), including English translations of Pāli texts primarily from the Majjhima Nikaya.

[7] In 1897, he made a presentation dealing with the Pāli term Tathagata, at the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists held in Paris.

[8][7] Between 1895 and 1902, under the direction of T.W Rhys Davids, he published the first English translation of the Sutta Pitaka, from the original texts written in Sinhala, Siamese and Burmese.

[9] At the same time, he produced his ultimate work of scholarship: a translation of the Sutta Nipāta, published in 1932, then considered remarkable for its style and literary accuracy.

Unfortunately, his competence in this field was of no use to him in his other career, particularly in managing the riots of 1915, which ironically took place in one of the countries where the ancient texts he studied tirelessly for most of his life were written.

After her death in 1923 he married, secondly, Iris Florence, daughter of Sir John Biles and widow of Robert Latta, in 1935.