Biographical Register: M

MANESTY, Samuel (1758-1812)
British Resident at Basra.
Samuel Manesty was appointed a Writer on the Bombay Establishment in December 1778. Three years later he went to Bussora (Basra) as Assistant to the HEIC Resident and became Resident himself in 1784. He remained here until his final departure in 1810, apart from a short interlude in 1804-1806 when he travelled on a self-appointed trip to Tehran as an envoy to the Qajar Court, followed by his subsequent visit to Calcutta and Bombay (in 1806-1807) to defend his actions and justify his expenses in Persia.

Samuel Manesty and his wife and children eventually reached London from the Persian Gulf on 17 May 1812, after an eighteen-month journey via Constantinople. However five weeks later, on Tuesday 23 June 1812, he committed suicide in London, aged fifty-three.

The Manesty family lived in obscurity and poverty in Britain thereafter rather than returning to the Persian Gulf. Maria died intestate at Chelmsford on 28 December 1835 [aged 64].

Sources: Wright, Denis. "Samuel Manesty and his Unauthorised Embassy to the Court of Fath'Ali Shah". IRAN: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies. Vol. 24, 1986 pp.153-160; M. E. Yapp "The Establishment of the East India Company Residency at Baghdad, 1798-1806." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 30, No. 2, Fiftieth Anniversary Volume (1967), pp. 323-336.