Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick English
Biography and letters of Lt Col Frederick English, Royal Engineers
No address or date at head: begun on 2 September 1835 at Demerara
The Ann Mondel I understand my dear Kate is to sail tomorrow, but these merchant vessels appear very uncertain as to the time of departure, and I fear you will be disappointed in not receiving letters regularly as heretofore by the Packets. However, all the correspondence with England is by the sugar ships, some of which generally ...
The Survey was a branch of the Royal Engineers in which English had been employed in Ireland. Colonel (later Major-General) Thomas Frederick Colby was its Superintendent from 1820 to 1847. English’s low opinion of him is unexplained; historians have hailed him as the architect of the modern Ordnance Survey. Mapping had begun in Scotland soon after the battle of Culloden. Priority was given ...
John Oldfield was English’s contemporary at Woolwich. He had been present at Waterloo, and was now Commanding Royal Engineer in Newfoundland with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. The two were exchanging letters; meanwhile their sons were fellow cadets.
With the Great Reform Act safely on the statute book, the Whig administration turned its attention to the cities and towns of England and Wales, ...
Coonancy is not a dictionary word – perhaps it is a private one.
No letters my dear Kate by the Packet which arrived here on Monday the 2d Inst, stopped I suppose at Pall Mall office as usual. Still, it will not answer to grumble for Major Wells has taken some trouble in our behalf to forward our correspondence. I returned from the woods late Sunday night, and was not a little astonished to learn ...
Written from Demerara, not dated at the beginning, but started on Thursday 26 November 1835
Lieutenant-Colonel George Judd Harding was an RE officer evidently on the spot, who had helped Augustus’s cause by writing a letter – see letters 15 and 16. Lieutenant-Colonel (later Sir) William Reid was another whose help might be enlisted. General Avila (a doubtful reading) has not been identified. ...
Not dated at head, but written from Demerara on 15 December 1835
Sir Andrew Halliday was an eminent medical practitioner and had held the post of Inspector of Hospitals for the West Indies since 1833. The charges against him appear to relate to leakages of confidential information to the press.
Do not be offended my dear Kate if this letter happens to be shorter than usual. I have heard of a Brig ...
English has now come to terms with the reality that promotion is most likely to result in his being given the command in Barbados in place of Sir Charles Smith, while being overlooked for promotion would augur ill for his prospects in the Corps. Hopes for an early return home are fading.
When you receive this my dear Kate two years of my transportation will nearly have expired. In the course of the ...
Here is a day for a man to write to his wife the 5th January 36 my dear Kate – blowing a gale, rain, sultry at intervals, gloomy, and at this moment the sand flies are so numerous that I am forced to write with my gloves on, the bad weather having driven them into the houses. They are such a pest, added to their companions the Mosquitos that our suffering from them is the subject of ...
Not dated, begun 14 January 1836 at Demerara
The Return Mail Boat to Barbados shd be here and depart tomorrow my dear Kate – 15th Jany 1836 – and as I have recd such dreadful goose for not writing by this roundabout channel, it is my determination to give you a few extracts from my journal, notwithstanding the last letter home was dated on the 6th or 7th Inst, ...
Was Augustus destined to follow in father’s footsteps? The day of reckoning has arrived.
Thomas Aiskew Larcom, at this time a lieutenant, was appointed by Colonel Colby (see letter 42) to be in charge of the Survey in Ireland, which must have been where English and he became acquainted. A meticulous surveyor, he produced six-inch maps of the whole of Ireland. The ‘Memoir of the Parish of ...