Following his time on the North-West Frontier, Lumsden served as quartermaster general in 1860 during the Second Opium War, where he participated in the capture of both Tang-ku and the Taku Forts.

After retiring from military service in 1893, Lumsden served as a justice of the peace in his home county of Aberdeenshire, before dying on his 89th birthday, 9 November 1918, in Dufftown, Banffshire.

[7] The final spell of active service in Lumsden's military career was in the Bhutan War of 1865: his later employment was on the staff and in political posts.

[9][10] While leading the Commission, he felt he had been given insufficiently clear instructions by the British government, which proved very dangerous as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated to the brink of war with Russia.

In 1885 he wrote "Countries and Tribes Bordering on the Koh-i-Baba Range", an article for the seventh volume of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography.

The book detailed the role that his brother, Harry Burnett Lumsden, had played in founding The Corps of the Guides, a regiment of the British Indian Army.

Thomas Lumsden was a distinguished officer of the Bengal Horse Artillery who had served in the Nepal Campaign of 1814 and at the siege of Hatrass and the capture of Kalunga in 1817.

He returned home on leave from the Bengal Army in 1819 to marry Hay Burnett of Elrick, and went on to serve another 23 years in India before retiring to Belhelvie in 1842.