S. D. L. Taunton (b. c. 1848) was a British civil engineer and mapmaker active in New York City in the 1870s and 1880s. Born in the West Indies, Taunton appears in New York City in the late 1870s as the copyright owner of several maps, either under the name S.D.L. Taunton and Company or simply S.D.L. Taunton, New York. Taunton also worked as the superintendent of the Railway Map and Publishing Company based in New York City. Taunton's other appearance in the historical record (other than through map copyrights) is two references to him absconding from New York City after having passed a series of bad checks and with money from the Railroad Map and Publishing Company. The first notice was published in the New York Times on February 28, 1885, and recounts Taunton's circuitous use of bad checks to pay off successive debts and Taunton stealing money from Methodist Reverend A. H. Goodenough. Goodenough gave Taunton $75 to pay a printer (one of Taunton's friends) to print a newspaper for his church. The printer, William Pagan, was never paid. The second instance is the Railway Map and Publishing Company suing a client in City Court in April 1885 for money they never received that Taunton supposedly collected. We have been unable to find any other historical evidence of Taunton's life before the late 1870s in New York or after he fled the city in 1885.