Bishop George Edward Lynch Cotton (1813-1866) was born at Chester; eminent as a master at Rugby under Dr. Arnold, and as head-master at Marlborough College and figures as "the young master" in "Tom Brown's Schooldays".

He was appointed Bishop of Calcutta, an office he fulfilled zealously from 1858 where he did missionary work and established schools for Eurasian children. In requests to England he asked for donations of clothing, often emphasizing "warm socks" for the children. In fact he seems to have held the simplistic view that if the children had warm socks many of their problems, malnutrition, disease, racial prejudice etc. could be easily solved. Little old maiden ladies all over England spent their time knitting socks for Bishop Cotton and sending them off to India. He blessed all items used in his schools, and many shipments would arrive labeled "Socks for Cotton's blessing" and reportedly even "Cotton's socks for blessing". Cotton's socks easily became corrupted to cotton socks.

The famous Bishop Cotton Schools in Bangalore and Shimla have also been founded bearing his name. Bless his cotton socks.

The Bishop Cotton School, Nagpur is also an old co-educational school which had been established in 1862, by Bishop George Edward Lynch Cotton, son of an Army Captain, who died leading his Regiment in battle. A scholar of Westminister, and a graduate of Cambridge, in 1836 he was appointed Assistant Master at Rugby by Doctor Thomas Arnold, was one of the founders of the British Public School system. Bishop Cotton was drowned in an accident on 6th October, 1866 while touring Assam in the Governor's yacht on the river Gorai. To perpetuate the memory this school in Nagpur was established.

The schools bearing his name also had a racist agenda; they were (initially) pointedly founded to "shield" European (mostly British) students from excessive exposure to quotidian India, and the "pernicious influences" of too-close contacts with Indians. Needless to say, no students or teachers were Indian in any of the schools in the early decades; in the early 1900s some upper middle class Indian (and Anglo-Indian) children and began to be admitted, though in modest numbers.

External Links

• Bishop Cotton School, Nagpur Y! Group