Inspector-General of Iraq Police; Chief of Police, Southern Railways, India
Lieutenant-ColonelHenry Cecil PrescottCMGCIE (1 March 1882 – 3 August 1960) was Inspector-General of Police in Iraq (1920–1935) and Chief of Police of the Southern Railway in India (1935–47).[1][2]
Early life
Henry Cecil Prescott was born in Cheshire on 1 March 1882, the son of Arthur Edward Prescott (who had died at the time of the 1891 census) and Kathleen Ann Augusta Prescott.[3][4] He was educated at Bedford Modern School.[2]
Career
Prescott was commissioned in the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and served as a lieutenant in the Second Boer War (1901–02), for which he received the Queen's Medal with five clasps.[2] While in South Africa, he received a commission in a regular regiment when he was appointed second lieutenant in The South Wales Borderers on 30 April 1902.[5] He stayed there for several months after the end of hostilities, returning home again on the SS Norman in late December 1902.[6] In 1903 he transferred to the Indian Army in the 69th Punjabis[7] until his appointment as Assistant Superintendent in the Burma Police in January 1908.[8] In December 1910 he was made District Superintendent of three districts in Burma.[8]
At the outbreak of World War I, Prescott rejoined the Indian Army; he was promoted Major in August 1916.[9] In June 1917 he was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the Iraq Police firstly in Basra and then in Baghdad.[9] In 1918 he was made Commissioner.[9] In 1920, Prescott was made Inspector-General of the Iraq Police until his resignation in 1935.[1][10] In a statement of service, he later wrote, ‘If it had not been for the seizing of power by the opposition (many of the leaders of whom I had arrested and placed in prison for the safety of the country) I should have remained in command for some years longer’.[9]
Prescott was later made Chief of Police of the Southern Railway in India for 12 years until his retirement in 1947.[1]
A keen polo player, Prescott was in the championship team of Iraq for 1933, 1934 and 1935.[9] He married Mary Augusta, daughter of Edward Chisholm.[1] They had two sons, one of whom was killed on active service in 1939.[1] Prescott eventually retired to St. Peter's, Jersey where he died on 3 August 1960.[9][12][13]
References
^ abcdeObituary, The Times, Lt.-Col. H. C. Prescott, 5 August 1960, p.12
^Who Was Who, Published by A&C Black Limited, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2014; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014; online edn, April 2014