About John Forbes Watson

John Forbes Watson, The Journal of Indian Art, Oct 1890. © Lancashire County Library and Information Service.

John Forbes Watson (1827-1892) was Reporter on the Products of India at the India Museum in London. His job was to identify and catalogue Indian products for the Secretary of State for India.

Originally from Scotland, Forbes Watson trained as a doctor and worked as an army surgeon in Bombay between 1850 and 1853. After returning to Britain due to ill health Forbes Watson concentrated on research into India, investigating the country’s plant life, for example. In 1858 he was appointed Director of the India Museum and Reporter on the Products of India for the Secretary of State.

Forbes Watson’s great skill was as an organiser and cataloguer of information and objects. He re-organised the India Museum’s collections and published on a variety of subjects, including Indian tobacco, tea cultivation, and cotton. He even tried to catalogue the population of India in a photographic series called The Peoples of India (8 vols, 1868-75).

Forbes Watson worked at the India Museum until 1880 when the museum’s collection was re-located to the South Kensington Museum, later the Victoria & Albert Museum. Between 1873 and 1877 he published a second set of textile samples, but this project was less successful as it wasn’t entirely completed and fewer sets were distributed.