William Henry Sleeman


Sir William Henry Sleeman was a British officer and administrator in Company-ruled India, best known for his leading role in the Anti-Thuggee Campaign of the 1830s. Sleeman served as General Superintendent of the Thuggee and [Dacoity Department|Thuggee Department] from 1835 to 1849 and published his main work on thuggee, entitled Ramseeana, in 1836. His writings served as the foundation for the colonial-era representation of thuggee and formed the basis of Philip Meadows Taylor's 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug. Sleeman's work on 'hereditary criminality' saw the extension of policing powers over itinerant communities, which later culminated in the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act.
Sleeman served as the British Resident in Gwalior between 1843 and 1849 and in Lucknow between 1849 and 1854. He toured the Kingdom of Oudh in 1849–1850 and his subsequent report to Lord Dalhousie proved instrumental in justifying its annexation in 1856. Sleeman himself strongly argued against the annexation on the basis that it would leave British rule vulnerable to an uprising by Company sepoys. He died in 1856.
Sleeman also published works on political economy in which he criticised the economic predation of the Company, viewing it as detrimental to British rule. He inadvertently made the first discovery of dinosaur bones on the Indian subcontinent in 1828, proposed in 1877 as Titanosaurus indicus, and his reports on feral children raised by wolves are thought to have inspired the character of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's 1894 novel The Jungle Book.

Early life and education

William Henry Sleeman was born on 8 August 1788 in Stratton, into a Cornish gentry family. His father, Philip Sleeman, worked at H.M. Excise and his mother, Mary, came from the Spry family. He was tutored in French, German, Latin, Greek, poetry, and literature, and developed a personal interest in military history. The family moved to Bideford in 1798 for Philip's work but moved back to Cornwall after Sleeman's father died in 1802, leaving the family in comparative poverty.
This prevented Sleeman from becoming an officer in the British Army, which effectively required a sufficient private income, and he instead settled on joining the East India Company. He joined his brother at a counting house in London in 1807 and started learning Hindustani and Arabic. With the help of family connections, Sleeman was accepted into the Bengal Army as a cadet and, in March 1809, disembarked on the Devonshire from Gravesend, arriving in Calcutta in October.

Military career

In December, Sleeman was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the 12th Native Infantry Regiment in Dinapore, before the regiment was moved to Barrackpore, on the outskirts of Calcutta, in late 1810. In autumn 1813, the regiment was moved to a cantonment in Mirzapore.
At the outbreak of the Gorkha War in 1814, by which time Sleeman was the battalion's quartermaster and interpreter, he was reassigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 25th Native Infantry Regiment, stationed at Dinapore. Soon after, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and placed in command of a company during the first campaign. He returned to the 2/12th Native Infantry, suffering a bout of malaria in the summer of 1815, and commanded a company during the Battle of Makwanpur in February 1816. By 1817, Sleeman was stationed with the regiment in Allahabad and, amid little prospect of further active service, he applied to join the Company's political service. The regiment was moved to Jubbulpore in February–March 1820, where Sleeman had been informed he would take up civil employment.

Civil service

In December 1821, Sleeman left his regiment and assumed the position of junior assistant to the Agent of the Governor-General in the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories. In 1822, he was placed in charge of the Narsinghpur District before recurring malaria led him to go on sick leave to New South Wales in April 1825. He returned to Calcutta in September 1826 and was placed in charge of the Jubbulpore district in March 1828. In April, Sleeman met the 19-year-old Amélie Josephine Blandin de Chalain, who came from a French noble family that had moved to Mauritius before the Revolution, and they married on 14 June. That same year, Sleeman, who developed a long-term interest in natural history, made the first discovery of dinosaur bones on the Indian subcontinent in the Lameta Formation near Jubbulpore. The fossils were later proposed in 1877 as a new species and List of [dinosaur genera|genus of dinosaur], Titanosaurus indicus.

Localised efforts (1829–1830)

Though Mike Dash notes that Sleeman had been in India in 1810 when a warning was sent out to the Company's sepoys and was likely to have been aware of a thuggee case in Jubbulpore in 1826, he states that there is no evidence to suggest that Sleeman took a great interest in the matter prior to 1829. Sleeman's biographer Francis Tuker claims that he had possessed a long-term interest in thuggee, whereby he discovered the account by Jean de Thévenot during his time in Barrackpore early in his career and the article by Dr. Sherwood during his time in Allahabad around 1819. Historian Máire ní Fhlathúin describes the historical accuracy of this version of events as doubtful and holds the evidence to suggest that Sleeman first encountered Sherwood's article when it was circulated by the Government in December 1830. Dash surmises that Sleeman became interested in thuggee in 1829, in the context of Captain Borthwick's success in arresting Thugs and his slow career progression by that point after ten years of service.
Sleeman assigned approvers in his possession to armed patrols along exposed roads, capturing 24 Thugs on two occasions and acquiring more approvers in the process. He submitted his first report on thuggee in May 1830, writing:

the depredations of these common enemies of mankind, which under the sanction of religious rites, ceremonies and opinions make almost every road in India between the Jumna and the Indus from the beginning of November to the end of May a dreadful scene of hourly murder, are becoming a subject of awful interest, and these proceedings have swelled from my anxiety to collect all the material that would be found to bear upon this particular case... by discharging certain duties to the priests and temples of their tutelary deity, Bhowanie, they believe that their murders are all perpetrated under her especial sanction and auspices

Sleeman further asserted that the Thugs could murder freely in Bhilsa and suggested that the district be secured from Scindia rule. Francis Curwen Smith, Sleeman's superior as Agent of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, suggested him for the position of Agent at Saugor in September. That year, Sleeman was sent 72 Thugs for trial that had been arrested in 1822 by Commissioner C. A. Molony but which had been forgotten about after Molony had died. Sleeman argued against capital punishment for the Thugs on the basis that they had already been detained for eight years, during which time 33 of them had died, however Smith and the Government disagreed.
On 3 October, Sleeman contributed an anonymous letter to the Calcutta Literary Gazette that recounted the execution of 11 Thugs and asserted that all the Thugs in India congregated at Vindhyachal Temple in Mirzapur, where their expeditions were planned by the temple priests. Sleeman's letter further provided details of ceremonies performed by the Thugs and described Thuggee as:

an organised system of religious and civil polity, to receive converts from all religions and sects, and to use them to the murder of their fellow creatures under the assurance of high rewards in this world and the next... You will probably hear from me again on this fearful subject.

Anti-Thuggee Campaign (1830–1839)

Sleeman's anonymous letter resonated with the Government, and Chief Secretary to the Governor General George Swinton requested to be able to commission a report from Smith and Sleeman on the feasibility of a wider campaign against thuggee. Swinton appointed Sleeman Agent at Saugor on 13 October and Smith submitted the plan on 19 November, which argued for the establishment of a Superintendent for the Suppression of Thugs that would try Thugs in the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories. Smith argued that Sleeman should be appointed to the office on the basis of his "extensive acquaintance with the habits, haunts, and customs of the Thugs and Phansigars". Governor-General Lord William Bentinck declined to establish a specific office for thuggee, though provided Sleeman with 50 barkandazes to pursue and apprehend the gangs. Accounts and depositions from Thugs captured around this time would form the basis of Sleeman's writings on thuggee, with the gang leader Feringheea captured by a nujeeb patrol escorted by approvers in November. Sleeman organised a system of investigation, prosecution, and punishment and institutionalised the approver system, successfully playing different factions within the gangs off of one another to secure approver testimony. Thugs were thereafter convicted based on circumstantial evidence and approver testimony.
On 5 March 1835, Sleeman was made General Superintendent of the newly established Thuggee Department after Smith declined the post. Sleeman's worsening health forced him to take a period of sick leave in Mussoorie, a hill station in the Himalayas, that began in November 1835. Sleeman published his main work on thuggee in 1836 entitled Ramaseeana, named after the Thugs' criminal argot 'Ramasee' that he perceived to be the key to uncovering the secrets of thuggee. In it he compiled a vocabulary of Ramasee from conversations with more than a dozen approvers, also printing some of them alongside approver testimony, and published genealogical trees derived from a 1797 Scindia tax list of Thugs.
Upon discovering 'river-thugs' operating on the Ganges whose modus operandi left very little circumstantial evidence, Sleeman successfully lobbied for the passage of Act III of 1836 that made simply belonging to a thuggee gang a crime punishable by life imprisonment with hard labour. Sleeman returned to Jubbulpore in January 1837, being given his previous post as head of the district on top of his thuggee duties. In March, he recommended that a manufactory be established or found to accomodate the approvers, whereafter the Jubbulpore School of Industry was founded later that year. Dacoity was added to Sleeman's responsibilities in 1838 as thuggee activity had been effectively suppressed and, in 1839, he declared that thuggee had been eradicated, marking the end of the campaign. That same year Phillip Meadows Taylor published the novel Confessions of a Thug, deriving much of his material from Sleeman's writings that would form the basis for the colonial-era account of thuggee. The village of Sleemanabad, near Jubbulpore, was named in his honour. During this period, Sleeman also published works on political economy in which he criticised the utilitarian model of the economy based on the ideas of David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, James Mill, Jean-Baptiste Say, and John Ramsay McCulloch. He objected to the accumulation and concentration of wealth in the hands of the Company, with a view of strengthening British rule, and perceived the policies of economic predation to be undermining law and order.

Later career

In 1842, while Sleeman was in the midst of his anti-dacoity campaign, Governor-General Lord Ellenborough despatched him to Bundelkhand to report on a rebellion there whereby he assumed charge of the Bundelkhand and Saugor provinces, headquartered in Jhansi. In October 1843, Sleeman was appointed Resident at Gwalior and attempted to secure a settlement prior to the December Gwalior campaign. By 1845, and if the Gwalior State is included, Sleeman was responsible for over of Indian territory. Sleeman assumed the position of Resident at Lucknow in January 1849, where he was described as being "probably the only British official ever to have addressed the King of Oudh in correct Urdu and Persian". He was relinquished of his duties relating to the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in March.
Sleeman's 1849 Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits set out a methodology for the identification and classification of criminal communities, in which he claimed that Budhuks were a pan-Indian cabal under several aliases. His work was central to the later extension of policing powers to other communities, culminating in the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. Sleeman toured the Oudh kingdom from December 1849 to February 1850, reporting his findings to Lord Dalhousie. While his characterisation of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah's administration proved instrumental in justifying the later annexation of the kingdom, Sleeman himself strongly argued against it, in 1853 stating to Sir [James Hogg, 1st Baronet|Sir James Hogg] :

Were we to take advantage of the occasion to annex or confiscate Oude, or any part of it, our good name in India would undoubtedly suffer; and that good name is more valuable to us than a dozen Oudes... The native States I consider to be breakwaters, and when they are all swept away we shall be left to the mercy of our native army, which may not always be sufficiently under our control. Such a feeling as that which pervaded Bundelcund and Gwalior in 1842 and 1843, must, sooner or later, pervade all India, if these doctrines are carried out to their full extent; and our rule could not, probably, exist under it. With regard to Oude, I can only say that the King pursues the same course, and every day
shows that he is unfit to reign. He has not the slightest regard for the duties or responsibilities of his high position; and the people, and even the members of his own family, feel humiliated at his misconduct, and grow weary of his reign... He is neither tyrannical nor cruel, but altogether incapable of devoting any of his time or attention to business of any kind, but spends the whole of his time with women, eunuchs, fiddlers, and other parasites. Should he be set aside, as he deserves to be...

Sleeman favoured the imposition of a British-directed Board to administrate Oudh in perpetuity or until the heir apparent came of age, upon which they would be bound to govern in accordance with the advice of the British Resident. Sleeman further asserted to Hogg that the Government had no right to annex the princely states and that these measures were driven by "a school... characterised by an impatience at the existence of any native state." In his 1849–1850 report, Sleeman provided six accounts of feral children nurtured by wolves, two he had witnessed himself, which were published separately in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens and are thought to have likely inspired the character of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's 1894 novel The Jungle Book.
During Sleeman's tenure at Lucknow, there were reportedly three attempts on his life in December 1851, October 1853, and 1853–1856. Sleeman's health collapsed in autumn 1854 and he left Oudh for Mussoorie, recommending that James Outram, 1st Baronet|James Outram] be appointed in his place. In November 1855, Sleeman wrote to the Government proposing that "predatory tribes", such as the Sansees, Bouriahs, and Kanjars, be subjected to India-wide surveillance, surmising that "petty crime would be considerably diminished". He and his wife left Mussoorie that same month and embarked on the East Indiaman Monarch from Calcutta to London on 25 January 1856. On 5 February, he was formally made Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. Sleeman died on 10 February off the coast of Ceylon, several days after the annexation of Oudh, and was buried at sea. His 1849–1850 report was published posthumously in 1858 as A Journey Through the Kingdom of Oudh, together with correspondence regarding Oudh's annexation.

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