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{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2022}}
{{Infobox military person
|honorific_prefix=Colonel
|name= Thomas Deane Pearse
|birth_date=ca. 1741-42
|death_date={{death date|1789|6|15|df=y}}
|birth_place=
|death_place=On the [[Ganges]] river, India
|burial_place=
|image=
|image_size=
|caption=
|allegiance={{flag|Kingdom of Great Britain}}<br />
[[File:Flag of the British East India Company (1707).svg|23px]] [[East India Company]]
|branch=[[British Army]]<br />
[[Bengal Army]]
|serviceyears=1761–1789
|rank= [[Colonel (United Kingdom)|Colonel]]
|commands=
|unit=[[Royal Artillery]]<br />
Bengal Artillery
|battles=[[Second Anglo-Mysore War]]
|awards=
}}
Colonel '''Thomas Dean Pearse''' (c. 1741/42<ref name="phillimore "/> – 15 June 1789) was a [[British Army]] officer who served as a colonel in the [[Bengal Army]]'s artillery. He took an interest in astronomy and conducted many surveys during his service in India.

==Biography==
[[File:Parse Memorial.jpg|thumb|250 px|Pearse Memorial, St. Stephen's School, Dum Dum, Kolkata]]
[[File:Parse Memorial Plaque.jpg|thumb|250 px|Plaque at Pearse Memorial, St. Stephen's School, Dum Dum, Kolkata]]
Pearse was born about 1741 or 1742 to Royal Navy Captain Thomas Pearse of Reading and his wife Martha. After passing out from the [[Royal Military Academy, Woolwich]], he was appointed [[second lieutenant]] of the Royal Artillery on 24 October 1761, and [[first lieutenant]] on 3 February 1766.{{sfn|Soulsby|1895|p=160}}

In February 1768, he transferred to the [[East India Company]]'s service. He was made major in the [[Bengal Army]] artillery on 2 September 1768 serving in Chunar, [[lieutenant-colonel]] on 30 October 1769, and [[colonel]] on 12 June 1779. In India he was high in the favour of [[Warren Hastings]], the governor-general, and acted as Hastings' second in his duel with Sir [[Philip Francis (politician)|Philip Francis]] on 17 August 1779.{{sfn|Soulsby|1895|p=160}}

In 1781, on the formation of the [[Military Corps of Indian Sepoys|Bengal Sepoy Corps]], Warren Hastings resolved on sending a detachment of five regiments to the relief of the [[Madras Presidency|presidency of Fort St. George]]. This important force was assembled at [[Midnapore|Midnapoor]], and the command of it was conferred on Pearse. Artillery officers of the East India Company's army, in the early wars in India, held general commands, and were not, as in the Royal Artillery, confined to their department of the army. The detachment consisted of the 12th, 13th, 24th, 25th, and 26th regiments. They proceeded on their march through [[Orissa, India|Orissa]] and the [[Northern Circars]]. Having reached the vicinity of Madras about the middle of 1781, the Bengal troops joined the other forces in the field, under the commander-in-chief, Sir [[Eyre Coote (East India Company officer)|Eyre Coote]].{{sfn|Soulsby|1895|p=160}}

During the arduous warfare in which they were engaged from that period down to the cessation of hostilities before [[Cuddalore]] in June 1783, the Bengal corps, under Pearse, established for themselves a lasting reputation. The attack on the French lines at Cuddalore was one of the first occasions on which European troops and the disciplined natives of India had met at the point of the bayonet. Lieutenant [[Sir John Kennaway, 1st Baronet|John Kennaway]] was Pearse's Persian secretary in the campaign.{{sfn|Soulsby|1895|p=160}}

Some two thousand out of the five thousand troops, the veteran remains of those gallant corps, returned to Bengal early in 1785, when their encampment was visited by governor-general Hastings in person, and his testimony of their services was recorded in the general orders issued at [[Fort William, India|Fort William]] on 22 January 1785, and three days later in the camp at Ghyretty. In the latter the governor-general desires that "the commanding officer, Colonel Pearse, whom he is proud to call his friend, will make [his thanks] known in public orders to the officers, his countrymen, and to the native officers and private sepoys of the detachment." For his services in the defence of the company's territories in the Carnatic, Pearse received a sword of honour.{{sfn|Soulsby|1895|p=160}}

Pearse supported the survey plans of [[Reuben Burrow]] in Bengal. In May 1785 Pearse contributed a paper on ''Two Hindu Festivals and the Indian Sphinx'' to the proceedings of the [[Asiatic Society]] at Calcutta, which was subsequently published in ''Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the History and Antiquities … of Asia, by Sir W. Jones … and others''. Dublin, 1793. Pearse died on the [[Ganges]] on 15 June 1789.{{sfn|Soulsby|1895|p=160}} Pearse married a muslim woman Punna Purree (d. 1820) and had a son Thomas Deane Mahomet Pearse. After her husband's death, Punna Purree sought the help of Warren Hastings in raising her son. Thomas Deane went to Oriel College, Oxford in 1795 but little is known of his later life. Pearse also had some illegitimate children.<ref name="phillimore">{{cite book|author=Phillimore, Colonel R.H. |year=1945|title= Historical records of the Survey of India. Volume I 18th century.|place= Dehra Dun|publisher= Survey of India|pages=[https://archive.org/details/HistoricalRecordsOfSurveyOfIndiaVol1ByColRHPhillimore/page/n402 361]–363|url=https://archive.org/details/HistoricalRecordsOfSurveyOfIndiaVol1ByColRHPhillimore}}</ref>

==Notes==
{{reflist|30em}}

== References ==
*{{DNB|last=Soulsby |first=Basil Harrington |wstitle=Pearse, Thomas Deane |volume=44|page=160}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pearse, Thomas Deane}}
[[Category:1789 deaths]]
[[Category:Royal Artillery officers]]
[[Category:Bengal Artillery officers]]
[[Category:British Army personnel of the American Revolutionary War]]
[[Category:1730s births]]

Thomas Deane Pearse - Revision history

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