The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition
by W.C. Lubenow
Queer Places:
Cheltenham College, Bath Rd, Cheltenham GL53 7LD, United Kingdom
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Robert Henry Pomeroy (May 18, 1832 – August 1, 1857) was born on May 18, 1832, in Saint Helier, Jersey, though some family records note connections to Ireland. He came from a notable lineage, being the son of the Honourable Henry Pomeroy and Elizabeth Holt, daughter of the Reverend Robert Holt Truell of Clonmannon, County Wicklow. Through his father, he was a younger grandson of a peer, rooted in an established Anglo-Irish background. Pomeroy's early education took place at Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, where he distinguished himself academically before being admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on November 1, 1850, at the age of nineteen, as a pensioner. At Cambridge, he pursued a rigorous academic course, becoming a Scholar in 1854 and graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1855 as a 39th Wrangler, having successfully navigated both the Mathematical and Classical Triposes. Further cementing his intellectual and social standing during his university years, he was elected as a member of the elite intellectual and discussion society, the Cambridge Apostles.
Following his graduation and university successes, Pomeroy transitioned to a career in public administration, entering the Bengal Civil Service in 1856. He traveled to India, where he was appointed as an Assistant Magistrate stationed at Azamgarh. His burgeoning career was tragically cut short the following year during the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny. Pomeroy died on August 1, 1857, at Ghazipur, at the age of twenty-five—though some historical records approximate his age at twenty-seven—having succumbed to an illness brought on by extreme fatigue, stress, and exposure during the military and administrative suppression of the mutiny. He was buried in Bengal, India. Regarding potential LGBTQ links, while membership in the Cambridge Apostles during the nineteenth century frequently fostered intimate intellectual and emotional homosocial bonds among its members, direct historical or archival documentation explicitly detailing Pomeroy's private romantic life or specific same-sex inclinations remains absent from the surviving biographical record.
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The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition by W.C. Lubenow |
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