Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/396

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geon on Lord Hill's staff, entered Paris with the allies, and was afterwards present at Waterloo. After the war he remained attached to Lord Hill until 1817, when he was stationed at Portsmouth. In 1819 he was at the hospital at Chatham, and for a short time staff assistant at the cavalry depôt at Maidstone. Tiring of garrison duty, he accepted an offer from Sir Edward Paget [q. v.], who had been appointed governor of Ceylon, of the post of personal surgeon, joined him in Ceylon in 1821, and accompanied him when appointed commander-in-chief of the Indian army to Bengal and the provinces. In 1824 he entered the East India Company's service, by Paget's influence, as assistant surgeon on the Bengal establishment, not resigning his king's commission, however, till 1830. After leaving Paget's staff he was appointed senior permanent assistant at the general hospital at Calcutta, a post which he held till his death, combining his hospital duties with the offices of surgeon to the gaol and to the Upper Orphan School, Kidderpore, and with a large private practice. He was also an active member of the Medical and Physical Society, in which he succeeded Dr. John Adams as secretary in 1830, and to which he contributed a number of important papers. In 1828 he printed a work on ‘Diseases of the Spleen, particularly … in Bengal,’ followed by a treatise on cholera (published in London in 1833); and in 1832 appeared his great work, ‘Clinical Illustrations of the more important Diseases of Bengal,’ the most valuable contribution to the scientific knowledge of Indian diseases so far published. The Indian government subsidised its expenses, and a second and enlarged edition was brought out in 1835. He died at Calcutta on 25 Aug. 1835. In 1817 he was married to Miss Montgomery. His only child was married to Frederick Cleeve, C.B.

[Bengal Obituary, 1848; Facts in the History of the Twining Family, Supplement, 1893.]

S. L-P.

TWISDEN. [See Twysden.]

TWISLETON, EDWARD TURNER BOYD (1809–1874), politician, born at Ceylon on 24 May 1809, was youngest son of Thomas James Twisleton (1770–1824), archdeacon of Colombo, by his second wife, Anne, daughter and coheir of Benjamin Ash of Bath; she died on 11 Sept. 1847, leaving four children (Gent. Mag. March 1825, pp. 275–6). Thomas Twisleton, baron Saye and Sele, was his grandfather. Edward matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, on 14 Feb. 1826, was a scholar and exhibitioner of Trinity College 1826–30, graduated B.A. 1829, taking first-class honours in classics, M.A. 1834, and was a fellow of Balliol College 1830–8. Entering Lincoln's Inn as a student in 1831, he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 30 Jan. 1835, and soon obtained employment on several government commissions. He was an assistant poor-law commissioner in 1839. In 1843 he was appointed a commissioner to inquire into the Scottish poor laws, and on 5 Nov. 1845 he was nominated chief commissioner of the poor laws in Ireland, a post which he held until 1849. In 1855 he was placed on the Oxford University commission, and in 1861 became a member of the commission of inquiry into English public schools. From 1862 to 1870 he was a civil service commissioner, when he retired from the public service, having probably served on more commissions than any other man of his time. His elder brother having succeeded to the barony of Saye and Sele on 13 March 1847, Twisleton in the following year was raised to the rank of a baron's son by a royal warrant. On 29 April 1859 he unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary borough of Cambridge. He was elected a fellow of the university of London in 1862, and an honorary student of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1869. Interesting himself in the controversy respecting the identity of Junius, he employed Charles Chabot [q. v.], the handwriting expert, to report on the Junian manuscripts at the British Museum. He came to the conclusion that Philip Francis was the author of the letters, and in 1871 he published Charles Chabot's ‘Handwriting of Junius professionally investigated,’ 1871, to which he furnished a preface and collateral evidence in support of the claims of Francis. Twisleton resided at 3 Rutland Gate, Hyde Park, London, but died at Boulogne-sur-Mer on 5 Oct. 1874, having married, on 19 May 1852, Ellen, daughter of Edward Dwight, member for the province of Massachusetts. She died on 17 May 1862, apparently without issue.

Twisleton was the author of a work entitled ‘The Tongue not Essential to Speech, with Illustrations of the Power of Speech in the African Confessors,’ 1873. To ‘Evidences as to the Religious Working of the Mission Schools in the State of Massachusetts,’ 1854, he contributed a preface.

[Men of the Time, 1872, p. 927; Illustr. London News, 17 Oct. 1874 p. 379, 5 Dec. p. 547; Law Times, October 1874, p. 439; Times, 10 Oct. 1874, 4 Dec.]

G. C. B.


TWISS, FRANCIS (1760–1827), compiler, born in 1760, the son of an English merchant residing in Holland, was descended