Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley

Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley (1781-1826), British colonial governor, b. aboard ship off Port Morant, Jamaica.

Thomas Raffles was the son of a sea captain.

He started work as a clerk with the East India Company in London at the age of fourteen and in 1805 he was sent out to Penang on the Malay Peninsula. There he became secretary to the Governor.

In 1811, the British invaded the Dutch island of Java and Raffles went with the army as an adviser. Afterwards he was made Governor of Java, but in 1816 he fell ill and returned to England.

Back in England he wrote a book, History of Java, and was knighted.

In 1818, he went back to the East to be Governor of the port of Benkoelen in Sumatra. Britain had given Java back to the Dutch and they were gaining control of all the trade in the East Indies. To stop this, Raffles bought a small island from the Sultan of Johore and started a settlement on it. The island was Singapore and it grew into one of the most important seaports in the East.

Raffles returned to England in 1824. Three of his children had died and he and his wife were ill. He was never well again. But before he died he founded the London Zoological Society and started London Zoo.

He is buried in the parish church at Hendon and there is a statue of him in Westminster Abbey.

See Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S., &C. &C., Particularly in the Government of Java, 1811-1816, Bencoolen and ... Selections From His Correspondence. V. 2 ~ Sophia Raffles