Foster 827

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826). Made 1817

A replica (27 ins (68.5 cms) high) commissioned by the India Office Library from the plaster bust in the possession of Mr. J.R.F. Drake, descendant of Marianne Flint, sister of Sir Thomas Raffles, 11 November 1970.

The original plaster was made by Chantrey in 1817 for the marble bust commissioned by Raffles in that year and from which subsequent plaster busts were made after the marble bust was presumably sunk on the ‘Fame’ in 1824. The marble bust now in the Zoological Society, London, was made from Chantrey’s plaster bust in 1877 by E. Roscoe Mullins (1849-1907). The original plaster bust was bequeathed by Lady Raffles in 1858 to her niece Jenny Rosdew Mudge, wife of her nephew the Revd. William Charles Russell Flint, from whom it descended to Mr. J R F Drake.

Literature: J. Bastin, ‘Raffles in marble and bronze’, ‘Straits times annual for 1972’ (Singapore, 1971), 58-63; M. Archer and J. Bastin, ‘The Raffles drawings in the India office Library’ (Kuala Lumpur, 1978), 10-14.

Raffles went to Penang as Assistant Secretary in the East India Company’s Service in 1805 and became Secretary in 1807. After the Java expedition against the Dutch in 1811 he was made Lieutenant Governor there, a post he held until 1815. He energetically reformed the administration and directed much archaeological work. In 1817 he published his ‘History of Java.’ In 1818 he was made Lieutenant Governor of Fort Marlborough in Sumatra and founded Singapore in 1819. He retired in 1824. He was the founder of the Royal Zoological Society in 1826 and its first President. Throughout his life he worked on natural history, philology, anthropology and archaeology. His great collections were tragically lost when the ship ‘Fame,’ on which he was returning to England, caught fire and was destroyed in 1824.