FIBIS Blog

Typewriter imade

Eastwick family – Request for help

02 Nov | News,

Please see the below request for help from Tom Sharrad who is researching the  Eastwick family in India.

Dear Fibis Members,

For the last two years I have been working on the lives of the Eastwick family. The orientalist and diplomat Edward Backhouse Eastwick (1814-1883) has been my primary focus. But I have also collected considerable material on his brother, William Joseph Eastwick (1808-1889), a Director of the East India Company, and their father, the mariner, Robert William Eastwick (1772-1865).

I have followed what I consider to be any obvious leads, consulting the India Office Records at the British Library extensively and also looking nationally – although not yet internationally – at other archives.
I wondered if any FIBIS members had come into contact with the Eastwicks in the course of their own research? I know that when compiling the memoirs of Robert William Eastwick at the turn of the twentieth century, the author Herbert Eastwick Compton must have had access to some sort of family archive as he quotes extensively from letters which I have not been able to find. (Eastwick Compton himself was an interesting character and deserves a biographical note at some point!)

The Eastwicks married both in and outside of East India Company networks. Some married names which crop up in the family tree are: Heron Maxwell, Reid, Ford, Compton, Hunter and Eastwick Field, if these help to jog any readers ‘ memories! I am hoping that when my research is complete, I will be able to produce a biography of Edward Eastwick. At present I am using much of the information I have collected about the Eastwicks for my PhD at University College London.

With kind regards, and many thanks in advance,

Tom Sharrad

[email protected]