Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner

Sir Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner
Portrait by unknown artist of General Sir (Tomkyns) Hilgrove Turner
Born	12 January 1764 Uxbridge (Middlesex, England)
Died	6 May 1843 Grouville (Jersey, Channel Isles)
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Rank	General
Commands held	Garrison of Jersey
Awards	Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Guelphic Order

General Sir (Tomkyns) Hilgrove Turner GCH (1764–1843) is best known as the officer who escorted the Rosetta Stone from Egypt to England.

Military career

Turner and the Stone were on board the recently captured French ship HMS Egyptienne when it made its way to England. He claimed that he had personally seized the Stone from General Jacques-François Menou and carried it away on a gun carriage. He also asserted that when the French learned of his intentions, that they removed the packaging for the Stone and that "it was thrown upon its face".^[1] There are other versions of how the English forces captured the Stone from the French, so it is unknown how reliable his account is. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in December 1804.^[2]

He would later become Lieutenant Governor of Jersey from 1814 to 1816^[3] and Governor of Bermuda from 1826 to 1832,^[4] and in 1827 became a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Guelphic Order.

Personal life

Turner was the son of Richard Turner, a surgeon in Uxbridge, Middlesex and his wife Magdalen Hilgrove, a native of Jersey. In 1839 his daughter Charlotte Esther Turner married Henry Octavius Coxe, Bodleian librarian. Coxe's predecessor Bulkeley Bandinel was Tomkyns Turner's second cousin. Some years after his death Turner's children were involved in a lawsuit over the legacies left them in the wills of some Hilgrove kinsmen.

References

External links

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