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 Gentlemans Magazine |
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 Death Announcements 1845-1854
| Transcribed by | Steve van Dulken |
| | Surname | Bracken | | | First names | Thomas | | | Rank / occupation | Merchant banker |  | Unit | Alexander & Co. | | | Death date | 16 Dec 1850 | | | Place of death | Calcutta  | | | Source | Gentleman's Magazine | | | Date | Apr 1851 | | | Page number | 440 | | | Detail | At Calcutta, aged 59, Thomas Bracken, esq. Soon after the New Charter of 1813 had removed some of the East India Company's high prerogatives, Mr Bracken, having completed an Oxford career, went out to Calcutta, and joined the opulent house of Alexander and Co. merchant-bankers of that capital. In 1818, in company with Colonel John Young, he became a leading partner of the firm, in consequence of the retirement of one or two of the members with perhaps the largest fortunes ever amassed in India by men not in the public service. From 1818 to 1832, Mr Bracken was the foremost man in the house of Alexander and Co. He was in England in 1831, and gave evidence at great length before the committees of Parliament then sitting on the East India Company's Charter. In the following year, the house of Alexander and Co. failed in the sum of three millions sterling -- and Mr Bracken saw himself deprived of that competence for which he had laboured. The catastrophe was felt to be no fault of his; and the best proof of the reality of that sentiment was his subsequent election to the responsible post of Secretary of the Bank of Bengal. He retired from the duties of that office in 1847, in consequence of his failing health. He came to England, and found himself little better. His spirit turned again to the country where he had passed the best part of his life, -- and he once more sailed for Calcutta. But the new change brought no relief, -- and he gradually sunk under the weight of his afflictions at the age of fifty-nine. Mr Bracken was one of the purest and most spirited of the public writers in India. Hundreds have dwelt with delight on the articles with which, about twenty-five or thirty years ago, he enriched the periodical press of Calcutta. At that time there was nothing in India superior to the productions which emanated from the pens of Thomas Bracken, John Young, and John Palmer; and if ever a collection should be made of the writings of the two former, and of the correspondence of th last, the public will learn that the merchant princes of the old times had higher claims to public estimation than the commercial influence that they wielded. |
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