tised in Orchard Street, Portman Square. In October 1809 he proffered his services to the government in behalf of the fever-stricken troops lately returned from the Walcheren expedition. These were accepted, and the aptitude which Laffan showed for military practice led to his appointment in 1812 as physician to the forces. He served in Spain and Portugal during the latter part of the Peninsular war, and was eventually made physician in ordinary to the Duke of Kent. At the termination of the war he stayed at Paris, and practised there with brilliant success until desire for more rest led him to Rochester, where he remained until he was disabled by disease. After his retirement he settled at Otham in Kent. His successful treatment of an illness of the Duke of York, brother to George IV, led to his being created a baronet by patent dated 15 March 1828, and in 1836 he was also created a knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic order. He died at Vichy, in France, on 7 July 1848, in his sixty-third year. His body was brought to Rochester and interred in a vault in St. Margaret's Church. Laffan married in 1815 Jemima, daughter of Paul Pilcher of Rochester, and widow of a Colonel Symes, formerly English envoy at Ava in Burmah. He had no issue, and the title has become extinct. He devoted the greater part of his fortune to found a cancer ward for women in the Middlesex Hospital, and a full-length portrait of him is preserved in the hospital board-room.
[Gent. Mag. 1848, pt. ii. p. 318; Munk's Coll. of Phys. iii. 70–1; Pantheon of the Age, ii. 521; information kindly supplied by Lady Laffan and by the Rev. L. Lagier of Lausanne, who married a Miss Symes, Laffan's step-daughter.]
LAFFAN, Sir ROBERT MICHAEL (1821–1882), governor of Bermuda, third son of John Laffan, esq., of Skehana, cos. Clare and Limerick, was born on 21 Sept. 1821. Educated at the college of Pont Levoy, near Blois, France, he went to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in September 1835, and on 5 May 1837 was gazetted a second lieutenant in the royal engineers. After serving for two years at Chatham and Woolwich, and becoming first lieutenant on 1 April 1839, he was sent to South Africa, where he was employed in frontier service. He was one of the officers summoned by the governor, Sir George Napier, to a council of war in order to concert measures for the relief of Colonel Smith and the garrison of Natal, then closely beleaguered by a strong body of emigrant Boers under their chief, Pretorius. It devolved upon Laffan to organise the engineering arrangements of the expedition, which, under Sir Josiah Cloete, succeeded in effecting the relief of the British garrison.
From the Cape, Laffan was sent to Mauritius, where he was promoted captain on 1 May 1846. On his return home in 1847 he was appointed commanding royal engineer at Belfast, and at the close of the year was nominated an inspector of railways under the board of trade, an office he held until the autumn of 1852, when he was sent to Paris and Antwerp to report on the defences for the information of Sir John Burgoyne, the inspector-general of fortifications.
Laffan represented the borough of St. Ives, Cornwall, in the House of Commons from 1852 to 1857 in the conservative interest. In 1854 he was appointed commanding royal engineer in the London district, and in 1855 he was sent by the Duke of Newcastle, then secretary of state for war, with Sir William Knollys and Sir George Maclean, to report upon the organisation of the French ministère de la guerre. On his return to England in May 1855 he was appointed deputy inspector-general of fortifications at the war office. From 1858 to 1860 he was absent on sick leave in the south of France and Switzerland. Laffan was promoted brevet-major on 26 Oct. 1858, and became a regimental lieutenant-colonel on 28 Nov. 1859. On his return from sick leave he was stationed at Portsmouth for a short time, and towards the end of 1860 he was sent to Malta as commanding royal engineer. He remained there for five years, during which the armament of the fortress was completely revised. He was promoted brevet-colonel on 28 Nov. 1864.
In 1865 Laffan was sent to Ceylon as a member of a commission to investigate and report on the military expenditure of the colony and the strength of the force to be maintained there in time of peace. He was at the same time deputed to report specially to the secretary of state for war on the defences. On his way home, under instructions from the war office, he visited the Suez Canal in company with M. de Lesseps, and he made a report to the secretary of state for war. He revisited Egypt at the invitation of M. de Lesseps, to witness the opening of the canal in November 1869.
In 1866 Laffan was appointed commanding royal engineer at Aldershot, where he acquired no small reputation in peace manœuvres. He transformed the appearance of the camp by planting trees and laying down grass, and the old Queen's Birthday Parade has lately been renamed Laffan's Plain in his memory. Laffan was promoted regimental colonel on 9 Feb. 1870. In
