Author: D'Oyly, Charles
Biography:
D’OYLY, Charles (1781-1845: ODNB)
Charles D’Oyly was born at Murshidabad, India, in Sept. 1781, a son of Sir John Hadley D’Oyly of the EIC at Bengal, MP for Ipswich, and his wife, Diana Cotes Rochfort. Upon the return of his family to England in 1785, he was educated at home by tutors and, briefly, at a private school. In 1798, now age sixteen and already in the EIC’s employ, he returned with his widowed father to India. To 1805, he was junior civil officer at Bengal; collector at Dacca in 1808-12; and deputy and then collector at Calcutta to 1820. He then moved to Patan, where he was opium agent and, from 1831, commercial resident. He was absent from India 1831-32. Upon his return, he was a senior official in the customs department at Calcutta. Famous in his own day as a draughtsman, he published some of his drawings on his own lithographic press. Tom Raw, the Griffin (1828), written and illustrated by him between 1815 and 1824 and published anonymously, is a mock-heroic, anti-imperialist burlesque. Shortly following its appearance, its publisher, Ackermann, withdrew it from sale. He married his first wife, his cousin Marian Greer (d 1814), at Tamluk in 1805, and his second wife, Elizabeth Jane, a daughter of Major Thomas Ross, in 1815 at Cawnpore. He retired to Italy in 1838. There he died, childless, on 21 Sep. 1845, at Livorno. (ODNB 3 May 2023; Charles D’Oyly’s Lost Satire of British India, Tom Raw, the Griffin, eds H. d Almeida, G. H. Gilpin [2020]) JC