William Jervis Livingstone (1865–1915) was the manager of the Magomero Estate in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) owned by A L Bruce Estates Ltd and was killed in 1915 during the uprising against colonial rule led by John Chilembwe. Livingstone, from the Isle of Lismore in Argyllshire, Scotland, was born in 1865 and appointed as manager of Magomero in 1893.
Although he experimented with growing coffee and later cotton, the estate was not a financial success and Livingstone imposed increasingly harsh labour demands on the estate workers there. He was also accused of the brutal mistreatment of those workers. Although Livingstone was immediately responsible for imposing excessive work demands on the workers and their brutal treatment, they were the results of the pressures for financial success that were imposed by Alexander Livingstone Bruce, a director and 40% shareholder in A L Bruce Estates Ltd after he came to live in Nyasaland from 1908. Bruce considered independent African churches to be subversive, and instructed Livingstone to destroy the church buildings that John Chilembwe had constructed without Bruce's permission on the Magomero estate.
Chilembwe's grievances about colonial rule and the oppression of African estate workers came to focus on William Jervis Livingstone and, when he initiated his revolt on 23 January 1915, Chilembwe ordered some of his men to attack the A L Bruce Estates, to kill all European men and to return with Livingstone's head. Livingstone and three others, including Duncan MacCormick also from Lismore and an African servant, were killed at Magomero, but the women and children were left unharmed on Chilembwe's instructions. In the aftermath of the uprising, Livingstone was blamed for the harsh and unsatisfactory conditions on the A L Bruce Estates, whereas Alexander Livingstone Bruce escaped censure. More recently, William Livingstone's character has been re-examined and, although undoubtedly a violent man, he is also regarded as reacting to the demands made by Alexander Livingstone Bruce which he found impossible to meet.[1]