Biography

Born in India of Irish descent, at the age of three his parents took him to live in Kilmanock, County Wexford. Barrett-Hamilton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (1890-1894) but worked mainly in Ireland. From an early age he was interested in plants and his earliest publications include an account of his local flora. Most of his work was zoological with an early emphasis on Muridae and geographical variation in European mammals, but he also collected arachnids and published on birds. He later specialised in marine mammals and was appointed commissioner (1896) on the Bering Sea Fur Seal Commission. He continued to collect plants while serving as Captain of the 5th Royal Irish Rifles in South Africa (1901-1902) during the Boer War, and also visited Antarctica. Barrett-Hamilton was appointed commissioner by the Colonial Office and the British Museum (Natural History) to report on indiscriminate killing of whales in the Falkland Islkands and South Georgia, but contracted pneumonia and died shortly after his arrival. The journal of his last expedition is at The Natural History Museum. Botanical material at BM includes both phanerogams and lichens.