| Honorific Prefix: | Sir |
| George Bettesworth Piggott | |
| Office: | Chief Justice of Zanzibar |
| Term Start: | August 1901 |
| Term End: | 1904 |
| Predecessor: | Walter Borthwick Cracknall |
| Successor: | Lindsey Smith |
| Office2: | Assistant Judge for the Sublime Ottoman Porte |
| Term Start2: | 1904 |
| Term End2: | 1911 |
| Birth Date: | 1867 4, df=yes |
| Death Place: | Monte Carlo, Monaco |
| Nationality: | British |
| Party: | Municipal Reform Party |
| Education: | Middle Temple |
| Occupation: | Judge |
Sir George Bettesworth Piggott (30 April 1867 – 14 March 1952)[1] was a British judge who served in various positions under the British Empire.
Piggott was the son of Fraser Piggott, a justice of the peace. His family had occupied Fitzhall in West Sussex since the 1400s.[2]
He was educated at the Westminster School.[1]
Piggott trained as a judge at the Middle Temple in June 1888,[3] and practiced law in London and the South-East.[1] Following this, he served as a judicial officer in the British Central Africa Protectorate in 1896.[1] [4]
From June 1900, he served as Acting Assistant Judge in Zanzibar.[5] In August 1901, he was appointed Chief Justice of Zanzibar.[6] While there, he helped implement "a deeply-entrenched legal bureaucracy" and the implementation of British imperial law.[4]
In 1904, he became Assistant Judge for the Sublime Ottoman Porte in Constantinople.[1] [4] He retired from the position in 1911 and returned to Africa, sitting in the East African Court of Appeal and as a judge for the Sultanate of Zanzibar.[1]
In 1913, he unsuccessfully contested Battersea in the London County Council election (LCC) as a member of the Municipal Reform Party. However, he sat on the LCC from 1917 to 1919 for Mile End, and then for Clapham until 1922.[1] At the time of his retirement from the LCC, he was chairman of the Public Control Committee.[7] [8]
On 12 July 1904, Piggott married Amy Spiller, a granddaughter of ironmaster Robert Thompson Crawshay.[9] She died on 14 April 1909 in Helwan, Egypt.[10]
In 1915, he married Nadine Beauchamp, daughter of Reginald William Proctor-Beauchamp.[11] In 1927, he married Winifred Lathbury.[12]
Throughout the build-up and length of World War II, Piggott and his third wife travelled around Canada and the United States: he had stated that "in [his] opinion" there would be no war.[13] During this time, they enjoyed the company of various socialites, entertaining guests at hotels at Palm Beach, Florida,[14] [15] and holidaying in Alberta's Rockies.[16] They attended parties with Archduke Franz Josef of Austria and his wife.[17]
He died on 14 March 1952 in Monte Carlo.[1]