The path to India and the British Raj

In a few months I was led to choose a profession, by reading a glowing account of India, in one of Walter Scotts novels, called the Chronicles of the Canongate, and I was resolved to be a surgeon, and go out to India, which my father kindly enabled me to carry out. I was therefore apprenticed for five years in January 1829 to Mr Wm S. Cumming, Surgeon, Commercial Road, Limehouse East London, during that time I dispensed all his medicines and obtained a good knowledge of diseases - he was a kind gentleman, but had a bad tempered wife, for whose rudeness he apologised on my leaving him. He told me one day that she was a descendant of James the 2nd. Her grandfather was a Jacobite, and had to escape to Scotland, his father was born in the West Indies, where he resided nearly all his life - I saw him but once - she was a woman, whom to know was to dislike - I suppose her servants were slaves, when she was young and her name was Stewart.