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<\/a>Perhaps the first conflation of Macintosh with “Mr Mackintosh” of the Rippon<\/em> occurred in Henry Beveridge’s The Trial of Maharaja Nanda Kumar<\/em> (1886), where he records that Macleane’s letters were taken out to Hastings “by Macintosh”. Although Beveridge identifies this Macintosh as the author of Travels<\/em>, he acknowledges the fact that\u2014according to Travels<\/em>\u2014its author “did not arrive in India till 1779”. “I still think,” he went on “that the Macintosh referred to by Hastings must be W. M., for [Joseph] Price calls the latter an intimate friend and fellow-labourer of Colonel Macleane”. In this respect, the confusion is perfectly understandable: what are the odds that Macleane would be working closely with two Macintoshes, both of whom travelled to India around about the same time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Years later, and apparently independently, Lauchlin Maclean’s biographer\u2014James N. M. Maclean\u2014made the same error in conflation, noting that Macintosh had been “sent out to India as his [Macleane’s] special messenger to Hastings in November, 1776”. In this case, Macleane’s biographer had at least consulted the original correspondence, in which he would have seen Macleane’s note to Hastings concerning the bearer of his letters: “Mr. Macintosh promises all diligence and Dispatch with zeal & fidelity. He is recommended to your Protection” (13 November 1776; BL Add Ms 29317, f. 461r).<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, who was the Macintosh who sailed with the Rippon<\/em> in November 1776? The best clue we have comes in a letter sent to Hastings from John Macpherson<\/a>. In that letter (30 August 1778, BL Add MS 29141, f. 342v), Macpherson explained to Hastings that it had been him who had introduced “Mr. Mackintosh” to Macleane, “in order to place him in the line of a better fortune, than had attended the early part of his life”. As Macpherson explained, “In the success of that poor fellow, I am much interested”. It is possible that this was the same Mackintosh whom Laurence Sulivan<\/a> had recommended to Hastings in 1773, when he wrote of a “Mr. William Mackintosh, who was in Bengal, & other parts of India, some Years, in the Shipping way; and now returns to follow the same Employ” (27 January 1773; BL Add MS 29133, f. 345r).<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the number of William Macintoshes continues to mount in my research, I can’t help but think that an interesting book could be written on their simultaneous, but different, experiences of the eighteenth-century world. What would it look like to write a history of that period from a prosopographical perspective, tracing the converging and diverging lives of those who shared a name? I shan’t allow my self to get distracted; one Macintosh is more than enough to keep me going!<\/p>\n\n\n\n