Maxwell, H.H. Initials not clearly written in Office Book, but seem to read "H.H." The two items ["An Opium Factory", VI, 118–20. Oct. 16, 1852; "Good Lac", VII, 463–66. July 16, 1853] assigned to the contributor describe, respectively, a visit to an opium factory in India and to a lac factory; they indicate that the writer knows England – at least London – and Ireland. His comment about having "only two days' leave" for one of the excursions indicates that he was probably in military service; his visiting a factory at Ghazipur indicates that he was in the Bengal Presidency. The Office Book records payment for both items as made, by cheque, Dec. 11, 1854, long after their publication.

The contributor may be Henry Hamilton Maxwell, 1824–1892 (Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography). Henry Hamilton Maxwell was of Irish background; entered service of East India Company in 1842 as lieutenant in Bengal Artillery served in Gwalior ad Sutlej campaigns and during the "Mutiny"; became lieut.-colonel in Royal Artillery; promoted to colonel, then general. C.B. 1873. Published a translation, from the German, of Taubert's On the Use of Field Artillery on Service, and, from the French, of G. S. Marey Monge's Memoir on Swords. Author of pamphlet on providing maimed poor with artifical limbs, Arms and Legs in Rome, 1882.
      Henry Hamilton Maxwell may be the Maxwell – "a captain in the Bengal artillery" – whom J. A. Crowe mentioned meeting in the Danubian Principalities in the winter of 1853–54; Crowe stated that Maxwell was correspondent for the Morning Chronicle (Reminiscences, pp. 117–18).

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971