Julia Charlotte Maitland

Julia Charlotte Maitland (21 October 1808 – 29 January 1864), née Barrett, first married name Thomas, was an English writer and traveller, and the grandniece of the novelists Fanny Burney and Sarah Burney. She and her husband ran a boys' school in India, while strongly advocating a national system of education for the country.

Family

Julia Barrett was born on 21 October 1808, probably in Richmond, Surrey, as the eldest of the five children of Henry Barrett (1756–1843) and his wife, Charlotte, née Francis (1786–1870), the niece of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay), who first, rather drastically, edited her journals and letters. Julia was a favourite with the elderly Fanny, who remarked on her "very good sense, & a truly blyth juvenile love of humour". She and her sister Hetty (died 1833) suffered from tuberculosis and their mother took them to France and then Italy, where they came in touch with Fanny's sister Sarah Burney. Sarah Burney wrote of them in her correspondence and regularly described Julia as a beauty. Julia made a full recovery in 1834.

Julia Barrett's many admirers included Fanny Burney's parson son Alexander d'Arblay, but she chose instead to marry a widower with children, James Thomas (died 1840) on 2 August 1836, to the disappointment of her family. Thomas took her to India, where he was a judge in the Madras Presidency. They moved to Rajahmundry in 1837, where they kept a boys' school. Her son James Cambridge Thomas was born on 3 February 1839. The ill-health of her daughter Henrietta Anne Thomas (born 1837) obliged her to return to England in December 1839.