“ HEAD, SIR FRANCIS BOND, Bart. (1793–1875) , English soldier, traveller and author, son of James Roper Head of the Hermitage, Higham, Kent, was born there on the 1st of January 1793. He was educated at Rochester grammar school and the Royal Military Academy, whence in 1811 he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers. He was for some years stationed in the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815, being present at the battle of Waterloo. He went on half-pay in 1825, when he accepted the charge of an association formed to work the gold and silver mines of Rio de La Plata. ”

“ Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and displaying both acute observation and genial humour. His principal works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative of his Canadian administration (1839) , were The Emigrant (1846) ; Highways and Dryways, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849) ; Stokers and Pokers, a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849) ; The Defenceless State of Great Britain (1850) ”

“ In 1830 he published a life of Bruce, the African traveller, and in 1834 Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an Old Man. In 1835 he was knighted, and in the following year created a baronet. In 1835 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection. ”