Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Thuillier, Henry Edward Landor
THUILLIER, Sir HENRY EDWARD LANDOR (1813–1906), surveyor-general of India, born at Bath on 10 July 1813, was youngest of eleven children (five sons and six daughters) of John Pierre Thuillier, merchant, of Cadiz and Bath, by his wife Julia, daughter of James Burrow of Exeter. An elder sister, Julia, married Walter Savage Landor [q. v.] in 1811. He descended from Huguenots who, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, first settled in Geneva. Educated at the East India Company's military academy, Addiscombe, Thuillier was gazetted to the Bengal artillery on 14 Dec. 1832, and was stationed at the headquarters, Dum Dum. Transferred to the survey department in Dec. 1836, he first served with parties in Ganjam and Orissa, and later was in charge of the revenue surveys in the Bengal districts of Cachar, SyLhet, Cuttack, and Patna. In Jan. 1847, ten months before receiving his captaincy, he was appointed deputy surveyor-general and superintendent of revenue surveys. That post he held for seventeen years, in the course of which he much improved the survey system and rendered the results more readily accessible to the public. He 'followed in the track of the different trigonometrical series, and thus had the advantage of fixed stations on which to base his detailed surveys' (Memoir on Ind. Surveys, 1878). In 1854 he prepared in his office in Calcutta the postage stamps first used in India, receiving the special thanks of government. He was joint author with Captain R. Smythe of 'The Manual of Surveying in India' (Calcutta, 1851; 3rd edit. 1885). There he discussed the difficult question of Indian orthography, which was officially standardised while he had charge of the department.
Succeeding Sir Andrew Scott Waugh [q. v.] as surveyor-general on 13 March 1861, he was promoted lieutenant-colonel in the same year, colonel on 20 Sept. 1865, and major-general on 26 March 1870. The survey of the more settled parts of India had been completed, and many of the surveys under Thuillier were over mountainous and forest-clad regions or sandy deserts, and frequently in parts never before visited by Europeans. In every branch he showed organising and administrative talent. In 1868 he transferred the preparation of the Atlas of India from England to Calcutta, selecting a staff of engravers there for the purpose, and encouraging John Bobanau Nicklerlieu Hennessey [q. v. Suppl. II] to introduce the photo-zincographic process. Under Thuillier's superintendence 796,928 square miles, or more than half the dependency, were dealt with. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1869, made a C.S.I, in May 1870, and knighted in May 1879. In July 1876 he was awarded a good service pension. He retired on 1 Jan. 1878, and the secretary of state, in a despatch dated 18 July 1878, highly com- mended the energy and perseverance of his forty- one years' service, and congratulated him on the results. He was gazetted lieutenant-general on 10 July 1879, general on 1 July 1881, and (a rare distinction for an officer with little actual military service) colonel commandant of the royal artillery on 1 Jan. 1883. Settling at Richmond, he was long a useful member of the Royal Geographical Society's council, and came to be looked upon as the father of the East India Company's service. Of fine presence and genial temper, he retained his faculties till his death on 6 May 1906 at Richmond, where he was buried.
He married (1) in 1836 Susanne Elizabeth (d. 1844), daughter of the Rev. Haydon Cardew of Curry Malet, Somerset, by whom he had a son (Colonel Sir Henry Ravenshaw Thuillier, K.C.I.E., also Indian surveyor-general 1887-95), and a daughter; and (2) in 1847 Annie Charlotte, daughter of George Gordon Macpherson, Bengal medical service, by whom he had six sons (three of them became officers in the Indian army) and two daughters.
There are three portraits in oils: (1) by Mr. Beetham (1846), belonging to Sir Henry Thuillier; (2) by Mr. G. G. Palmer (1885), now in the surveyor-general's office, Calcutta; and (3) by Mrs. Rowley (1896), presented by her to his eldest daughter, Mrs. Westmoreland.
[Markham's Memoir on Indian Surveys, London, 1878; official papers and survey reports; India List, 1906; Times, 8 May 1906; Army and Navy Gaz., 12 May 1906; Geographical Journ., June 1906; information kindly supplied by Sir Henry Thuillier.]