William Henry Rattigan

Sir William Henry Rattigan was an English barrister born in India who is of interest to Theosophists because he purchased The Pioneer and removed Theosophist Alfred Percy Sinnett from the editorship.

Newspaper ownership

Rattigan purchased The Pioneer from George William Allen in 1882. Alfred Percy Sinnett had previously been editor for the paper for about eleven years, but the new owner asked him to leave. Sinnett received a year's salary in compensation and left Allahabad in 1883.

Rattigan later hired the very young Rudyard Kipling to work in the newspaper office for a few months. His son Clive wrote:

It was my father, the late Sir William Rattigan, KC, MP, who gave Rudyard Kipling his first start in a literary career.

That was in 1882 when Kipling was only seventeen, a mere schoolboy who had only just left Westward Ho! At that time my father was practising at the Bar at Lahore and was the principal proprietor of two Indian newspapers, the Civil and Military Gazette at Lahore and The Pioneer at Allahabad.

He was a great friend of Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling, Principal of the Art School of Lahore, and the Lockwood Kiplings, anxious to have their son with them in India, approached my father with the request that he should give Rudyard a job on the Civil and Military Gazette.

They frankly admitted that Rudyard had no journalistic qualifications... but he had, they said, a certain urge to write and a gift for vigorous expression.

Rattigan agreed to bring the young man to Lahore as an assistant editor. Subsequently Kipling also worked on The Pioneer.