CHAPTER XI
JOHN HOLWELL, AND THE FALL OF CALCUTTA*
" Aequam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem."
Horace, Odes, II, 3-
John Zephaniah Holwell was born in Dublin, and baptised there on 23rd Sept., lyn- He was the son of a London merchant and grandson of John Holwell, Royal Astronomer, a noted mathematician. He was articled to Andrew Cooper, the semor Surgeon of Guy's Hospital, and went to Calcutta m 1732, as Surgeon's Mate of the Duke of Cumberland, which sailed from Gravesend on 2nd Feb., 1731/32. Soon after his arrival in India he went to the Persian Gulf as Surgeon of a Company's ship, studying Arabic on the voyage. In 1733-34 he went from Calcutta to Surat as Surgeon of the Prince of Wales. In Sept., 1734, he was sent to Bihar in medical charge of the " Patna Party," an escort which went each year from Calcutta to Patna and back. After making a voyage to Mocha and Jidda in 1735, as Surgeon of the Prince of Orange, he accompanied the Patna party a second time. In 1736 he was appointed Surgeon to the factory at Dakka. He came to Calcutta about the end of that year, and soon after- wards was elected Alderman of the Mayor's Court, subsequently being twice elected Mayor. In 1740 he is mentioned as Surgeon to the Calcutta Hospital, but must have been a Surgeon's Mate or a supernumerary, for he was not confirmed on the regular medical staff, as one of the two Surgeons sanctioned for Calcutta, until July, 1749, when he succeeded Surgeon William Lindsay, who died on
- Much of the information about Holwell's early life is taken from the well-known work. Echoes of Old Calcutta, by the late Brigade Surgeon H. E. Busteed, C.I.E., himself a distinguished member of the I.M.S. Further particulars are gathered from a life of Holwell in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1799 (Characters, p. 25). The facts about the siege and capture of Calcutta are taken from Mr. S. C. Hill's Bengal in 1756-57, Indian Records Series, three volumes, 1905; the best and fullest account of the events of these two years.
