Thomas Duer Broughton

Life

Thomas Duer Broughton was son of the Reverend Thomas Broughton, rector of St. Peter's, Bristol. He was educated at Eton, and went to India in 1795 as a cadet in the East India Company's Bengal Army. He became a lieutenant in 1797 and fought at the siege of Seringapatam in 1799. He was later appointed adjutant and assistant teacher of Hindi to the Cadet company(described in his obituary in the United Services Magazine as " a sort of college formed to receive the cadets, and teach and discipline them on their first arrival in the country") at Barasett.

In 1802 he was appointed military resident with the Mahrattas. He published his experiences in a book entitled Letters Written in a Mahratta Camp During the Year 1809, descriptive of the character, manners, domestic habits, and religious ceremonies of the Mahrattas (1813). During this period he also collected Hindi poems from the oral tradition, publishing his transcriptions and translations as Selections from the Popular Poetry of the Hindoos (1814). Broughton left for England at the end of 1811 and returned to India in August 1815, having been promoted to the rank of major in the meantime He was appointed to the command of Weltevreden on Java, but by the time he arrived on the island in April 1816, preparations were being made to hand it back to the Dutch, so he was returned to Bengal. In 1822 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

On his return from India he became honorary secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, and travelled widely in Britain and southern Europe. He also published Edward and Laura, a free translation of a French novel by a follower of Rousseau, and translations of Persian poetry.

He died in Dorset Square, London, on 16 November 1835.