Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Taylor, John (d.1808)
TAYLOR, JOHN (d. 1808), writer on India, entered the service of the East India Company in 1776 as a cadet in the Bombay army. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 1 May 1780, became captain in December 1789, was appointed major on 20 March 1797, and on 6 March 1800 attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He married before 1789, and died at Poonah on 10 Oct. 1808. Taylor was the author of: 1. ‘Considerations on the Practicability and Advantages of a more speedy Communication between Great Britain and her Possessions in India,’ London, 1795, 4to. This work, which was chiefly based on Colonel James Capper's ‘Observations on the Passage to India’ (1783), advocated an overland route for letters through Egypt. 2. ‘Observations on the Mode proposed by the New Arrangement for the Distribution of the Off-reckoning Fund of the several Presidencies in India,’ 1796, 4to. 3. ‘Travels from England to India by the way of the Tyrol, Venice, Scandaroon, Aleppo, and over the Great Desert to Bussora,’ London, 1799, 8vo. 4. ‘Letters on India,’ 1800, 4to; translated into French, Paris, 1801, 8vo. 5. ‘The India Guide,’ pt. i. vol. i. 1801, 8vo. This writer must not be confused with John Taylor (d. 1821), member of the Asiatic Society of Bombay and of the Literary Society of Bombay, who was born in Edinburgh and obtained the degree of M.D. from the university in 1804. He entered the Bombay service, was appointed assistant-surgeon on 26 March 1809, and was promoted to the rank of surgeon in 1821. He was the author of several translations from the Sanscrit. He died on 6 Dec. 1821 at Shiraz in Persia, leaving a son John, born in 1804, who became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, and died in that city on 14 July 1856 (Notes and Queries, II. vi. 309, 464; Dodwell and Miles, List of Indian Medical Officers, p. 140).
[Dodwell and Miles's Indian Army List, Bombay Presidency, p. 80; Reuss's Register of Living Authors, 1804, ii. 376–7; Gent. Mag. 1796, ii. 945.]