Henry Walter Bellew
Indian-born British medical officer and writer (1834–1892)
Henry Walter Bellew MRCP (30 August 1834 – 26 July 1892) was an Indian-born British medical officer who worked in Afghanistan. He wrote several books based on his explorations in the region during the course of his army career and also studied and wrote on the languages and culture of Afghanistan.
Life
Bellew was born at Nusserabad in India on 30 August 1834, son of Captain Henry Walter Bellew of the Bengal army, assistant quartermaster-general attached to the Kabul army who was killed at Jalalabad in the disastrous retreat of 1842. He joined as a medical student at St. George's Hospital, London in 1852 (where he studied under Caesar Hawkins), and admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1855. He served in the Crimean War during the winter of 1854–5, and on 14 November 1855 he was gazetted assistant-surgeon in the Bengal medical service, becoming surgeon in 1867, and deputy surgeon-general in 1881.
He was with the Bengal Army, assistant surgeon in the Bengal Medical Service, and was posted along with Harry Burnett Lumsden and Peter Lumsden on the 1857 mission to Afghanistan. He was in Mardan with the Corps of Guides in the 1860s, and was then in Peshawar as a civil surgeon. He was appointed political officer at Kabul. During the 1857 rebellion, he was in Afghanistan and when he visited Kandahar along with the Lumsdens there were questions on whether the three should be put to death from the son of Dost Mohammad Ghulam Hyder.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Henry Walter Bellew” as indian-born British medical officer and writer (1834–1892). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as indian-born British medical officer and writer (1834–1892). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15453814. VIAF identifies the subject as 245213. The Library of Congress control number is n83159312. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1834, 1892, 1842 and 1852.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Walter Bellew” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.