He returned home to England at the age of forty-three already a dying man

From The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert. Page 24.

Undemanding as Sir Thomas Metcalfe's daily round appeared to his daughter, there were many other English officials in India who worked for as few hours a day as he. The Governor-General, how- ever, was not one of them.

Lord Dalhousie, a man of firm, decided views and of masterful disposition, had been sworn in as Governor-General of India at Calcutta in January 1848. From the beginning he had displayed a capacity for work which had become more remarkable with each passing month, sitting down at his desk at half past nine in the morning and never quitting it 'even while he ate his lunch, till half past five in the afternoon'. After eight years, during which the reforms he tenaciously supported were pushed through against all opposition, his health was broken; he returned home to England at the age of forty-three already a dying man. He left behind him so awesome a reputation that a member of the Government House staff noticed over a year later that people still did 'not mention his name without lowering their voices and looking nervously over their shoulders'.