William Henry Sleeman
| William Henry Sleeman | |
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| Born | 8 August 1788 Stratton, Cornwall, Great Britain |
| Died | 10 February 1856 (aged 67) At sea near Ceylon |
| Occupation | Army officer, civil servant |
| Known for | Thuggee suppression |
Major-general Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB (8 August 1788 – 10 February 1856) was a British soldier and administrator in British India, best known for his work suppressing Thuggee activity.
Sleeman was born in Stratton, Cornwall, the son of Philip Sleeman, a yeoman and supervisor of excise of St Tudy.
In 1809 Sleeman joined the Bengal Army and later served in the Nepal War between 1814–1816.
In 1820 he was selected for civil employ, and became junior assistant to the Governor-General's agent in the Saugor and Nerbudda territories. In 1822 he was placed in charge of Narsinghpur District, and would later describe his two years in the role as by far the most laborious of his life. He was gazetted to the rank of Captain in 1825, and in 1828 assumed charge of Jubbulpore District. In 1831 he transferred to Sagar district to cover for a colleague on leave. Upon his colleague's return, Sleeman continued with magisterial duties in Sagar until 1835.
Sleeman became the earliest discoverer of dinosaur fossils in Asia when in 1828, serving as a Captain in the Narmada valley region, he noticed several basaltic formations which he identified as having been "raised above the waters". By digging around in the Bara Simla Hills, part of the Lameta formation near Jabalpur, he unearthed several petrified trees, as well as some fragmentary dinosaur fossil specimens. Subsequently he sent these specimens to London and to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. In 1877 the genus was named Titanosaurus Indicus by Richard Lydekker, but the taxonomic position is in doubt. Sleeman wrote about wild children who had been raised by wolves with his notes on six cases. This was first published in the first volume of his Journey through the kingdom of Oude in 1848-1850 (1858) and reprinted in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens, by an Indian Official and in The Zoologist (1888 12(135):87-98). This caught the imagination of many and ultimately inspired Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli character.
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