William Sinclair Marris


Sir William Sinclair Marris, was a British civil servant, colonial administrator, and classical scholar. He was a member of the Indian Civil Service during the British Raj, and later became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Durham.

Education and life

Born on 9 October 1873, Marris was educated at Wanganui Collegiate School and Canterbury College in New Zealand, and later studied at Christ Church, Oxford. He passed first in the Indian Civil Service examination in 1895.
He married Eleanor Mary Fergusson, in 1905, who died a year later in 1906. After retirement from the Indian Civil Service, Marris returned to Northern England and remarried to Elizabeth Wilford in 1934, whom he had known from his childhood in New Zealand.
In 1921, he laid Murari Chand College's foundation stone in Thackeray Hills, Sylhet alongside Syed Abdul Majid.
Following his return from India he resigned as a member of the Council of the Secretary of India to take a principalship at Armstrong College in Newcastle upon Tyne, and he was Vice-Chancellor of Durham University from 1932 to 1934. During this period, he published translations of Greek and Roman Literature. He retired in 1937 and settled in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, where at Dollar House he died on 12 December 1945.

Indian Civil Service

Sir William Sinclair Marris served in the Indian Civil Service in several positions
Sir William Marris authored and translated several publications including
  • The Odes of Horace. By Horace, . Published London, New York : H.Frowde, 1912
  • The Iliad of Homer. By Homer, . Published London, New York : Oxford University Press, 1934
  • The Odyssey of Homer. By Homer, . Published London, New York : Oxford University Press, 1925
  • Catullus. By Catallus, . Published Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924
  • India: the political problem By Sir William Marris. Published Nottingham, 1930?

    Vice-Chancellor of the University of Durham

From 1929 to 1937, Marris was Principal of Armstrong College in the Newcastle division of the University of Durham, in which role he held the position of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Durham from 1932 to 1934.