Welsh led the storming party in the successful assault of those formidable defences on the night of 10 Feb. He was mentioned in despatches, and the court of directors of the East India Company bore high testimony to his services on the occasion, observing that the achievement reflected the utmost credit on Welsh, ‘who led the storming party in a manner that does singular honour to his intrepidity and perseverance’ (Political Despatch, 29 Sept. 1809). On 19 Feb. 1809 he led the advance from the south, and was successful in capturing several hill forts, arriving at Trivandrum, the capital of Travancore, on 2 March.
In April 1812 he commanded a small force sent to quell a rising in the Wainad, which he accomplished after a month of heavy marching and desultory fighting. He was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel on 25 Jan. 1813, and was appointed deputy judge-advocate-general, residing at Bengalur.
On 6 Feb. 1821 Welsh was appointed to command the troops in the provinces of Malaba and Canara; on 6 May 1823 to command at Velur; on 23 Jan. 1824 to command in Travancore and Cochin; and on 1 Aug. 1826 to command the Doab field force. He arrived at Belgaum in September, and was immediately engaged with the resident in measures which were successful in preventing a threatened rising at Kolapur.
Early in 1829 Welsh went to England on furlough. He was promoted to be colonel on 5 June. In the following year he published ‘Military Reminiscences, from a Journal of nearly forty years' Active Service in the East Indies,’ with over ninety illustrations (2 vols. 8vo, two editions). The work remains useful for its descriptions of places and military incidents in southern India.
Welsh did not return to India until his promotion to major-general on 10 Jan. 1837. He was appointed on 1 June to the command of the northern division, Madras presidency, to which was added, in November 1838, the command in Katak. He was promoted lieutenant-general on 9 Nov. 1846, and relinquished his command on 16 Feb. following. On leaving India the governor in council expressed the high sense entertained of the gallantry and zeal which had marked his service of fifty-eight years. He was promoted to be general on 20 June 1854. He died at North Parade, Bath, on 24 Jan. 1861. Welsh married at Calcutta, in 1794, a daughter of Francis Light, first governor of Prince of Wales's Island, Penang, by whom he had a numerous family.
[India Office Records; Royal Military Calendar, 1820; Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature; Annual Register, 1861; Welsh's Military Reminiscences; Literary Gazette, Spectator, Scotsman, and London Monthly Review of 1830.]
WELSH, JOHN (1824–1859), meteorologist, eldest son of George Welsh of Craigenputtock, was born at Boreland in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright on 27 Sept. 1824. His father, who was ‘extensively engaged in agriculture,’ died in 1835, and his mother settled at Castle Douglas, where Welsh received his early education. In November 1839 he entered the university of Edinburgh with a view to becoming a civil engineer, and studied under Professors Philip Kelland [q. v.], James David Forbes [q. v.], and Robert Jameson [q. v.] In December 1842 Sir Thomas Makdougall-Brisbane [q. v.], on the advice of Forbes, engaged Welsh as an observer at his magnetical and meteorological observatory at Makerstoun under John Allan Broun [q. v.], then director. In 1850 Welsh, being anxious to obtain some other post, was recommended by Brisbane to Colonel William Henry Sykes [q. v.], chairman of the committee of the British Association which managed the Kew Observatory, and he was appointed assistant to (Sir) Francis Ronalds [q. v.], who was honorary superintendent. Welsh read at the Ipswich meeting of the association in October 1851 an elaborate report on Ronalds's three magnetographs. Welsh also presented and described two sliding-rules for reducing hygrometrical and magnetic observations. In 1852 he read an important report on the methods used in graduating and comparing standard instruments at the Kew Observatory. Since this date the verification of thermometers and barometers for construction of these instruments has been regularly undertaken at Kew.
Welsh now succeeded Ronalds, who had resigned, as superintendent of the observatory. On 17 Aug., 26 Aug., 21 Oct., and 10 Nov. 1852 he made, under the auspices of the Kew committee, four ascents from Vauxhall, with the assistance of Charles Green [q. v.], in his balloon the Great (or Royal) Nassau, in order to make meteorological observations, of which a detailed description is given in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1853, p. 310.
In March and May 1854 he made for the committee an investigation on the ‘pumping’ of marine barometers. In 1855 Welsh went to Paris to supervise, at the exhibition of that year, the exhibit of magnetic and meteorological instruments used at Kew. In
