in Timmannee, Kooranko, and Soolima, Countries of Western Africa,’ London, 1825.
Late in 1824 Laing received instructions from Lord Bathurst to undertake an expedition, by way of Tripoli and Timbuctoo, to ascertain the source and course of the Niger. Full of enthusiasm, he left England 5 Feb. 1825. He proceeded to Tripoli by way of Malta, where he was treated with marked attention by the governor, the Marquis of Hastings. At Tripoli he contracted a close friendship with the British consul, Mr. Warrington, whose daughter, Emma Maria Warrington, he married 14 July 1825. Two days later he set out for Timbuctoo, in company with Babani, a sheikh of good repute, who undertook his safe conduct thither in ten weeks' time. The ordinary route was deemed unsafe, and, after a tedious and roundabout journey of a thousand miles through part of Fezzan, the travellers reached Ghadamis on 13 Sept. Laing was well received. Although many of his instruments had been damaged, and the stock of his only rifle had been broken by a charging elephant, he hopefully left Ghadamis 27 Oct., and on 3 Dec. 1825 reached Ensala, a town on the eastern frontier of the province of Tuat, belonging to the Tuaric, where he repaid a kindly reception by rendering medical aid to the sick. On 10 Jan. 1826 he quitted Ensala, and a fortnight later entered the flat, sandy, cheerless desert of Tenezaroff. Of his subsequent movements there is no detailed information. According to letters received by his father-in-law, and dated 10 May and 1 July 1826, after suffering from fever, he and his party were attacked and plundered by the Tuaric, and he was severely wounded. The sheikh Babani, who was dead at the time, was not in Laing's opinion wholly blameless. Laing was then the sole survivor of his party. According to another letter, his last, dated Timbuctoo (Timbuctù) 21 Sept. 1826, Laing reached that city on 18 Aug. 1826 (which entitled him to the 3,000l. offered by a society in London to the first European arriving there). The city answered all his expectations, except as regarded size. His position was very unsafe, owing to the hostility of Bello, chief of the Foulahs of Massina, who had dispossessed the Tuaric. He proposed leaving the city in three days' time. From information afterwards collected from various sources, it appeared that Laing left Timbuctoo at the time intended, and was surprised and murdered by Arabs in his bivouac on the night of 26 Sept. 1826. Facts, which were established at Tripoli in 1829 to the entire satisfaction of the British, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Sardinian consuls there, showed that the sheikh Babani, who was sent with Laing from Tripoli, was under the secret direction of Hassunah d'Ghies, son of the prime minister of the bashaw of Tripoli; that it was by d'Ghies's direction that the actual murderer, the ferocious Bourabouschi, was appointed to be Laing's guide on the return journey from Timbuctoo; that Laing's papers, forming a packet fourteen inches long and seven inches thick, were placed in d'Ghies's hands shortly after the murder, and that the packet was known to be secreted in Tripoli in August 1828. It was also alleged that the documents were given by d'Ghies to the French consul, Baron de Rosseau, who was in correspondence with the conspirators during the greater part of Laing's journey. Mohammed, brother of Hassunah d'Ghies, gave most of this information. A summary of the evidence is given in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ March 1830 (No. lxxxiv.). No further explanation has appeared. The Geographical Society of Paris presented to Mrs. Laing a gold medal in recognition of her late husband's services to science.
[The most authentic memoir of Laing is that in Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen, vol. ii., with a portrait from a painting in the possession of the family. A few corrections have been made here from war office sources. See also Thomas Nelson's Memoirs of Oudney, Clapperton, and Laing, 1830; Quarterly Review, 1830, No. lxxxiv.; Dict. Universelle, under ‘De Caillé’ and ‘Laing, Alexander Gordon;’ and Johnston's Dict. of Geogr., under ‘Niger’ and ‘Timbuctoo.’ The only notices of Laing in the Journals of the Roy. Geogr. Soc. London, are in vol. ii. p. i. viii. 298, xxii. 191.]
LAING, DAVID (1774–1856), architect, son of a merchant in the city of London, was born in 1774, and articled to Sir John Soane [q. v.] about 1790. In 1811 he was appointed surveyor of buildings at the custom house, and was directed to prepare designs for a new custom house on a site to the westward of Sir Christopher Wren's structure. In five years (1813–17) the building was completed and occupied, but in 1825 the beech piling and planking used as the substratum of the foundation decayed, and the front fell down. Much litigation followed, and ultimately, under Sir Sydney Smirke's advice, a new foundation was put in, and the whole building rearranged and altered.
Tite, one of Laing's pupils, laid the foundation of his reputation as joint architect with Laing of the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East in 1817–19. Laing, who was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, died at 5 Elm Place, West Brompton, London, on 27 March 1856, aged 82. He was the author of ‘Hints for Dwellings, consisting of Original Designs
