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Lt. Colonel Fleming Mackenzie was born in Tapah, Malay Straits' Settlements (Malaysia) in 1897. His father was the Chief Surveyor for the opening up of the area. He returned to England with his mother, attending first St Paul's and later Bedford schools.

At the outbreak of WWI, Mackenzie became a tank commander and was present throughout the Battle of Cambrai. Joining the Indian Army (1st Battalion, XV Punjab Regiment) after the War, he served in Calcutta, recruiting in Palampur, and moved with his battalion up to the North West Frontier (bordering Waziristan and Afghanistan) in 1936. He was part of the Escort to the Trade Agent to Tibet in 1938-39.

During the 1939-45 War, Mackenzie raised a battalion of the XV Punjab Regiment and later commanded a battalion of the Mahratta Light Infantry fighting in the Greek Islands. He retired from the Indian Army after Partition in August 1947.

Returning to the UK, Mackenzie later qualified as a Guide Lecturer and escorted many foreign visitors, including some who came for the Queen's Coronation in 1953. He died in 1980.

Dr David Richardson was a surgeon in the Madras European Regiment who saw military action in the 1824-26 war in Burma when he escorted a group of wounded to safety.. He was seconded as a political officer to the administration of the new British territory of Tenasserim Provinces where he rose to be a senior assistant to the Commissioner, E.A. Blundell, with responsibilities for justice, finance, health, education and civil affairs. Richardson was chosen for his "scientific acquirements" and "mild and conciliatory manner". He was an excellent linguist. Richardson undertook a mission to the King of Siam in Bangkok in 1839. The material within these Papers is mainly to do with this mission.

Richardson married a Tai-speaking woman and died, age 49, in Moulmein. He translated and annotated a comprehensive and influential Buddhist legal text, the dhamathat or the laws of Menoo, which was published in 1847.

Rawlinson was born in 1810 in Oxfordshire. He sailed to India 1827, to take up a cadetship in the East India Company's army. In 1833 he was sent to Persia with other British officers to organise and train the Persian army. It was during his duty in Persia that he first saw the great trilingual cuneiform inscription at Behistun (Bisitun) and began his work on cuneiform decipherment. In 1839 the British military officers were withdrawn as a result of a change in Persian foreign policy.
In 1841 Rawlinson joined the British military contingent in Afghanistan, where he was stationed at Kandahar as political agent (consul). When the Afghans rose against the British, he was required to organise the defence of Kandahar, which he did successfully. In 1842, on his return from Afghanistan, much of his property, including most of his papers, was lost when a river boat caught fire on the river Sutlej.
In 1843, Rawlinson was posted to Baghdad as political agent, where he spent the rest of his East India Company career, and resumed work on cuneiform inscriptions. He returned to England from 1849-1851 on sick leave. But in 1851 he was entrusted by the Trustees of the British Museum with supervision of the archaeological excavations at Nimrud after A H Layard abandoned archaeology for a career in politics and diplomacy. He also conducted excavations on his own account in other places.
In 1855 he was relieved of his post at Baghdad and returned to England permanently. Almost immediately the Trustees of the British Museum applied to the Government for a special grant to fund the publication of lithographic reproductions of the cuneiform inscriptions in their collections under Rawlinson's editorship.
In 1856 he was appointed a Crown Director of the East India Company. he also received a baronetcy. In 1858 he became MP for Reigate, but resigned after a few months to take up a seat on the newly-formed Council for India.
In 1859 Rawlinson was appointed Ambassador to Tehran, which involved his resigning his seat on the Council for India. He resigned from this position in 1860. in September 1862 he married Louisa Caroline Harcourt Seymour and in 1865 became MP for Frome. He held the seat until 1868 when he rejoined the Council for India, a post which he held to the end of his life.
His wife Louisa died in 1889 which seemed to have deeply affected Rawlinson. Concern for his father's well-being led to their son, Henry Seymour, resigning his post in India to continue his military career in England. Rawlinson died at the beginning of 1895.

Hugh George Rawlinson was born in Middlesborough in 1880 and went, as a scholar, to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He graduated with a First Class degree in the Classics Tripos and gained the Hare University Prize. In 1903 he joined the Education Service of the Government of Ceylon and in 1908 moved to the Indian Education Service. He became Principal of the Karnatak College in Dharwar and later, Principal of Deccan College in Poona, where he stayed until his retirement in 1933.
Rawlinson was a prolific writer about Indian history and related themes and also acted as editor for several volumes. On his return to England he lectured in Classics at Birkbeck College, London. He was a Member of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1944-1954 and wrote an article, "Indian Influences on Western Culture" (JRAS 1947, pp.142-150) for the Journal of the Society. He died, in London, on 8 June 1857.

Ram Raz was born in Tanjore in 1790. He mastered English while working as a clerk with the 2nd Battalion of the 16th Madras Native Infantry Regiment. He then became a vakil. Around 1815 he was a clerk in the office of the English Military Auditor General. He helped translate Tipu Sultan's code of regulations for revenue officers from Marathi to English. He was appointed head English master at the college of Fort St. George in Madras and subsequently was appointed to the position of Native Judge in Bangalore, Mysore state, where he worked for 23 years. He became a Corresponding Member of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1828 and his paper, On tiral by Jury was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol.3, 1836, pp. 244-57.

From about 1825 onwards, at the suggestion of Richard Clarke, Madras Civil Service, Ram Raz began preparing material for a translation of the Silpa Sastra - the Hindu treatise on art. He commissioned accurate drawings from Indian artists working for the Survey Department, Madras. The work was completed by the end of 1831 and together with the translation were sent to the Royal Asiatic Society. They were received in July 1832 and it was agreed to publish the work. However, Ram Raz died circa 1833 and failed to see the publication which was printed in 1834.

Ram Gharib Chaube was probably born in the late 1850s into the traditional learned Chaube family. He graduated from the Presidency College, Calcutta, and was learned in both Indian tradition and the British colonial system of education, being fluent in dialects of Awadhi and Bhojpuri, as well as Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit and English. He became Mirzapur's distirct collector of revenues and whilst there met William Crooke, who was keen to document Indian folklore. Impressed with Chaube's abilities, Crooke asked that Chaube help in his work. Chaube probably continued to work with Crooke until Crooke's departure for England in 1896. The material in these papers, therefore most likely dates from this time. Crooke continued to correspond with Chaube after his return to England. However he does not seem to have acknowledged Chaube's contribution to his work.

After Crooke's departure Chaube also worked for V.A. Smith, and G.A. Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India. However he constantly struggled to earn enough money and satisfy his academic interests. He died in 1914 in Gopalpur.

The life of Crooke and Rame Gharib Chaube has been well documented in In Quest of Indian Folktales: Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and William Crooke by Sadhana Naithani (Indian University Press, 2006) from which these biographical details have been obtained.

His family home was at Woodfield, near Eyrecourt in Co. Galway, Ireland but he spent most of his life in Asia as a Merchant-ship-officer and trader. He went to India in 1792 and did not return to Ireland for 27 years. The letters in the Collection were written to his sister Mary, or her husband Robert Turbett, A Dublin merchant.. He sailed on the Anna from Bombay in 1792 with a cargo of cotton for China reaching Macao in April 1793 and returning with a "cargo of soft sugar, sugar candy, tea, silk, camphire, allum paint, nankeens, beads and toothinague". He continued to work on board vessels and teaching himself French, Mathematics and Navigation. On a journey to "Cochinchina" in 1804 they were shipwrecked and had to travel overland through Hainan to reach Canton. He was Captain of the William Petrie in 1812 but had to give up command because of bad health. He spent time in "Malacca" which seemed to improve his health. He seems to have remained in Asia until around 1822. He retired to Ireland but later moved to England and married Eleanor Masters Woodman in 1842 when she was about 26 years old. he died in 1846.. Information for this biography was obtained from From Indian Waters: Some Old Letters by G.C. Duggan, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1958), pp. 1-7, which also gives details of the letters no longer in the collection. Further information was provided by Robert Grant in 2022.

Iltudus Thomas Prichard was born in 1826 in Bristol, the fifth son of physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard and Anna Marie Estlin. He attended Rugby School before entering the Bengal army, serving through the mutiny before retiring in 1859. Prichard returned to England and studied law. He then returned to India, where he edited the Delhi Gazette and served as a barrister. Throughout his life, he turned his Indian experiences into several books, including a memoir of his mutiny experiences (1860), a novel "How to Manage It" (1864), and the satire "The Chronicles of Budgepore" (1870). It would seem that Prichard was one of the men who were involved in the translations used by Henry Myers Elliot in his History of India (edited and published by Dowson posthumously).
Prichard died in 1874 in India.

David Price was an orientalist and army officer. Born in Wales, his father died when he was young and, despite being given a scholarship for university he was unable to afford to complete his course. Instead he joined the army of the East India Company and in 1781 sailed for Bombay. However he volunteered for temporary service in the south and took part in the siege of Negapatam and the capture of Trincomali in Ceylon. His ship completed its voyage to Bombay on 22 April 1782. As well as serving as an army officer Price undertook Persian studies. He retired in 1807 and returned to Wales.

He was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, to which he bequeathed over seventy valuable oriental—chiefly Persian—manuscripts. He was published by the Oriental Translation Fund.