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Portrait of a gentleman, believed to be Colonel Mossom Boyd of the East India Company Service. Pencil and crayon.

Signed and dated 1836 lower right 36cm x 26cm.    F. Talabert ? (mid 19th century)

Mossom Boyd lived with his family at Park House in Little Knowle. The dates of his stay were probably from 1847 until the middle 1850s. In the 1851 census Mossom aged 69 was living with his second wife Charlotte aged 45, and their five children, plus two children from Charlotte’s previous marriage. He was described as being a Major General in the “East Indies” (i.e. India). He has the distinction of apparently siring five generals in his two marriages and, fortunately for all of us, he was the great grandfather of the famous WW2 code-breaker Alan Turing.

Mossom was born in Londonderry in June 1771. He joined the East India Company Army as a cadet in 1796 and became an Ensign in 1797 in the 1st Bengal European Regiment. He was rapidly promoted to Lieutenant in October 1797 and served in the second battalion of the 15th Native Infantry during the Second Maratha War (1803-4); he was at the capture of the forts at Sarsney, Bajeeghan and Cutchwarra and in August was at the storming of the Fort at Allighur. Later he was present at the Battle of Delhi, the storming of the ravelins of the Fort of Agra, and the Battle of Laswarree for which actions he received the Army of India Medal with three clasps (for Allighur, Delhi and Laswarree)  when it was instituted much later in 1851. He moved to Colonel Greslier’s Brigade in 1804 and was in action against the Forts of Imlanee (where he was wounded) and Cammonah.

He was promoted to Captain in October 1807 and went with the 1st Battalion Bengal Volunteers on an Expedition in 1810 against the Isle de France (Mauritius) which had been a base from which French corsairs harried British shipping. He was at the decisive Battle of Port Louis in November where the French were defeated and this resulted in the British taking over the island by treaty in 1814 (and retaining it until 1968). He became an Acting Brigade Major in 1812 in the 25th Native Infantry.

He married his first wife Isabella Chambers in January 1815 and they had a son Mossom born in November the same year. The child appears to have died but Isabella went on to have another 10 children the last in 1831 when another boy was baptised Mossom. Four of the sons became Generals in the Indian Army.

Captain Mossom Boyd was promoted to Major in May 1816 and was in command of 1st Battalion 25th Native Infantry during the 3rd Maratha War (1817-8) but was not involved in a major action. This was the final and decisive conflict between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire and it left the Company in control of most of India.

He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1822 and ordered to raise a new Regiment, the 65th Native Infantry, and take command of it in Penang. He became Colonel Commandant at Barrackpore in 1826; (perhaps a tricky posting because there had been a mutiny at Barrackpore in 1824). In 1827 he was in command of the garrison at Delhi.

After the death of his first wife he returned to England on furlough and in 1834 married his second wife Charlotte Lucas in Lyme Regis, the Dean of Salisbury officiating. She was the widow of a Bengal Army officer and had two daughters, and her maiden name had been Charlotte Loftie. She had been born in Penang where her father Billington Loftie was a surgeon with the East India Company.

Mossom and Charlotte had two sons born at Walcot, Bath, in 1834 (Billington) and 1837 (Julius). Julius went on to become the 5th of his sons to become an Indian Army General but Billington died in an accident building a bridge in Vellore as a Lieutenant in the Madras Engineers.

ossom was promoted to Major General in 1838 and arrived back in Calcutta from England in November. Another son, William, was christened in Mednipore in January 1839 and in March the same year Mossom was appointed to command the Sirhind Division and moved to Kurnaul in May. He retained the post until 1842 but had to take leave due to ill health in June 1841. The same year he had another son, Palmer, born in Simla. Before leaving Kurnaul a daughter, Fanny, was born; Fanny was Alan Turing’s grandmother.

In December 1842 he was moved to command the Saugor Division. At the same time he was Colonel of the 53rd Native Regiment which was listed as proceeding to Afghanistan in 1842 but as commander of the Saugor Division he probably didn’t accompany them.

In the 1841 census both Mossom’s step-daughters and his own daughter Isabella were pupils at school in Bath but both parents were still in India. The whole family were back in England living at 36 Brock Street in Bath probably shortly after 1842. Major General Boyd is listed as a patron of a boarding school, Grosvenor College, in Bath. His son Gardiner had attended the school and he unfortunately died in March 1842 at the College. They lived at Brock Street until September 1847 when the contents of their house were auctioned after they had left the town, presumably to move to Budleigh Salterton.

Mossom’s step-daughter Charlotte Price Lucas was married in East Budleigh in February 1852 to a Lieutenant in the 3rd Light Dragoons, Edward Joseph Thackwell, the son of Major General Thackwell another East India Company soldier in Bengal. It is likely that the couple had met in India.

His second step-daughter, Barbara, married in Cheltenham in October 1855 to Bernard Kendall another employee of the East India Company; the couple may have met in Budleigh Salterton as he was the son of Dr Walter Kendall a surgeon and general practioner who practised in Budleigh for about 30 years. Barbara was described as resident in Cheltenham which perhaps suggests that the family had moved away from Budleigh by then.

In 1861 Mossom and Charlotte were living in Cambridge with their daughters Fanny and Mary Ann. The same year Fanny married the Revd. John Robert Turing, the chaplain of Trinity College. They had 12 children and one of them (Julius) was the father of Alan Turing (1912-1954).
Mossom then moved to London with his wife and was living at 6 Dawson Place in Paddington where he died on the 8th of April 1865.

Researched and Written by Roger Lendon © November 2015

Some of the sources for this account include:

https://pottoingaround.wordpress.com/2013/07/.../the-lofties-go-to-india

http://www.mocavo.com/Family-Record-of-the-Name-of-Dingwall-Fordyce-in-Aberdeenshire-Microform-Showing-Descent-From-the-First-Known-Progenitor-of-Either-Name-Both-Direct-and-Collateral-With-Appendix-Containing-Notices-of-Individuals-and-Families-Incidentally-Referred-to/727304/41

War Services of Members of the Bengal Army (published 1863)

fibis.org

Ancestry.com

British Newspaper Archives

http://www.dnw.co.uk/medals/auctionarchive/searchcataloguearchive/itemdetail.lasso?itemid=13727  Dix Noonan Webb auctions.

BS-B-00074 Biography