''Thacker, Spink & Co.'' was a well-known

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

publishing company. ''Thacker's Bengal Directory'' was published from 1864 to 1884 and covered the

Bengal Presidency The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...

– which included the present day

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

. From 1885 the ''Directory'' covered the whole of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

and was renamed ''Thacker's Indian Directory''. It was later owned by Maharaja of Darbhanga.{{cite book, title=Appendices, date=1982, publisher=India. Second Press Commissior Controller of Publications, pages=266, 343, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tBwuAAAAMAAJ&q=darbhanga+Thacker+Spink It continued to be published until 1960. The directory was essentially an

almanac An almanac (also spelled ''almanack'' and ''almanach'') is an annual publication listing a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes information like weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and othe ...

which listed British and Foreign Merchants and Manufacturers, Commercial Industries, Army, railway and government departments and office holders, European residents, and separately, prominent non-European residents. Earlier editions of ''Thacker'' had street directories of major cities, such as Kolkata and

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

, together with the name of the residents of each house. Similar directories published included: *''Thacker's Bombay Directory, city and island... (Together with a directory of the chief industries of Bombay, etc.)'' *''Thacker's Medical Directory of India, Burma and Ceylon. (Thacker's Indian Medical Directory.)'' *''Thacker's Directory of the Chief Industries of India, Burma and Ceylon''.

References

Almanacs Directories Books about British India Bengal Presidency