This necessarily meagre account of a life which deserves more ample commemoration may be fitly closed by a few words concerning the relatives and descendants of Sir William Sleeman.

His sister and regular correspondent, to whom he dedicated the Rambles and Recollections, was married to Captain Furse, R.N.

His brother’s son James came out to India in 1827, joined the 73rd Regiment of the Bengal Army, was selected for employment in the Political Department, and was thus enabled to give valuable aid in the campaign against Thuggee.  In due course he was appointed to the office of General Superintendent of the Operations against Thuggee, which had been held by his uncle.  He rose to the rank of Colonel, and after a long period of excellent service, lived to enjoy nearly thirty years of honourable retirement.  He died at his residence near Ross in 1899 at the age of eighty-one.

In 1831 Sir William’s only son, Henry Arthur, was gazetted to the 16th (Queen’s) Lancers, and having retired early from the army, with the rank of Captain, died in 1905.

His elder son William Henry died while serving with the Mounted Infantry during the South African War.  His younger son, James Lewis, a Captain in the Royal Sussex Regiment, who also saw active service during the war, and was mentioned in dispatches, has a distinguished African and Indian record, and recently received the honorary degree of M.A. from the Belfast University for good work done in establishing the first Officers’ Training Corps in Ireland.  The family of Captain James Lewis Sleeman consists of two sons and a daughter, namely, John Cuthbert, Richard Brian, and Ursula Mary.  Captain Sleeman, as the head of his family, possesses the MSS. &c. of his distinguished grandfather.  The two daughters of Sir William who survived their father married respectively Colonel Dunbar and Colonel Brooke.

Notes: 

1. Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, vol. ii, p. 105.

2.  The general reader may consult with advantage Meadows Taylor, The Confessions of a Thug, the first edition of which appeared in 1839; and the vivid account by Mark Twain in More Tramps Abroad, chapters 49,50.

3.  The incident is described in detail in a letter dated December 18, 1842, from Sleeman to his sister Mrs. Furse.  Captain J. L. Sleeman has kindly furnished me with a copy of the letter, which is too long for reproduction in this place.

4.  This letter is printed in full in the Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, pp. xvii-xix.

5.  Letter to Lord Hardinge, dated Jhansee, 4th March, 1848, printed in Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, vol. i, p. xxvii.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE
WRITINGS OF
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN, K.C.B.

I.—­PRINTED

(1.) 1819 Pamphlet.  Letter addressed to Dr. Tytler, of Allahabad, by Lieut.  W. H. Sleeman, August 20th, 1819.  Copied from the Asiatic Mirror of September the 1st, 1819. [This letter describes a great pestilence at Lucknow in 1818, and discusses the theory that cholera may be caused by ’eating a certain kind of rice’.]