John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria. He is also known for propounding the Hamitic hypothesis in 1863, in which he supposed that the Tutsi ethnic group were descendants of the biblical figure Ham, and had lighter skin and more Hamitic features than the Bantu-featured Hutu over whom they ruled. Speke was born on
Orleigh Court of cards, to Major Edward Lee. After Edward Lee's death in 1819, the house passed to his nephew, the politician John Lee Lee (1802-1874), who did not live there but let it to his sister and her husband, William Speke. Born at Orleigh in 1827 was their son John Hanning Speke, the celebrated explorer who discovered the source of the River Nile. From 1845 the house was occupied by other tenants: In 1869 Orleigh was sold to Thomas Rogers, who employed the architect J. H. Hakewill to make extensive changes to the house, including the replacement of most of the