According to Sherlock Holmes's index of criminal biographies, Sebastian Moran was born in London in 1840, the son of Sir Augustus Moran, CB, sometime Minister to Persia.
A devoted sportsman and highly skilled shot, he was author of the books Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas in 1881 and Three Months in the Jungle in 1884, and reportedly once "crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger".