Frank Miller Lupton was born in Little Ilford, Essex, England on May 5th 1854, son of a local merchant.

[3] Around 1880 many Azande chiefs had placed themselves at the disposal of the Egyptians, who were represented by Europeans such as Lupton and Romolo Gessi, in part to fight the slavers.

[3] In August 1882 the Mahdist Sheikh Jango attacked some of Lupton's bashi-bazouks at Liffi and gained the surrender of the inhabitants.

On 27 January 1883 Lupton was at Dembo when his military commander Major Mahmoud Effendi Abdallah returned from a campaign against the Shat tribe in very poor health.

On 1 February 1883 Lupton's chief Ruffai Agha fought off another attack by Sheikh Jango in the Liffi district.

On 2 April 1883 Lupton wrote to Dr. Wilhelm Junker telling him that his force of 2,000 men was expecting to be attacked any day.

He sent 400 men south to Rol to join forces sent north by Emin, and the ensuing campaign captured a large amount of cattle.

In January 1884 Lupton wrote to Emin telling him that Hicks had been wiped out in the Battle of Shaykan and Slatin had surrendered Darfur.

[5] In early 1884, a joint campaign by Mahdist rebels led by Emir Karam Allah Kurkusawi, a former merchant,[6] and local Southern forces defeated the Turkish-Egyptian rule in Bahr El Ghazal,[7] almost one year before the fall of Khartoum.

According to the Austrian Rudolf Carl von Slatin Pasha, one of Kurkusawi's brothers had served as a commander under Lupton Bey and therefore managed to convince most of the Ottoman officers and troops to defect.

[8] On 21 April 1884, having fought for eighteen months against the Islamist insurgents, Lupton was compelled to surrender to Kurkusawi in Deim Zubeir.

He set off with his wife and daughter, Major Abdallah and a small party to walk to Shakka, where the Emir Abdel-el-Gader showed them the battlefield where the force under Hicks had been wiped out.

[11] After tactful negotiations by Slatin their chains were removed in September 1885 and Lupton joined his family in their tent in the Beit-el-Mal.

It contained 12 pages of narrative and a folding color map which covers the area between Darfur in the north and the Stanley Falls in the south.

It describes the Denka (Dinka), Golo, Sehre, and Jur tribes, but its main subject is the rivers of the region.

He also discussed trade in rubber, ivory and slaves, mining, exploitation of cotton, gum, tamarind and timber, and tribal warfare.