Robert Kyd

Colonel Robert Kyd (1746 – 27 May 1793 ) was a British army officer stationed in India. He founded the botanical garden at Calcutta in 1787.

Life and career Little is known of Kyd's early life. He was born in Scotland at Forfarshire (now Angus), the son of Thomas, a merchant, and Rachel Eccles. He may have studied medicine at Edinburgh. He joined the Bengal Engineers as an ensign in 1764. He became a lieutenant a year later, a captain on 3 April 1768, major on 29 May 1780, and lieutenant-colonel by 7 December 1782. He was then made a Secretary to the Military Department of Inspection in Bengal and continued in that post until his death.

Kyd had proposed that the botanical garden would help in introduction of economically important plants and help the East India Company "outstrip our rivals in every valuable production which nature has confined to this part of the globe". By 1790 Kyd had 4000 plants in the garden and when the botanist Joseph Hooker visited in 1848, he noted that it had "contributed more useful and ornamental tropical plants to the public and private gardens of the world than any other establishment before or since".

A genus Kydia (Kydia calycina) in the family Malvaceae was named after him by William Roxburgh.

He also left behind specific payments to be made to his native servants "Rajemahl Missah ... in retribution for the unsuitable education given to him, entailing separation from his native soil and kindred. To the other native known by the name of George, in reparation of the injury dune him by his former master, in alienating him from his tribe (understood Rajpoot), converting him to Christianity, and secluding him from all future connection with his family, the monthly sum of six rupees during his life; to both on condition of their continuing to serve Major Alexander Kyd during his residence in India..."

Kyd memorial urn by Thomas Banks (1795) at the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden. Family Major Alexander Kyd, later Lieutenant General and Surveyor General of Bengal, was a first cousin once removed of Robert (Thomas Kyd was brother of George Kyd, grandfather of Alexander Kyd) and was the father of James Kyd (1786-1836) and his brother Robert (d. 1825), who became shipbuilders, also an Alexander Kyd. Kyd street and the locality Kidderpore derive their names from this family. James Kyd became Company Master Builder after the retirement of A. Waddell.