Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Elphinstone, John (1807-1860)
ELPHINSTONE, JOHN, thirteenth Lord Elphinstone (1807–1860), governor of Madras and Bombay, only son of John, twelfth lord Elphinstone in the peerage of Scotland, a lieutenant-general in the army, and colonel of the 26th regiment, was born on 23 June 1807. He succeeded his father as Lord Elphinstone in May 1813, and entered the army in 1826 as a cornet in the royal horse guards. He was promoted lieutenant in that regiment in 1828, and captain in 1832, and was a lord in waiting to William IV from 1835. to 1837. The king took a fancy to him, and made him a G.C.H. in 1836, in which year he was sworn of the privy council. In 1837 he left the guards on being appointed governor of Madras by Lord Melbourne. It was said at the time that his appointment was made in order to dissipate an idle rumour which was current that the young queen had fallen in love with the handsome guardsman. He was governor of Madras from 1837 to 1842 during very quiet times, and the only notable fact of his administration was his building a house at Káiti, in the Nilgiri Hills, and his efforts to bring those hills into use as a hot-weather residence for the Europeans in the presidency. On resigning his governorship in 1842 he travelled for some years in the East, and he was one of the first Englishmen to explore Cashmere. He returned to England in 1845, and in 1847 was appointed by Lord John Russell to be a lord in waiting to the queen, an office which he held until 1852, and again under Lord Aberdeen's administration from January to October 1853, when he was appointed governor of Bombay. Elphinstone's second governorship in India was far more important than his first, for during it the Indian mutiny broke out in 1857. His conduct during that crisis was admirable; he not only promptly checked the attempts made at a rising at a few places in his presidency, and put down the insurrection of the rajá of Sholapur, but discovered a more serious conspiracy in Bombay itself, of which he held the thrends until the right moment, when he seized upon the ringleaders and prevented the conspiracy from coming to anything. Still more praiseworthy was his promptitude in sending every soldier he could despatch to the more threatening localities, almost stripping his presidency of European troops, and his services on this account were only second in importance to those of Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. For these services he was made a G.C.B. in 1858, and on 21 May 1859, on his return to England, he was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Lord Elphinstone of Elphinstone, Stirlingshire. He did not long survive the effects of the Indian climate, and died unmarried in King Street, St. James's, London, on 19 July 1860, when his peerage of the United Kingdom became extinct.
[Gent. Mag. August 1860; Kaye and Malleson's Hist. of the Indian Mutiny for Elphinstone's conduct during the mutiny.]