Hello David, There were a lot of "colleges" preparing pupils to go to the East India Company. My gt x 4 uncle went to Thomas Tompkins "that T. Hervey Baber has gone through a regular course of book keeping for merchants" signed Thomas Tompkins March 7 1796."[i] Other ancestors went to a school the Revd. Heathcote's Academy at Hackney. This seems to have taken a number of other EIC Artillery officers, who then went onto Woolwich in the 1807 period. There was a school operating during the 1840's at Ramsbury in Wiltshire run by a Mr Meyrick that took several pupils who became Bombay Infantry Officers, and by chance I happen to have photographs from this same family from the 1880's, where one of my gt gt grandfather's was the vicar. I think that a lot of smaller prep schools were preparing children for Indian careers. Some of these schools like the Hackney College seem to have also specialised in taking the children of serving officers who had remained in India, so that these children spent the holidays in these schools as well. It would be a fascinating study to see if it were possible to look at these schools in more detail. Perhaps other people on this list have also discovered where their ancestors went to school before they joined the EIC. The information is often in the officials personal file in the OIOC. Addiscombe and Haileybury were not the only routes into the EIC. Regards Nick Balmer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [i] IOL Microfilm reference J/1/16 folio 20. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Railton" <[email protected]> To: "INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 4:11 PM Subject: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] Training of HEIC officials >I have seen a reference to an HEIC writer appointed in 1777 receiving '.his > commercial education at Hebden's School, Hounslow'. I can't find anything > about this establishment. Could it have been an HEIC college? If not, > where > would he have received training prior to appointment? He would have been > age > 18 on appointment. Was this the usual age? > > This man's father was also supposed to have been an HEIC official although > this may have been a misinterpretation of the records. The father was born > in 1732. Was there any formal HEIC training at the time he would have been > appointed? If so, where would it have been and what records are available? > > Thank you. > > David > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message