Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Grose, John Henry
GROSE, JOHN HENRY (fl. 1750–1783), civil servant of the East India Company, younger brother of Francis Grose [q. v.], left England in March 1750 for Bombay, ' in the station of a covenant servant and writer to the East India Company.' He had the good fortune to be recommended by a director in London to a nephew of the governor of Bombay; his introduction to the new mode of life was made easy to him, and he would seem to have been afforded unusual opportunities, which a faculty for observation enabled him to turn to good account. In 1757 he published 'A Voyage to the East Indies' in one vol., and in 1766 a second edition (2 vols. 8vo), with a history of the war, 1756-1763, and etchings by his brother Francis. A third edition was published in 1772. The first edition gives a good account of Eastern manners and customs, then little known, and the work has been made the basis of many popular accounts. It is said to have been compiled from Grose's notes by John Cleland. A French translation by Philippe Hernandez was published in London in 1758. Grose, who was a member of the Society of Arts, lived at Richmond, Surrey, in 1783. By his wife, Sarah Smalley, daughter of John Browning, a woolstapler, of Barnaby Street, Southwark, he left issue; his son John is noticed separately.
[A Voyage to the East Indies (as above); Gent. Mag. 1791, lxi. pt. i. 493.]