Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton got engaged to Isabel Arundell amid protests from Isabel’s family. Isabel’s family was against the marriage as he neither was a Catholic nor rich. But with time the protests declined and the couple got married in 1861.

He passed away in Trieste on 20 October 1890 due to a heart attack. His wife never recovered from this loss and she burned many of Burton’s diaries and journals. Her act was to protect her husband from being called vicious, as most of his collected data was on the matters that Victorian England called vice.

Richard Francis Burton was born on March 19, 1821 in Torquay, Devonshire, England. His father, Lt.-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, was a British army officer in the 36th regiment and his mother, Martha Baker, was the daughter of a wealthy English squire.

He had two younger siblings, a sister named Maria Katherine Elizabeth Burton and a brother named Edward Joseph Netterville Burton.

Joseph retired early from an unsuccessful army career and the family shifted to France in 1825 and frequently travelled between England, France, and Italy. Richard Francis Burton’s primary education came through private tutors and in 1829 he enrolled in a preparatory school in Surrey.

He became well versed in French, Italian, Greek, Latin and Béarnaise and Neapolitan dialects over the following years.

He entered Trinity College, Oxford in 1840 where he gave glimpses of exceptional intellect and ability, but his overall image was more of a trouble-maker. He picked up a new language, Arabic, in the university but was expelled in 1842 on the grounds of disobedience.

Richard Francis Burton wished to fight in the first Afghan War and enlisted in the army of the East India Company in 1842. However, he was posted to the 18th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry, which was under the command of General Charles James Napier.

In India, he continued his love affair with new languages and soon mastered Hindustani, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, Saraiki, Marathi, Telegu, Pashto, Multani and Persian.

His multilingualism and knack for disguises made him Napier’s favorite intelligence officer. Burton travelled as a Muslim merchant named Mirza Abdullah in the bazaars of the Sindh province and brought back detailed reports.

In 1845, he conducted an undercover investigation of a homosexual brothel in Karachi which was frequented by the British officers. His report went into the wrong hands and it was believed that he was a regular visitor too.

He returned to Europe on a sick leave in 1849. For the next couple of years he stayed in Boulogne, France and wrote four books on India, including ‘Goa and the Blue Mountains’ and ‘Sindh and Races that Inhibit the Valley of the Indus’, a discourse on falconry, and a book on bayonet exercise.

Richard Francis Burton received a thrill from going on expeditions to religiously forbidden places. He went for Hajj to Mecca (a zealously guarded Islamic city which non-Muslims are prohibited from entering) and Medina in 1853. He accomplished this journey by disguising himself as a Muslim merchant and even underwent circumcision. His next expedition of great risk and danger was to Harar, the forbidden East African City. According to a prophecy, the city would fall if a Christian entered its domains, but Burton did it in 1854 and became the first European to do so.