Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Birdwood, George Christopher Molesworth
BIRDWOOD, Sir George Christopher Molesworth, M.D., C.S.I., eldest son of General Christopher Birdwood, late of the 3rd Native Infantry, and Commissary-General, Bombay, was born at Belgaum, Bombay, Dec. 8, 1832. He was educated at Plymouth New Grammar School and at the University where he took the degree of M.B., and passed the usual examination of the College of Surgeons in 1854. He was appointed to the medical service of the East India Company on their Bombay establishment in the same year. His first charge was of the Southern Mahratta Horse, Kalludghee, in 1855. Later he was transferred to the 1st Battery 2nd Brigade of Artillery at Sholapore, where he was also at different times in charge of the 8th Madras Cavalry, 3rd Bombay Native Infantry, and the Civil Station. In 1856 he was sent to the Persian Gulf in medical charge of the Company's steamship Ajdaha and the detachment of Her Majesty's 64th Regiment on board, and was present at the bombardment and capture of Mohammarah, for which he received the medal and clasp given for the Persian War of 1856–57. On his return to Bombay in April, 1857, he was appointed Acting Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Grant Medical College, and from that date to his leaving India continued to be connected with the college almost without interruption in the chairs successively of Anatomy and Physiology and Botany and Materia Medica. In the same year Dr. Birdwood was appointed Curator of the Government Central Museum at Bombay. With the assistance of the late eminent Hindoo physician and scholar, Dr. Bhawoo Dhajee, and the liberal cooperation of the leading native gentlemen of all religions and races he succeeded in establishing the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Victoria Gardens in Bombay. In 1867 Dr. Birdwood was sent by Sir Bartle Frere, at the express desire of the leading merchants of Bombay, as Special Commissioner for the Government, to the Universal Exhibition hold in Paris in that year. These services were acknowledged by his being appointed Sheriff of Bombay and by the addresses presented to him on his being forced to finally leave India, through permanently broken health, in 1869, by the Royal Asiatic Society, the Agri-Horticultural Society, the University of Bombay, of which he was then Registrar, and the students of Grant Medical College. On the occasion, also, of the proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India, Jan. 1, 1877, he was appointed to the Companionship of the Star of India. Since his return to this country Dr. Birdwood has chiefly devoted himself to writing on Indian subjects, and more especially on Indian art. For his services on behalf of Indian art the Queen conferred on Dr. Birdwood the honour of knighthood in Sept., 1881. Sir George Birdwood also still maintains his official ties with India, having been appointed about 1879 Special Assistant in the Revenue, Statistics, and Commerce Department of the India Office. He is the author of "Catalogue of the Economic Products of the Bombay Presidency (Vegetable)," 1st edition, 1862, 2nd edition, 1868; "The Genus Boswellia (Frankincense plants), with illustrations of three new species;" in the "Transactions of the Linnean Society," vol. xxvii.; the article "Incense," in the "Encyclopædia Britannica"; "Handbook to the British Indian section, Paris Exhibition of 1878"; "Handbook on the Industrial Arts of India," 1880; "The Arts of India," 1881; "Austellung Indischer Kunst-Gegenstände, zu Berlin," 1881; "Indiens Konstslöjd en Kortfattad Skildring," Stockholm, 1882. He was a constant contributor to the Indian Press, and for some time editor of the Bombay Saturday Review. He wrote two letters in the Times of 6th Dec., 1881, and 26th Jan., 1882, in which he contended that the opium revenue of the Indian Government is as sound and moral as the revenue derived by this country from the excise. These letters were republished in Mrs. W. H. Brereton's "Truth about Opium," 1882.