Thomas Backhouse Sandwith (1831-1900) was a member of the British consular service in the Levant. He was a Vice Consul in Syria 1857 to 1865, and then Vice Consul in Cyprus between 1865 and 1870. He was Consul in Chania, Crete from 1870 to 1885, in Tunis 1885 to 1888 and Consul-General in Odessa 1888 to 1891. Background Thomas Sandwith was born in Bridlington in 1831 into a family long resident in Yorkshire in which successive generations had practiced medicine, as did his father. Like numerous middle-class families of the time, the Sandwiths believed strongly in education (at least for their sons) and he went to good schools: Christ's Hospital (while his father took a break from medicine to edit a Methodist journal in the London, for he was a strongly committed Methodist), Wesley College Sheffield, and Edinburgh Academy. From there he went to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated in 1855. Consular career In 1855, a year into the Crimean war, Sandwith sailed to Constantinople to work for the recently appointed Consul in Aleppo. The post was personal and unpaid and was seemingly arranged by his elder brother Humphry, who for some years had been a doctor in the city and was then a medical officer with the Turkish forces fighting the Russians. But events intervened and he went instead to support the same Consul who had been sent by the British Ambassador on a special mission to the Dardanelles to handle disputes in the British-funded Turkish irregular cavalry. Here he witnessed the so-called mutiny by General Beatson and the General's dismissal. He then spent the winter with the irregular cavalry in Bulgaria where it faced further crises. The Consul helped gather witnesses for the inquiry into Beatson's alleged incitement of the 'mutiny', and they then both went to Aleppo in spring 1857. After a few months helping the Consul in Aleppo, Sandwith was appointed to an unpaid Vice Consul post in Aintab and soon after to the additional post in Marash (Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras in modern Turkey). He served in these two isolated posts, which had never before had a resident British representative, until 1861 when he was appointed to the salaried Vice Consul post in Haifa. But before he could take it up, he was diverted to spend eight months working for the British representative on the International Commission the West European countries had forced on