Major-General Thomas Polwhele
(1798-1885)
20 September 1862

Volume 9, page 189, sitting number 11,753.

Born in 1798, Thomas Polwhele was the second son of the Reverend Richard Polwhele of Polwhele in Cornwall. 

On 11 February 1830 'Captain Thomas Polwhele, of the Hon. East India Company's Service' married Edith Edgecumbe Hosken James, daughter of the late John James of Truro (Sherborne Mercury, 15 February 1830).

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at 3 Sydenham Villas in Cheltenham. Thomas gave as his profession ‘Major-General [in the] Indian Army.’ Also present on the night of the census were his wife, their daughter Edith, aged 32, and one female servant. 

Major-General Thomas Polwhele died, aged 87, on 23 May 1885. He left an estate valued at £5643. His executor was his son Thomas Roxburgh Polwhele.

‘General Thomas Polwhele, of the Bengal Army, died on Saturday at Tivoli Lodge, Cheltenham, aged 87 years. The deceased entered the army in 1815, served in the Nepaul campaign in the following year, and accompanied the expedition to Ceylon in 1818. He also took part in the Burmese war in 1824-5, and was present at the attack and capture of Mahatee and Arracan. He was also engaged in the campaign in Candahar and Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842, and served as Assistant Adjutant General throughout the operation of the Candahar force under General Nott. He commanded the 42d Bengal Native Infantry throughout the Sutlej campaign of 1845-6, and was present at the battles of Moodkee, Ferozeshah and Sobraon, for which services he obtained the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel. He became colonel in 1854, major general in 1865, lieutenant general in 1872, and a general in 1877. General Polwhele married, in 1829, Edith, daughter of Mr John James, by whom he has left a family’ (London Evening Standard, 26 May 1885).