He was born in
Hythe, Kent to William and Harriett Mackeson. He studied at
the King's School, Canterbury and in France, before joining the
Bengal Native Infantry in 1825. He was made Lieutenant in 1828, and in 1831 transferred to
Ludhiana where he would be based for several years. In 1832, he was appointed assistant political agent at Ludhiana and in that capacity accompanied
Claude Martin Wade on a Mission to
Lahore and
Bahawalpur in connection with the
Indus navigation scheme. In 1837 he accompanied Sir
Alexander Burnes to
Kabul. In 1838, he was sent to
Peshawar tasked with winning local support for
Shuja Shah Durrani's attempt to return to power in
Afghanistan. He remained in Peshawar throughout the
First Anglo-Afghan War responsible for forwarding supplies and money to Sir
Robert Sale in
Jalalabad, hastening up reinforcements and maintaining British influence in the Khyber region. Mackeson's reputation was enhanced by the war, and a colleague
Henry Lawrence described him as an "excellent officer, first-rate linguist, a man of such temper that no native would disturb and of untiring energy" he noted that "his life was spent in discoursing night and day with false Sikhs and Khyberees at Peshawar, and treading almost alone, or attended by Afghan escort, the paths of the Khyber". After the final withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan in 1842, he was appointed acting Superintendent of Buttee, and later assistant to the political agents in
Rajpootana and at Delhi. During the
First Anglo-Sikh War Mackeson served under
Harry Smith and was present at the
Battle of Aliwal. However, after the war when the prestigious position of British Resident to Lahore became available, he was overlooked in favour of Henry Lawrence, who lacked Mackeson's first hand frontier experience. In March 1846,
Lord Harding appointed him Superintendent of the
Cis-Sutlej territory in the
Punjab, an area outside of Lawrence's domain. In the
Second Anglo-Sikh War he served as aide to
Lord Gough through which he gained the praise of both Lord Gough, and the Governor General
Lord Dalhousie. After the
Battle of Chillianwala, he swam the treacherous
Jhelum River to notify Brigadier Burn's brigade on the other side of the river bank of the danger of an imminent Sikh force, in turn saving the brigade. In 1849 he was made a local Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1850,
Lord Dalhousie selected him, along with his nephew Captain Ramsay, to safely escort the
Koh-i-Noor diamond to Britain. The jewel had been ceded to the East India Company in the
Treaty of Lahore at the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Sikh War, and was to be presented to
Queen Victoria as a gift from the Company. The pair left
Bombay on 6 April 1850 on board the steamship
Medea captained by William Lockyear and arrived at Portsmouth on 30 June. The voyage was full of hazards, when first an outbreak of
cholera and later a devastating gale threatened to destroy all on board. On their arrival in Portsmouth, Mackeson and Ramsay were escorted to the East India Company's headquarters,
East India House in
Leadenhall Street, where they safely handed the jewel over to Company chairman,
John Shepherd. Mackeson returned to India in 1851, and being then senior captain of his regiment and a brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, he was appointed Deputy Commissioner at Peshawar. For the next two years Mackeson was asked to pacify the frontier tribes, amid fears that subversive
Wahhabi agents had been supporting local insurrection. In 1852 he took part in operations against the
Yusufzai clans in the
Black Mountain region. Two British officers of the Customs department had been hacked to death by a gang of
Hassanzais, a Yusufzai clan in the region. The offending clan was threatened with punitive action if they did not hand over the killers, however they refused to surrender the culprits and seized two local forts instead. The Government assembled an expeditionary force under Mackeson's command, including columns led by
Robert Napier and
James Abbott, which successfully retook the forts. On 10 September 1853 while listening to appeals in his veranda, he was greeted with a low salaam and presented with a piece of paper by a religious fanatic from
Swat who proceeded to stab him with a large knife. Mackeson died four days later on 14 September 1853. It was generally understood that a price had been set on Mackeson's head, although the government denied that was the case. His assassin was tried, and on 1 October 1853 was hanged. By the advice of
John Lawrence the murderer's body was burned after it was cut down, and the ashes thrown into a running stream. ==Legacy==