.RAFFLES, SIR THOMAS STAMFORD, author of the History of Java, Lond. 1817, 2 vols. 4to, and other valuable works on the Malay Penin sula. He was one of the most remarkable of the many distinguished men who have risen from the ranks of the East India Company's Civil Service. He was the founder of Singapore, and one of the best and most astute of the governors of smaller Eastern British dependencies. He was born at sea near Jamaica, on the 5th of July 1781. From his infancy he was accustomed to an adventurous life. His father, Benjamin Raffles, was one of the oldest captains in the trade of those seas out of the port of London. Placed at an early age at a school in Hammersmith, at fourteen he was placed as an extra clerk in the East India House, but he did not abandon learning. His leisure hours were never idle ; and when, in 1805, the Court of Directors resolved on consolidating the establish ment at Penang, he was named Assistant-Secretary, and towards the close of that year he arrived in the Indian Archipelago. Whilst the whole E.
Archipelago was under British domination, he was Governor-General, and resided near Batavia from 1811 to 1816, and from 1818 to 1824 he was Governor of the British possessions of Sumatra. During his visit to London, before coming to Sumatra, he founded the Zoological Society, and was its first president, and he began the Zoological Gardens. When he sailed from Bencoolen, the ship took fire when about 50 nules from land, and all his official and private documents, all the living and mounted animals of Sumatra, were destroyed. Lady Raffles, his widow, wrote a memoir of her husband. She was the second wife of Sir Stamford, to whom she was married in 1817. Her maiden name was Sophia Hull ; she survived her husband 22 years, and died on the 12th of December 1858, aged 72, at Highwood, near Hendon, Middlesex, an estate purchased by Sir Stamford shortly after his return to England in 1824.—St. John s Indian Archi pelago, p. 44 ; Bikmore, p. 488.