William Burkitt (judge)

Sir William Robert Burkitt (1838 – 16 June 1908) was an Irish judge in British India in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

From October 1862, he served in the North Western Provinces as Assistant Magistrate and Collector, Joint Magistrate and Deputy Collector, District and Sessions Judge (from 1862–1891) in Gorakhpur, Basti, Banda, Cawnpore (or Kanpur), Bareilly, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Etawah, Azamgarh, and Mathura,[1] and, later, as a Judicial Commissioner in locations such as Oudh, Allahabad,[2] Delhi and Calcutta.

His most well-known achievement was, together with Lord Kitchener (then District Grandmaster of Punjab), to induct the Emir of Afghanistan Habibullah Khan at Freemasons Hall at Lodge Concordia in Park Street, Kolkata in 1907.

[13][14][15][16][17] It was performed in an unusual style, the Emir taking all three ordinary degrees of masonry at once - a rare event rumoured to signify membership of the Roshaniya.

[citation needed] There were several daughters, including Ethel Lilian Burkitt, who married in December 1902 Captain Charles Hampden Turner, Suffolk Regiment.