Robert Collinson d’Esterre Spottiswoode was born in India on 24 December 1841, the son of Major-General Arthur Spottiswoode and Jessy Eliza Loveday. As was common for British children in India, he saw little of his parents in early life and was sent to school in Edinburgh. He returned to India in 1857 as a cadet at the age of sixteen, during the Indian Mutiny, and was posted as a cornet to the 3rd Bengal European Cavalry.
He saw active service during the rebellion. While travelling to Allahabad in 1858 with a detachment of recruits, there was an engagement with mutineers at Sasseram near Benares. Although entitled to the Mutiny Medal, he never claimed it, later writing that the presence of so many veterans of Delhi and Lucknow “so impressed me that I kept my mouth shut on the subject of a medal.”
He was promoted to lieutenant on 21 June 1858, but soon afterwards the 3rd Bengal European Cavalry was disbanded. As a result, he was absorbed into the British Army, serving with the 21st Hussars in 1861–62. At some point—likely before April 1870—he transferred to the 10th Hussars, in which he was promoted to captain on 9 April 1870.
Spottiswoode served in the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–80. It was his squadron that suffered heavy casualties in the disastrous night crossing of the Kabul River on 31 March 1879. He was promoted to major on 1 July 1881, and in April 1882 he was appointed Aide-de-Camp to Lieutenant-General Charles Cureton, then commanding in Oudh.
In the mid-1880s he served as a staff officer in the Sudan, and was subsequently posted to Russia to learn the language. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in September 1887 and to colonel in October 1889, serving on the staff in Cork. Having spent most of his life in India, he later wrote in his reminiscences that he only began to live when stationed in Ireland, chiefly because of his love of hunting.
He married Anne Elizabeth Turnbull in 1885; the couple had no children. Spottiswoode retired from military service in September 1890. A notably hardy individual, he continued the habit of taking a cold bath every morning at eight o’clock well into his nineties. Colonel Robert Collinson d’Esterre Spottiswoode died in Ireland on 21 March 1936 at the age of ninety-four.
