Sir Edward Charles Benthall, KCSI (26 November 1893 – 5 March 1961), also known asTom Benthall, was a British businessman and public servant who spent the majority of his career in British India. He was described in an obituary inThe Times as "perhaps the foremost figure in his day of the British mercantile community in India."[1]
The son of the Rev. Charles Francis Benthall and Annie Theodosia Benthall, Edward Benthall was educated atEton College, where he was aKing's Scholar, andKing's College, Cambridge. He joined theWhite Star Line at itsLiverpool office in 1913, then went to India at the outbreak of theFirst World War, enlisting and serving in India in 1914–15 andMesopotamia in 1916–18, where he was wounded. He was then transferred to theWar Office staff, where he served in 1918–19.
In 1918, he married the Hon. Ruth McCarthy Cable, daughter ofErnest Cable, 1st Baron Cable, with whom he had a son, the theatre directorMichael Benthall. He followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law, the chairman of the Calcutta trading firm Bird and Co., and joined the firm in India. He was a director of theImperial Bank of India from 1926 to 1934, and was its governor from 1928 to 1930.