Author of a “History of British India,” was the son of John Orme, surgeon in Bombay, and was born at Anjengo, Travancore, in June 1728. He was sent to Harrow school in 1736, and in 1742 to a school near London to obtain an education preparing him for commercial pursuits. In 1744 he became a clerk in the East India Company’s service in Calcutta. In 1752 he went to Madras, and in the following year he returned home with Lord Clive, with whom he lived on terms of close intimacy. His knowledge of Indian affairs gave him considerable influence with the company. Returning to Madras in 1755, he was appointed a member of the council, and in this position took an active part in directing the military operations in the Carnatic in 1755–59. By the court of directors he was appointed to succeed Lord Pigot in the government of Madras, and in 1757–59 he was commissary-general. In the latter year bad health compelled him to quit India, and he took up his residence in London, where he occupied himself in writing a “History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 1745,” the first volume appearing in 1763, the second in 1775, and the third in 1778. In acknowledgment of his services he was appointed historiographer to the East India Company with a salary of £400 a year. In 1770 he was chosen a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He died at Ealing 13th January 1801.

Personal

  A bust of Orme at the age of forty-six, made in 1774 by J. Nollekens, R.A., was bequeathed to the East India Company; an engraving of it forms the frontispiece to Orme’s “Historical Fragments,” ed. 1805. His face is described as expressing shrewdness and intelligence. Orme had a taste for painting and sculpture, and was a lover of Handel.

History of British India, 1763–78

  Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely-printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.

  Colonel Newcome’s favourite work.

  As a writer, he had formed his taste in the school of Robertson. He had some imagination, much clearness, a pure diction, and many agreeable qualities. He was truthful, accurate, and desirous in every particular to avoid exaggeration, and to prepare a reliable narrative of a series of remarkable events…. Orme’s style, manner, and subject seem to have delighted his contemporaries. Robertson and Sir William Jones unite in praising them highly, and Sterne speaks in graceful praise, in a letter to his daughter, of Mr. Orme’s agreeable History. Although he was no philosopher, nor gifted with any remarkable learning or originality, he was honest, truthful, and sincere. Some of his descriptions, too, are written with a simplicity and natural power that remind one strongly of Herodotus.

  Accurate and perspicuous.