Showing 6356 results

Clinton Thomas Dent was born in 1850 and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He trained as a surgeon becoming Senior Surgeon at the St George's Hospital Medical School, London, Consulting Surgeon at the Belgrave Hospital for Children, Chief Surgeon to the Metropolitan Police from 1904, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. However he also had a love of mountaineering and was one of the few British climbers to attempt the unclimbed peaks in the Alps including the Aiguille du Dru (3,754 m), a steep granite peak in the Mont Blanc massif.
With British alpinists such as Albert Mummery, A. W. Moore and D. W. Freshfield, Dent was involved in the pioneering of climbing in the Caucasus, where he made the first ascent of Gestola (4,860 m) with W. F. Donkin in 1886. He was President of the Alpine Club from 1886-1889.
Dent died in 1912 from a virulent septicaemia.

Samuel Davis was born in the West Indies where his father was Commissary General. After his father died he returned to England with his mother and siblings. He became an East India cadet in 1778, and sailed for India aboard the Earl of Oxford, arriving in Madras in 1780. In 1783 Warren Hastings assigned him as Draftsman and Surveyor on Samuel Turner's Mission to Bhutan and Tibet, but unable to enter Tibet he remained in Bhutan for the duration of the Mission.
On his return he was appointed Assistant to the Collector of Bhagalpur and Registrar of its Adalat Court. There he met William Jones and they became good friends, Davis also becoming a member of the Asiatic Society founded by Jones. He subsequently became Collector of Burdwan, a town in the Bengal Presidency, and from 1795-1800 was Magistrate of the district and city court in Benares. He continued in civil posts in India until his retirement in 1806 when he returned to England via St. Helena. He was elected as a Director of the East India Company on his return.
While in Burdwan, Davis married Henrietta Boileau and they had four sons and seven daughters. The eldest son, John Francis Davis, became the second Governor of Hong Kong. Davis died on 16 June 1819 at Birdhurst Lodge near Croyden in Surrey.

Thomas William Rhys Davids was born in Colchester, Essex, 12 May 1843. He was educated at Brighton School and Breslau University, where he studied Greek and Sanskrit. He held a number of posts in the Ceylon Civil Service, including District Judge and Archaeological Commissioner, 1866-72. He returned to England and became a barrister in 1877 before being appointed Professor of Pali and Buddhist Literature at University College, London, a position he held from 1882-1904. He subsequently became Professor of Comparative Religion at Manchester University in 1905.

Rhys Davids married Caroline Foley in 1894. She was also a Pali scholar. He was a founder and President of the Pali Text Society from 1881-1922, and a founder of the British Academy, 1901. He served as Secretary and Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1887-1905, and he established the Indian Text Series.

In his retirement, Rhys Davids wrote for the Manchester Guardian and worked on the preparation of a Pali dictionary. He died in Chipstead, Surrey, on 27 December 1922.

Major J.R. Cunningham was part of the Indian Government. In 1930 J.R. Cunningham, the then Director of Public Information of Assam, issued a circular imposing a blanket ban on any anti-British and pro-swadeshi activity by students. It seems he was stationed in Jabalpur in 1939 and also visited Mashhad in the same year. The membership list of the Society for 1947 has him listed as Lieutenant-Colonel Cunningham and living in Tunbridge Wells.