14cm (5.5in) x 8.9cm (3.5in) x 4cm (1.5in)
Provenance: Sir Charles James Stevenson-Moore.
Silver, parcel-gilt and enamel. Table snuff box of rectangular form, the hinged lid, set with Emil Fuch’s 1901 silver conjoined heads Royal Tour medal of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later George V and Queen Mary), the reverse struck with the inscription 'TRH Prince of Wales & Victoria Mary Princess of Wales / India 1905-6’. Gilt interior, with inscription ‘Presented to / C.J. Stevenson Moore / Indian Civil Service / Inspector General of Police / Lower Provinces - By Their Royal Highnesses / The Prince & Princess of Wales / As a Memento of Their Visit / To Bengal / 1905-06’. Maker’s mark James Samuel Bell & Louis Willmot of Oxford Street, London. Hallmarked London 1904.
Sir Charles James Stevenson-Moore KCIE, CVO (1866-1947) was educated at Felsted and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and joined the Indian Civil Service in 1885. He went out to Bengal two years later. He served as Inspector-General of Police of Bengal from 1904 to 1907, when he was appointed Director of Criminal Intelligence of the Government of India. As such he was immersed in intelligence work against subversive forces threatening to undermine British rule. He was by turns both a supporter and detractor of the pioneering Indian lawyer Cornelia Sorabji -, and the first woman to study law at Oxford University - who on one occasion assisted him in extraditing a suspected terrorist to Britain and whose career he later denigrated. Stevenson-Moore served as Chief Secretary of Bengal from 1910 to 1914, as a member of the Bengal Board of Revenue from 1914 to 1920, and a member of the Executive Council of Bengal from 1920 to his retirement in 1921. He was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1912 and Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in the 1920 New Year Honours.
A keen mountaineer, Stevenson-Moore was killed while climbing alone in the Alps near Montreux, Switzerland, at the age of 81.