ROBERT MELVILLE GRINDLAY (1786-1877) was that peculiarly English product, the gifted amateur. He was born at St. Mary-le-Bone, then a village near London and, to put the event into historical perspective, it occurred two years after the passing of Pitt's India Act and two years before Warren Hastings' impeachment and trial began. The years of Grindlay's youth were thus a time when Indian affairs loomed large in English life, and at the age of 17 he secured a nomination as a cadet in the East India Company's Army, arriving in Bombay in 1803. A year later he was promoted to lieutenant, and by 1817 he had reached the exalted rank of captain which remained the high water mark of his military career. At the end of 1820 he retired on half-pay, which for his rank amounted to five shillings a day at that period. By this time he was 34 years old and it might have seemed that, with his relegation to a half-pay officer on the strength of the 2nd battalion of the 7th Bombay Native Infantry, his working days were over. Such were the conditions in which upper middle-class young Englishmen of the period might expect their careers to be moulded.

Extracted from the book: ‘100 Years of Banking in Asia and Africa, 1863 – 1963’ by Geoffrey Tyson.

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