second in command did all the work, is incorrect. The error originated no doubt in Taylor's energy and zeal in carrying out Baird Smith's orders, and in Nicholson's deathbed exclamations that if he lived he would let the world know that Taylor took Delhi. Wilson's despatch stated that in ill-health, and while suffering from the effects of a painful wound, Baird Smith devoted himself with the greatest ability and assiduity to the conduct of the difficult and important operations of the siege, and that his thanks and acknowledgments are especially due to Baird Smith for having planned and successfully carried out, in the face of extreme and unusual difficulties, an attack almost without parallel in the annals of siege operations (Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny). The rewards bestowed upon Baird Smith were in no way commensurate with his great services. He was promoted to be brevet lieutenant-colonel (a rank he already held temporarily) on 19 Jan. 1858, for service in the field; he was made a companion of the Bath military division on the 22nd of the same month; he received the medal and the thanks of the several commanders under whom he served, and of the government of India (London Gazette, 14 and 24 Nov. and 15 Dec. 1857, and 16 Jan. 1858).
It was not until 23 Sept. that Baird Smith gave up his command at Delhi, and went by slow marches to Rurki, where he arrived on the 29th, suffering from scurvy, the effect of exposure and work, aggravated by the state of his wound. He was laid up for some weeks, and then went to Mussuri to recruit his health. On his recovery he was appointed to the military charge of the Saharanpur and Mozaffarnagar districts, which he held along with the appointment of superintendent-general of irrigation.
On 1 Sept. 1858 Baird Smith was appointed mint master at Calcutta, in succession to Colonel John Thomas Smith [q. v.] On 25 Jan. 1859 he became a member of the senate of the university of Calcutta. On 26 April the same year he was appointed aide-de-camp to the queen, and promoted to be colonel in the army. From 5 Aug. to October 1859 Baird Smith officiated as secretary to the government of India in the public works department. The appointment of mint master afforded him leisure for other public services, which made his manifold powers of usefulness better known and appreciated. His crowning service was the survey of the great famine of 1861, the provision of relief, and the safeguards proposed to prevent such disaster in future. The labour and fatigue of long journeys, investigations, and reports, followed by the depressing wet season, renewed the illness from which he suffered after the capture of Delhi. He was carried on board the Candia at Calcutta, and died on 13 Dec. 1861. His body was landed at Madras and buried there with military honours. A memorial of him was placed in Calcutta Cathedral, the epitaph being written by Colonel Sir Henry Yule [q. v.] A memorial was also erected at Lasswade, Midlothian.
Baird Smith married, on 10 Jan. 1856, in the cathedral at Calcutta, Florence Elizabeth, second daughter of Thomas De Quincey [q. v.] His widow and two daughters, Florence May and Margaret Eleanor, survived him. Of his two brothers, John Young (d. 1887) was a deputy surgeon-general in the Bombay army, and Andrew Simpson, a colonel in the Indian army, saw a good deal of active service in Upper India.
Besides the works mentioned Baird Smith published: 1. ‘Agricultural Resources of the Punjab; being a Memorandum on the Application of the Waste Waters of the Punjab to Purposes of Irrigation,’ London, 8vo, 1849. He contributed ‘Report of some Experiments in Tamping Mines’ to the ‘Papers on various Professional Subjects connected with the Duties of the Corps of Engineers, Madras Presidency,’ edited by Colonel John Thomas Smith [q. v.], vol. i. 1839, and ‘Some Remarks on the Use of the Science of Geology’ to ‘The Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers,’ Corps Papers Series, 1849. Baird Smith left unpublished notes for a history of the siege of Delhi, which are embodied in ‘Richard Baird Smith, a Biographical Sketch, by Colonel H. M. Vibart,’ London, 1897, 8vo.
[India Office Records; Despatches; London Gazette; private sources; Memoir in Vibart's Addiscombe, its Heroes and Men of Note; Kaye's Hist. of the Sepoy War in India; Malleson's Hist. of the Indian Mutiny; Medley's Year's Campaigning in India; An Officer's Narrative of the Siege of Delhi; Colonel Samuel Dewé White's Complete History of the Indian Mutiny; Bosworth Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence; Norman's Narrative of the Campaign in 1857 against the Mutineers at Delhi; article by Sir Henry Norman in the Fortnightly Magazine, April 1883; Letter from Baird Smith to Colonel Lefroy, R.A., published by the latter in the Times, 11 May 1858; Lord Roberts's Forty-one Years in India; Holmes's Hist. of the Mutiny; Thackeray's Two Indian Campaigns; Thackwell's Second Sikh War.]
SMITH, RICHARD JOHN (1786–1855), actor, commonly known as O Smith, the son of an actor named Smith, whom Doran
