Background
Sleeman was born at Stratton, Cornwall, on the 8th of August 1788. He was the son of Philip Sleeman, yeoman and supervisor of excise.
Sleeman was born at Stratton, Cornwall, on the 8th of August 1788. He was the son of Philip Sleeman, yeoman and supervisor of excise.
In 1809 Sleeman joined the Bengal Army and later served in the Nepal War between 1814–1816.
In 1820 he was selected for civil employ, and became junior assistant to the Governor-General's agent in the Saugor and Nerbudda territories. In 1822 he was placed in charge of Narsinghpur District, and would later describe his two years in the role as by far the most laborious of his life. He was gazetted to the rank of Captain in 1825, and in 1828 assumed charge of Jubbulpore District. In 1831 he transferred to Sagar district to cover for a colleague on leave. Upon his colleague's return, Sleeman continued with magisterial duties in Sagar until 1835.
Sleeman became the earliest discoverer of dinosaur fossils in Asia when in 1828, serving as a Captain in the Narmada valley region, he noticed several basaltic formations which he identified as having been "raised above the waters". By digging around in the Bara Simla Hills, part of the Lameta formation near Jabalpur, he unearthed several petrified trees, as well as some fragmentary dinosaur fossil specimens. Subsequently he sent these specimens to London and to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. In 1877 the genus was named Titanosaurus Indicus by Richard Lydekker, but the taxonomic position is in doubt. Sleeman wrote about wild children who had been raised by wolves with his notes on six cases. This was first published in the first volume of his Journey through the kingdom of Oude in 1848-1850 (1858) and reprinted in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens, by an Indian Official and in The Zoologist (1888 12(135):87-98). This caught the imagination of many and ultimately inspired Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli character.
He died and was buried at sea near Ceylon on a recovery trip to Britain in 1856, just six days after being awarded the Order of the Bath.
(Excerpt from The Thugs or Phansigars of India: Comprising...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(Mark Twain once famously said "there was but one solitary...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
Whilst in Jubbulpore, he married Amélie Josephine, the daughter of Count Blondin de Fontenne, a French nobleman. They had seven children. His second daughter, Henrietta, was married to William Alexander Ross, an uncle of Sir Ronald Ross. A grandson of Sleeman, Colonel Sir James Lewis Sleeman who also wrote about thuggee and shikar became a pioneer of wildlife photography in India.
