Lt Gen Charles Reynolds, RE

Adapted from Miller, D. (2001). The Black Bottle Affair and its Family Background. Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Autumn 2001, Vol. 79, No. 319 (Autumn 2001), pp. 209-218.

Charles Reynolds was born in London in 1756. He obtained a passage to India at the age of fourteen and four years later gained a commission in the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) Army as an infantry officer. He then taught himself the new science of surveying, becoming so successful that he was appointed the HEIC 's first Surveyor-General and undertook a survey which resulted in what he claimed to be the first accurate map of the subcontinent. He retired as a colonel in 1807 and returned to England, where, in accordance with the practice of the time, he continued to be promoted, becoming a major-general in 1810 and a lieutenant-general in 1814.

In 1811, at the age of fifty-five, Charles Reynolds married a twenty-two year old Scottish girl, Mary Hunter, the eldest daughter of Sir John Hunter, who was British Consul-General in Spain throughout the Napoleonic Wars. When Charles Reynolds died in Portland Place in London in 1819, he left his young widow with four children, one of whom was John Williams Reynolds. Mary died in Dublin in 1833, having appointed guardians for her children.