William Henry Sleeman

Sleeman was born in Stratton, Cornwall, the fifth of eight children of Philip Sleeman, a yeoman and supervisor of excise of St Tudy.^[2]

In 1809 Sleeman joined the

Sleeman wrote about wild children who had been raised by wolves with his notes on six cases. This was first published in the first volume of his Journey through the kingdom of Oude in 1848-1850 (1858)[11] and reprinted in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens, by an Indian Official and in The Zoologist (1888 12 (135): 87–98).^[12] This discovery inspired Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli character in The Jungle Book.^[13]

Thuggee suppression

Sleeman is best known for his work suppressing the

Colonial Construction (Fabrication) of Thuggee to Legitimize British Judicial Power in India

In recent decades, historians have begun to revisit the British administration's campaign against thuggee, with many arguing that thuggee was an orientalist construction formed with the intention of legitimizing increased British judicial power in India.^[17] Upon India's independence in 1947, there were 128 tribes, constituting 3,500,000 individuals, officially classified as criminal tribes.^[18] Established in Regulation XXVII of 1871, the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) sought to identify, surveil, and 'rehabilitate' groups of Indians who, due to their itinerancy, presented a challenge to British authority. As such, tribes deemed 'criminal' typically included travelling craftsmen, traders, entertainers, and displaced peasants, and measures to combat their itinerancy included forced settlement, roll calls, and travel passes.

Thuggee Act of 1836, which set a legal precedent because it allowed individuals to be convicted based solely on affiliation to a criminal group, with no evidence of having committed a crime.^[19]

British Resident and later life

Sleeman served as Resident at Gwalior from 1843 to 1849, and at Lucknow from 1849 to 1856. Whilst Resident at Lucknow he survived three assassination attempts. He was also opposed to the annexation of Oudh by Lord Dalhousie, but his advice was disregarded. Sleeman believed that British authorities should annex only regions of India that were plagued by violence, unjust leadership or poor infrastructure and thus maintained that native leadership should be left in place when their rule was even-handed.^[20]

Sleeman also took an interest in phrenology and believed that the measurements of the skulls could help him identify criminal ethnic groups.^[21]

He died and was buried at sea near

The village Sleemanabad in Madhya Pradesh, India was named in his honour.^[22]

Family

Whilst in Jubbulpore, he married Amélie Josephine, the daughter of Count Blondin de Fontenne, a French nobleman. They had seven children.

• The 1959 Hammer film production "The Stranglers of Bombay" recounts a story based on Sleeman suppressing criminal gangs although his part is not mentioned until the finale of the film.
• Sleeman is featured as a supporting character in the book Terror in the Sun by Barbara Cartland (1979), a romantic novel in which Thuggees are the overarching antagonists.
• Sleeman is featured in the novel The Strangler Vine by Miranda Carter (2015), Firingi Thuggee (2015) by Himadri Kishore Dasgupta and Ebong Inquisition (2020) by Avik Sarkar.
• Sleeman features in the novel The Tigress of Mysore (2022) by Allan Mallinson.
• Sleeman is the main antagonist in the 2016 video game Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India. In the game, Sleeman is depicted as the leader of a group of Knights Templar seeking to acquire the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
• Sleemanabad is a village named after him in Katni district in Madhya Pradesh.^[26]

References