Dyce Sombre

David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre (18 December 1808 – 1 July 1851), also known as D. O. Dyce Sombre and David Dyce Sombre, was an Anglo-Indian held to be the first person of Asian descent to be elected to the British Parliament. He was elected to represent the Sudbury constituency in July 1841, but was removed in April 1842 due to bribery in the election process. He was named after the British Resident at Delhi, David Ochterlony

David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre was great-grandson of Walter Reinhardt Sombre (c. 1725 – 1778), a mercenary soldier who lived for many years in India. Walter Reinhardt Sombre had two wives, both of whom were Indian Muslim women; the senior wife is known only as Badi Bibi ("senior lady"), while the second wife was the famous Begum Samru (c. 1753–1836). The name "Samru" is the local corruption of the name "Sombre," and the begum, a Kashmiri Muslim by birth, converted in 1781 to the catholic faith. A fabulously wealthy woman, she was left with no surviving children or grandchildren in her old age. Her husband had had only one son by Badi Bibi his first wife; that young man, who died in 1799, had left behind a daughter named Juliana, who married a man named George Alexander Dyce and gave birth to several children. One of these children was David Ochterlony Dyce, the subject of this page. He was selected by Begum Samru, the second wife of his great-grandfather, to succeed to her vast estates. He thereupon added the surname "Sombre" to his existing names and came to be known as David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre.

The details are as follows. The mercenary soldier Walter Reinhardt Sombre (c. 1725 – 1778) had one son by his senior wife, Badi Bibi. The boy, born in 1764, was initially named Zafar Yab Khan and raised more or less as a Muslim by his mother in a mixed household. However, he accepted catholic baptism in 1781 (aged 17), three years after the death of his catholic father. Incidentally, his widowed step-mother, Begum Samru, also accepted catholic baptism at the same time. Upon his baptism, the young man's name was changed to "Walter Balthazzar Reinhardt," or (according to a biography of his grandson) "Aloysius Balthazzar Reinhardt." He married Julia Anne (or Juliana) Le Fevre (1770–1815), daughter of a captain in Begum Samru's service. Julia Anna was also known as Juliana, as Madame Reybaud and as Bhai Begum. The couple had two children, a son, Aloysius Reinhardt, who died young and is buried in the Akbar Church in Agra, and a daughter, Julia Anne (or Juliana). Zafar Yab alias Walter/Aloysius Reinhardt died in 1799 of cholera, being survived by his wife Juliana (who died in 1815) and his daughter, also named Juliana.

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