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Biography
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell CIE FRS FLS FZS (5 March 1880 – 11 February 1964) was a British military doctor who served with the Indian Medical Service and an amateur naturalist, editor of The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma 1933-1963.
Sewell was born in 1880 in Leamington, Warwickshire. His father was the reverend Arthur Sewell, and his mother was Mary Lee (née Waring). His grandfather was Robert Burleigh Sewell (1810–1872), who had a number of notable siblings, including Richard Clarke Sewell (1803–1864), William Sewell (1804–1874), Henry Sewell (1807–1879), James Edwards Sewell (1810–1903), and Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815–1906). He studied at Cambridge (Christ's College) and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He received a B.A. (Hons) from Cambridge in 1902 and qualified M.C.R.S & L.R.C.P. in 1907.
He was commissioned into the Indian Medical Service as a Lieutenant 1 February 1908 and was promoted Captain 1 February 1911.
He served during the First World War and was Mentioned in Dispatches in the London Gazette 6 July 1917.
He was promoted Major 1 August 1919 and Lieutenant-Colonel 1 August 1927.
His last appointment was as Director of the Zoological Survey of India from 17 July 1925 to his retirement.
He retired 5 March 1935.