Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB
1851 portrait[a]
General Superintendent of the Operations for the Suppression of Thuggee[nb 1]
In office 5 March 1835 – March 1849
Governors General	Lord William Bentinck Charles Metcalfe The Earl of Auckland The Earl of Ellenborough William Wilberforce Bird The Viscount Hardinge The Marquess of Dalhousie
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	James Sleeman
Resident at the Court of Lucknow
In office January 1849 – autumn 1854
Governor General	The Marquess of Dalhousie
Preceded by	Archibald Fullerton[2][3]
Succeeded by	James Outram
Resident at the Court of Gwalior
In office 27 October 1843 – January 1849
Governors General	The Earl of Ellenborough William Wilberforce Bird The Viscount Hardinge The Marquess of Dalhousie
Preceded by	Alexander Spiers[4][2]
Personal details
Born	8 August 1788 (1788-08-08) Stratton, Cornwall, Great Britain
Died	10 February 1856(1856-02-10) (aged 67) At sea near Ceylon, 2°22′S 82°51′E / 2.367°S 82.850°E / -2.367; 82.850 [5]
Spouse	Amélie Josephine Blandin de Chalain (m. 1828)
Children	List Henry Arthur Sleeman (1833–1905) Louise Josephine Sleeman (1836–1845) Henrietta Sleeman (1838–1844) Amelia Sleeman (b. 1839) Charles Arthur Sleeman (d. 1849)
Known for	Thuggee suppression
Nickname	"Thuggee" Sleeman[6][7]
Military service
Allegiance	British East India Company
Branch/service	Bengal Army
Years of service	1809–1821
Rank	Major general Lieutenant (active service)[b]
Unit	12th Native Infantry Regiment
Battles/wars	Gorkha War Battle of Makwanpur
Awards	Army of India Medal Gwalior Star Nepal Medal

Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB (8 August 1788 – 10 February 1856) was a British officer and administrator in Company-ruled India, best known for his leading role in the Anti-thuggee Campaign of the 1830s. Sleeman served as General Superintendent of the Thuggee Department^[c] from 1835 to 1849 and published his main work on thuggee, entitled Ramseeana, in 1836. His writings served as the foundation for the colonial-era representation of thuggee and formed the basis of Philip Meadows Taylor's 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug. There is a general consensus among contemporary historians against Sleeman's cultic portrayal of thuggee.^[9]

Sleeman joined the Bengal Army of the East India Company in 1809 and fought in the Gorkha War from 1814 to 1816. He joined the Company's political service in 1821 as an assistant to the Agent of the Governor-General in the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, remaining in the Central Provinces for the Anti-thuggee Campaign. Sleeman's work saw the extension of policing powers over itinerant communities, which later culminated in the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act.

Sleeman served as the British Resident in Gwalior between 1843 and 1849 and in Lucknow between 1849 and 1854. He toured the Kingdom of Oudh in 1849–1850, and his subsequent report to Lord Dalhousie (published in 1858 as A Journey Through the Kingdom of Oudh) proved instrumental in justifying its annexation in 1856. Sleeman himself strongly argued against the annexation of native states on the basis that it would leave British rule vulnerable to an uprising by Company sepoys. He died in 1856.

Sleeman also published works on political economy in which he criticised the economic predation of the Company, viewing it as detrimental to British rule. He inadvertently made the first discovery of dinosaur bones on the Indian subcontinent in 1828, proposed in 1877 as Titanosaurus indicus, and his reports on feral children raised by wolves are thought to have inspired the character of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's 1894 novel The Jungle Book.

William Henry Sleeman was born on 8 August 1788 in Stratton, into a Cornish gentry family.^[10][11] His father, Philip Sleeman, worked at H.M. Excise and his mother, Mary (d. 1818), came from the Spry family.^[10][8][12] He was tutored in French, German, Latin, Greek, poetry, and literature, and developed a personal interest in military history.^[13] The family moved to Bideford in 1798 for Philip's work but moved back to Cornwall after Sleeman's father died in 1802, leaving the family in comparative poverty.^[13][12]

This prevented Sleeman from becoming an officer in the British Army, which effectively required a sufficient private income, and he instead settled on joining the East India Company.^[12][14] He joined his brother at a counting house in London in 1807 and started learning Hindustani and Arabic.^[15][16] With the help of family connections, Sleeman was accepted into the Bengal Army as a cadet and, in March 1809, disembarked on the Devonshire from Gravesend, arriving in Calcutta in October.^[17][18][d]

In December, Sleeman was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the 12th Native Infantry Regiment in Dinapore, before the regiment was moved to Barrackpore, on the outskirts of Calcutta, in late 1810.^[19][20] In autumn 1813, the regiment was moved to a cantonment in Mirzapore.^[21][20]

At the outbreak of the Gorkha War in 1814, by which time Sleeman was the battalion's quartermaster and interpreter, he was reassigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 25th Native Infantry Regiment, stationed at Dinapore.^[22] Soon after, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and placed in command of a company during the first campaign.^[23] He returned to the 2/12th Native Infantry, suffering a bout of malaria in the summer of 1815, and commanded a company during the Battle of Makwanpur in February 1816.^[24] By 1817, Sleeman was stationed with the regiment in Allahabad and, amid little prospect of further active service, he applied to join the Company's political service.^[20][25] The regiment was moved to Jubbulpore in February–March 1820, where Sleeman had been informed he would take up civil employment.^[26]

In December 1821, Sleeman left his regiment and assumed the position of junior assistant to the Agent of the Governor-General in the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories.^[27] In 1822, he was placed in charge of the Narsinghpur District before recurring malaria led him to go on sick leave to New South Wales in April 1825.^[28][29] He returned to Calcutta in September 1826 and was placed in charge of the Jubbulpore district in March 1828.^[30] In April, Sleeman met the 19-year-old Amélie Josephine Blandin de Chalain, who came from a French noble family that had moved to Mauritius before the Revolution, and they married on 14 June.^[31] That same year, Sleeman, who developed a long-term interest in natural history, made the first discovery of dinosaur bones on the Indian subcontinent in the Lameta Formation near Jubbulpore.^[32] The fossils were later proposed in 1877 as a new species and genus of dinosaur, Titanosaurus indicus.^[33]

Map of the Indian subcontinent in 1827

Enlarged view of Northern, Central, and Eastern India

Though Mike Dash notes that Sleeman had been in India in 1810 when a warning was sent out to the Company's sepoys and was likely to have been aware of a thuggee case in Jubbulpore in 1826, he states that there is no evidence to suggest that Sleeman took a great interest in the matter before 1829.^[34] Sleeman's biographer Francis Tuker claims that he had possessed a long-term interest in thuggee, whereby he discovered an account by Jean de Thévenot during his time in Barrackpore early in his career and an article on thuggee by Dr. Sherwood during his time in Allahabad around 1819.^[35][36] Historian Máire ní Fhlathúin describes the historical accuracy of this version of events as doubtful and holds the evidence to suggest that Sleeman first encountered Sherwood's article when it was circulated by the Government in December 1830.^[37] Dash surmises that Sleeman became interested in thuggee in 1829, in the context of Captain Borthwick's success in arresting Thugs and his slow career progression by that point after ten years of service.^[38]

Sleeman assigned approvers (the period term for informants)^[39] in his possession to armed patrols along exposed roads, capturing 24 Thugs on two occasions and acquiring more approvers in the process.^[40] He submitted his first report on thuggee in May 1830, writing:^[41]

the depredations of these common enemies of mankind, which under the sanction of religious rites, ceremonies and opinions make almost every road in India between the Jumna and the Indus from the beginning of November to the end of May a dreadful scene of hourly murder, are becoming a subject of awful interest, and these proceedings have swelled from my anxiety to collect all the material that would be found to bear upon this particular case... by discharging certain duties to the priests and temples of their tutelary deity, Bhowanie, they believe that their murders are all perpetrated under her especial sanction and auspices

Sleeman further asserted that the Thugs could murder freely in Bhilsa and suggested that the district be secured from Scindia rule.^[43] Francis Curwen Smith, Sleeman's superior as Agent of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, suggested him for the position of Agent at Saugor in September.^[44] That year, Sleeman was sent 72 Thugs for trial that had been arrested in 1822 by Commissioner C. A. Molony, but which had been forgotten about after Molony had died.^[45] Sleeman argued against capital punishment for the Thugs on the basis that they had already been detained for eight years, during which time 33 of them had died. Smith and the Government disagreed.^[46]

On 3 October, Sleeman contributed an anonymous letter to the Calcutta Literary Gazette that recounted the execution of 11 Thugs and asserted that all the Thugs in India congregated at Vindhyachal Temple in Mirzapore, where their expeditions were planned by the temple priests.^[47][48][49] Sleeman's letter further provided details of ceremonies performed by the Thugs and described Thuggee as:^[50]

an organised system of religious and civil polity, to receive converts from all religions and sects, and to use them to the murder of their fellow creatures under the assurance of high rewards in this world and the next... You will probably hear from me again on this fearful subject.

Sleeman's anonymous letter resonated with the Government, and Chief Secretary to the Government George Swinton requested to be able to commission a report from Smith and Sleeman on the feasibility of a wider campaign against thuggee.^[51] Swinton appointed Sleeman Agent at Saugor on 13 October and Smith submitted the plan on 19 November, which argued for the establishment of a Superintendent for the Suppression of Thugs that would try Thugs in the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories.^[52] Smith argued that Sleeman should be appointed to the office based on his "extensive acquaintance with the habits, haunts, and customs of the Thugs and Phansigars".^[53] Governor-General Lord William Bentinck declined to establish a specific office for thuggee, though provided Sleeman with 50 barkandazes (mercenaries) to pursue and apprehend the gangs.^[54] Accounts and depositions from Thugs captured around this time would form the basis of Sleeman's writings on thuggee, with the gang leader Feringheea captured by a nujeeb patrol escorted by approvers in November.^[55][56][e] Sleeman organised a system of investigation, prosecution, and punishment and institutionalised the approver system.^[59] To secure approver testimony, he played different factions within the gangs off of one another.^[55] Thugs were thereafter convicted based on circumstantial evidence and approver testimony in the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, which had been established in 1818 outside the scope of the Company's usual regulations.^[60]

On 5 March 1835, Sleeman was made General Superintendent of the newly established Thuggee Department after Smith declined the post.^[62] Sleeman's worsening health forced him to take a period of sick leave in Mussoorie, a hill station in the Himalayas, that began in November 1835.^[63][64] Sleeman published his main work on thuggee in 1836 entitled Ramaseeana, named after the Thugs' criminal argot 'Ramasee' that he perceived to be the key to uncovering the secrets of thuggee.^[65] In it he compiled a vocabulary of Ramasee from conversations with more than a dozen approvers, also printing some of them alongside approver testimony, and published genealogical trees derived from a 1797 Scindia tax list of Thugs.^[66][67] In these interviews, Sleeman and his colleague Captain James Paton were predominantly interested in the goddess-worship of the Thugs, their observance of rules and omens, and the variance between different gangs' customs.^[68]

In the five years after publication, only 100 copies of Ramaseeana were sold privately, with most of its 750 print run being distributed to Company officials.^[69] At least one or two copies made their way to London where it was extensively copied for Edward Thornton's Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs in 1837, while a pirated version was published in the United States in 1839 entitled History of the Thugs or Phansigars of India.^[70][71]

Upon discovering 'river-thugs' operating on the Ganges whose modus operandi left very little circumstantial evidence, Sleeman successfully lobbied for the passage of Act III of 1836 that made simply belonging to a thuggee gang a crime punishable by life imprisonment with hard labour.^[72] Sleeman returned to Jubbulpore in January 1837, being given his previous post as head of the district on top of his thuggee duties.^[73][74] In March, he recommended that a manufactory be established or found to accommodate the approvers, whereafter the Jubbulpore School of Industry was founded later that year.^[75][76] Dacoity was added to Sleeman's responsibilities in 1838 as thuggee activity had been effectively suppressed and in 1839 he coined the term Megpunnaism to refer to the murder of impoverished parents to attain their children for sale, portraying it as a new form of thuggee.^[77][78] Sleeman initially welcomed his assistants' work in early 1838 arresting bands of religious mendicants, asserting in February that he now had full proof that Gosains and Bairagis were "assassins by profession".^[79] However, Sleeman halted the proceedings a couple of months later after the failure of trials against bands of Thoris and Jogis, remarking that had a further case against Jogis gone ahead the evidence was such that "it would have created a feeling of distrust in all that we do which nothing could ever have removed".^[80] In 1839, Sleeman declared that thuggee had been eradicated, marking the end of the campaign.^[81]

That same year Phillip Meadows Taylor published the novel Confessions of a Thug, deriving much of his material from Sleeman's writings, which would form the basis for the colonial-era account of thuggee.^[82] Contemporary historians generally view this representation to some extent as a colonial construct and contest the cultic nature of thuggee.^[9] During this period, Sleeman also published works on political economy in which he criticised the utilitarian model of the economy based on the ideas of David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, James Mill, Jean-Baptiste Say, and John Ramsay McCulloch.^[83] He objected to the accumulation and concentration of wealth in the hands of the Company, with a view to strengthening British rule, and perceived the policies of economic predation to be undermining law and order.^[84] He criticised the economic policy of the Company, rooted in the Ricardian theory of rent, for prioritising what he termed "tribute" over expenditure, on the basis that it led to spiralling demand and an inability to pay into the Company's revenues.^[85] The village of Sleemanabad, near Jubbulpore, was named in his honour.^[86]

In 1842, while Sleeman was in the midst of his anti-dacoity campaign, Governor-General Lord Ellenborough despatched him to Bundelkhand to report on a rebellion there whereby he assumed charge of the Bundelkhand and Saugor provinces, headquartered in Jhansi.^[87][8][88] In October 1843, Sleeman was appointed Resident at Gwalior and attempted to secure a settlement before the December Gwalior campaign.^[89][8] By 1845, and if the Gwalior State is included, Sleeman was responsible for over 100,000 sq mi (260,000 km²) of Indian territory.^[90] Sleeman assumed the position of Resident at Lucknow in January 1849, where he was described as being "probably the only British official ever to have addressed the King of Oudh in correct Urdu and Persian".^[91][92] He was relieved of his duties relating to the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in March.^[93]

Sleeman's 1849 Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits set out a methodology for the identification and classification of criminal communities, in which he claimed that Budhuks^[f] were a pan-Indian cabal under several aliases (which were in reality different jātis).^[95] His work was central to the later extension of policing powers to other communities, culminating in the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act.^[96] Sleeman toured the Oudh kingdom from December 1849 to February 1850, reporting his findings to Lord Dalhousie.^[97] While his characterisation of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah's administration proved instrumental in justifying the later annexation of the kingdom, Sleeman himself strongly argued against it, in 1853 stating to Sir James Hogg (formerly the chairman of the Company from 1849–1852):^{[98][99][100]}

Were we to take advantage of the occasion to annex or confiscate Oude, or any part of it, our good name in India would undoubtedly suffer; and that good name is more valuable to us than a dozen Oudes... The native States I consider to be breakwaters, and when they are all swept away we shall be left to the mercy of our native army, which may not always be sufficiently under our control. Such a feeling as that which pervaded Bundelcund and Gwalior in 1842 and 1843, must, sooner or later, pervade all India, if these doctrines are carried out to their full extent; and our rule could not, probably, exist under it. With regard to Oude, I can only say that the King pursues the same course, and every day shows that he is unfit to reign. He has not the slightest regard for the duties or responsibilities of his high position; and the people, and even the members of his own family, feel humiliated at his misconduct, and grow weary of his reign... He is neither tyrannical nor cruel, but altogether incapable of devoting any of his time or attention to business of any kind, but spends the whole of his time with women, eunuchs, fiddlers, and other parasites. Should he be set aside, as he deserves to be...

Sleeman favoured the imposition of a British-directed Board composed of members of the Lucknow aristocracy to administrate Oudh in perpetuity or until the heir apparent came of age, upon which they would be bound to govern in accordance with the advice of the British Resident.^{[99][101][102]} Historians have since contested Sleeman's characterisation of Wajid Ali Shah and his administration, arguing that his report was based on accounts by people aiming to discredit the king and contained inconsistencies, or that it was influenced by the king's deviation from Western norms of governance.^[103][104] Sleeman further asserted to Hogg that the Government had no right to annex the princely states and that these measures were driven by "a school... characterised by an impatience at the existence of any native state."^[98] In his 1849–1850 report, Sleeman provided six accounts of feral children nurtured by wolves, two he had witnessed himself, which were published separately in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens and are thought to have likely inspired the character of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's 1894 novel The Jungle Book.^[105][106]

During Sleeman's tenure at Lucknow, there were reportedly three attempts on his life in December 1851, October 1853, and 1853–1856.^[107] Sleeman's health collapsed in autumn 1854 and he left Oudh for Mussoorie, recommending that James Outram be appointed in his place.^[108] In November 1855, Sleeman wrote to the Government proposing that "predatory tribes", such as the Sansees, Bouriahs, and Kanjars, be subjected to India-wide surveillance, surmising that "petty crime would be considerably diminished".^[109] He and his wife left Mussoorie that same month and embarked on the East Indiaman Monarch from Calcutta to London on 25 January 1856.^[110] On 5 February, he was formally made Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.^[111][112] Sleeman died on 10 February off the coast of Ceylon, several days after the annexation of Oudh, and was buried at sea.^{[5][113][114]} His 1849–1850 report was published posthumously in 1858 as A Journey Through the Kingdom of Oudh, together with correspondence regarding Oudh's annexation.^[98][115]

• The 1959 film The Stranglers of Bombay centres around the discovery of a thuggee sect and its defeat by an officer of the East India Company. The film ends with a quote attributed to Sleeman: "If we have done nothing else for India, we have done this good thing."^[116]
• In the 1977 Satyajit Ray film The Chess Players, Prime Minister of Oudh Ali Naqi refers to Sleeman and his negative report, the text of which is used for some of James Outram's dialogue.^[117]
• Sleeman is featured as a supporting character in the 1979 historical romance novel Terror in the Sun by Barbara Cartland, in which the Thugs are the overarching antagonists.^[118][119]
• In the 2014 historical fiction novel The Strangler Vine by Miranda Carter, the protagonist, a British officer, encounters Sleeman in Jubbulpore and becomes suspicious of his system for reclaiming Thugs.^[120][121]
• The 2015 Bengali novel Firingi Thagi by Himadri Kishor Dashgupta is a fictionalised rendering of Sleeman's operations against the Thugs.^[122]
• Sleeman is the main antagonist of the 2016 video game Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India. In the game, Sleeman is depicted as a newly-arrived Master Templar in possession of the powerful Koh-i-Noor diamond, a Piece of Eden.^[123][124]
• Sleeman features as head of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in the 2020 historical fiction novel The Tigress of Mysore by Allan Mallinson, centred around a Company soldier who is tasked with leading a campaign against thuggee.^[125][126]

• Sleeman, W. H. (1829). On taxes, or public revenue, the ultimate incidence of their payment, their disbursement, and the seats of their ultimate consumption. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. Cornhill. Originally printed in Calcutta in 1827.^[83]
• ——— (1836). Ramaseeana: Or A Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language Used by Thugs (PDF). Calcutta: G. H. Huttman, Military Orphan Press.
• ——— (1837). Analysis and review of the peculiar doctrines of the Ricardo, or new school, of political economy. Serampore Press.
• ——— (1839). A report on the system of Megpunnaism, or the murder of indigent parents for their young children (who are sold as slaves) as it prevails in the Delhie territories, and the native states of Rajpootana, Ulwar and Bhurtpore. Serampore Press.
• ——— (1840). Report on the depredations committed by the Thug gangs of upper and central India, from the cold season of 1836-37, down to their gradual suppression, under the operation of the measures adopted against them by the supreme government, in the year 1839. Calcutta: G. H. Huttman, Bengal Military Orphan Press.
• ——— (1844). Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, Vol. 1. London: J. Hatchard and Son. Both volumes revised and annotated in 1915 by Vincent A. Smith.
• ——— (1849). Report on Budhuk alias Bagree dacoits and other gang robbers by hereditary profession and on the measures adopted by the Government of India for their suppression. Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press.
• ——— (1858). A Journey Through the Kingdom of Oudh, in 1849–1850: With Private Correspondence Relative to the Annexation of Oude to British India. Vol. 1. London: R. Bentley.
• ——— (1858). A Journey Through the Kingdom of Oudh, in 1849–1850: With Private Correspondence Relative to the Annexation of Oude to British India. Vol. 2. London: R. Bentley.

• Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath – 5 February 1856^[112]
• Army of India Medal^[127]
• Gwalior Star^[128]
• Nepal Medal^[128]

• Bhatnagar, G.D. (1968). Awadh Under Wajid Ali Shah. Varanasi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan.
• Brown, Mark (2014). Penal Power and Colonial Rule. Abingdon; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-113-894-481-7.
• Chakraborty, Ayusman (2021). "Were Thugs of India religious terrorists or mere bandits? The evidence of Hockley's Pandurang Hari". Academia Letters (198): 2–3. doi:10.20935/AL198.
• Dash, Mike (2005). Thug: The True Story of India’s Murderous Cult. London: Granta. ISBN 978-1-86207-846-8.
• Encyclopædia Britannica (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Sleeman, Sir William Henry. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). pp. 237–238.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Fhlathúin, Máire ní (2001a). ""That solitary Englishman": W.H. Sleeman and the biography of British India". Victorian Review. 27 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1353/vcr.2001.0003.
• Fhlathúin, Máire ní (2001b). "The Travels of M. de Thévenot through the Thug Archive". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 11 (1): 31–42. JSTOR 25188082.
• Fisher, Michael H. (1981). "British Expansion in North India: The Role of the Resident in Awadh". The Indian Economic and Social History Review. 18 (1): 69–82.
• Gorhind, Rahul (2011). "Revenue, rent... profit? Early British imperialism, political economy and the search for a differentia specifica (inter se)". Indian Economic and Social History Review. 48 (2): 177–213.
• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Sleeman, Sir William Henry". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 52. New York; London: The Macmillan Company; Smith, Elder, & Co. pp. 373–374.
• Piliavsky, Anastasia (2013). "The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen In British India". Modern Asian Studies. 47 (3): 751–779. JSTOR 24494166.
• Rawat, Maneesh; Mukherjee, Jenia (2025). "'Discipline and Punish': A Historical Account on the Jubbulpore School of Industry in Central India". Journal of the Asiatic Society. 67 (1): 1–22.
• Shafique, Muhammad; Ali, Muhammad Yasir; Warraich, Imtiaz Ahmad (2019). "Beyond Utilitarianism: Nineteenth Century South Asian Economic Crises and Sleeman's (1788–1856) Necessitarianism" (PDF). Review of Economics and Development Studies. 5 (4): 847–851.
• Singha, Radhika (1998). A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-019-564-049-6.
• Smith, Vincent A. (1915). "Memoir of Maj.-Gen. Sir William Henry Sleeman, K.C.B.". In Sleeman, W. H. (ed.). Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official. London: Oxford University Press. pp. xxi–xxx.
• Smith, Vincent A. (1919). The Oxford History of India: From the Earliest Times to the End of 1911. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Stubbings, Matthew (2016). "British Conservatism and the Indian Revolt: The Annexation of Awadh and the Consequences of Liberal Empire, 1856–1858". Journal of British Studies. 55 (4): 728–749. JSTOR 26598928.
• Tuker, Francis (1977). The Yellow Scarf: The Story of the Life of Thuggee Sleeman. London: White Lion. OCLC 578826920. Originally published in 1961.
• Van Woerkens, Martine (2002). The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-022-685-086-3.
• Wagner, Kim A. (2007). Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-59020-5.

• Mark Brown, "Ethnology and Colonial Administration in Nineteenth-Century British India: The Question of Native Crime and Criminality", in: The British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 36, issue 2, pages 201–219.
• Sleeman, Col. James Lewis, Thug, or, a Million Murders, London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1918, 1933; reprint: New Delhi: Pilgrims Book Pvt. Ltd., 1998. With a foreword by Brig.-Gen. Sir William T. F. Horwood.
• Woodruff, Philip (1953). The Men Who Ruled India: The Founders. London: Jonathan Cape.
• The Victorians: Twelve Titans Who Forged Britain by British MP Jacob Rees-Mogg

• Works by William Sleeman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Henry Sleeman at the Internet Archive