Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles established a British East India Company trading factory in Singapore in 1819. This letter is part of a collection of letters he wrote to his cousin, the Revd Thomas Raffles, an influential religious leader in Liverpool to whom Raffles was close and with whom he corresponded frequently. This is the first extant letter by Raffles from Bencoolen, where he was Lieutenant Governor. In the letter, Raffles speaks positively of the Singapore settlement and comments on his natural history collecting.
