Allegiance United Kingdom Education Eton College Rank General Awards Royal Guelphic Order | Commands held Garrison of Jersey Service/branch British Army Name Tomkyns Turner | |
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Died May 6, 1843, Grouville, Jersey | ||
General Sir (Tomkyns) Hilgrove Turner GCH (12 January 1764 – 6 May 1843) is best known as the officer who escorted the Rosetta Stone from Egypt to England.
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Military career
Turner and the Stone were on board the recently captured French ship HMS Egyptienne when it made its way to England. He claimed that he had personally seized the Stone from General Jacques-François Menou and carried it away on a gun carriage. He also asserted that when the French learned of his intentions, that they removed the packaging for the Stone and that "it was thrown upon its face". There are other versions of how the English forces captured the Stone from the French, so it is unknown how reliable his account is. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in December 1804.
In 1811 he was made Colonel of the 19th (1st Yorkshire North Riding) Regiment of Foot. From 1812 to 1830 he held the post of Groom of the Bedchamber to George IV (including the period when the latter acted as Prince Regent during his father's mental illness). He would later become Lieutenant Governor of Jersey from 1814 to 1816 and Governor of Bermuda from 1826 to 1832, and in 1827 became a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Guelphic Order.
Personal life
Turner was the son of Richard Turner, a surgeon in Uxbridge, Middlesex and his wife Magdalen Hilgrove, a native of Jersey. In 1839 his daughter Charlotte Esther Turner married Henry Octavius Coxe, Bodleian librarian. Coxe's predecessor Bulkeley Bandinel was Tomkyns Turner's second cousin. Some years after his death Turner's children were involved in a lawsuit over the legacies left them in the wills of some Hilgrove kinsmen.