Author: Rattray, Robert Haldane
Biography:
RATTRAY, Robert Haldane (1781-1860: findmypast.co.uk)
He was born on 26 Nov. 1781 in Harpur Street, London, and baptised on 29 Dec. at St. George the Martyr, Queen’s Square, the son of James Rattray (1741-1809), an East India Company (EIC) ship commander, and his wife Henrietta Henshaw (1751-1817), who had married in Calcutta in 1769. He went to Winchester School and later joined the EIC civil service, sailing to India in 1800. He was to remain in India all his life, eventually becoming Chief Justice of Bengal. He married Amelia Cock on 13 Feb. 1806 at Dinapore, Bengal. They had at least six children. She died in 1842. He seems to have already formed a relationship and had children with Frances Crane before they married in Calcutta in 1846. They had at least nine children. He died of a fever on 29 Sept. 1860 at Calcutta. The Exile (1820), an admired Childe Harold-style journey poem from England to India, was at first published anonymously. Later reprintings in 1837 and 1844 added further poems. (findmypast.co.uk 28 Oct. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 28 Oct. 2020; Calcutta Gazette 27 Feb. 1806; St. James’s Chronicle 26 Oct. 1826; Letters of Henrietta Rattray [1878] which contains his 1859 account of his family) AA