CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
William Makepeace Thackeray who, as Sir W. W. Hunter has told, made a very large fortune during his eleven years' service in Bengal as Resident at Sylhet, chiefly by the capture of wild elephants, which he sold to his honourable masters, at a handsome profit to himself. Sylhet Thackeray married, in Calcutta, in 1776, a daughter of Lieut-Colonel Richmond Webb, and retired from India the year after, at the age of twenty-eight, to live in comfort and style for thirty-five years in England, from where he sent out to India six sons and three daughters, out of his family of twelve children.
Of the sons, two spent some years in Calcutta, and died there: Richmond, the civilian, and Charles, a barrister. Clever, witty, an able writer, and a charming companion, Charles Thackeray fell a victim to his own convivial tastes. His practice at the Bar was of the slightest, but he was on the staff of the leading Calcutta newspaper, the then newly created Englishman, and might have prospered but for the vice which dragged him down. He lived for many years in Alipore, at No. 12, and died in the early forties of the last century, leaving none to mourn him, or to place a kindly record on his grave. His brother died some thirty years before him, in September, 1815. Richmond Thackeray arrived
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