Thomas Latter

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Thomas Latter (c. 1816 – 8 December 1853) was a Bengal Army officer and a scholar of the Burmese language. Born in India to Major Barré Latter, he joined the East India Company’s Bengal Native Infantry in 1836 and served in Arakan. In his spare time he studied Burmese and, in 1845, published a Burmese grammar—the first serious scholarly work after Adoniram Judson’s primers. He worked as chief interpreter during negotiations before the Second Anglo-Burmese War and then served in the war for Sir Henry Godwin. On 14 April 1852 he led the assault on the eastern entrance of the Shwedagon Pagoda, and the historian W. F. B. Laurie called him the “Chevalier Bayard of the expedition.” He also helped capture Pegu in June 1852. After Prome was taken, he became resident deputy commissioner on 30 December 1852, a tough post because Burmese hostility lingered until the 1862 treaty. He was murdered in his bed at 2:00 a.m. on 8 December 1853 and was buried in Prome with military honours. Latha Township in Yangon is named after him.