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George Sydenham Clarke Sydenham

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"GEORGE SYDENHAM CLARKE SYDENHAM, 1ST Baron (1848-), British soldier and administrator, was born in Lincolnshire July 4 1848. He was educated at Haileybury and Wimbledon, andafterwards at the Royal Military Academy. In 1868 he entered the Royal Engineers, and in succeeding years served in various expeditions abroad, including the Sudan operations of 1885. The same year he returned to England, and was employed at the War Office until 1892, being at the same time secretary to the Colonial Defence Committee. He was also secretary to the Royal Commission on Navy and Army Administration. From 1894 to 1901 he was superintendent of the royal carriage factory at Woolwich. During all these years Sir George Clarke, who was created K.C.M.G. in 1893, had earned a great reputation, outside as well as inside his profession, as an authority on military questions, over and above his special subject of fortification. On his retirement from Woolwich, he was made a member of the important committee on War Office reorganization. In 1901 he was appointed governor of Victoria (Australia), and on his retirement in 1904 he became secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence. From 1907 to 1913 he was governor of Bombay. He had been created G.C.M.G. in 1905, and in 1913 was raised to the peerage. He subsequently took a vigorous interest in many public questions, becoming chairman of the Royal Commission on Contagious Diseases (1913-5), chairman of the Central Appeal Tribunal (1915-6), and president of the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases. In addition to his classic work on Fortification (1890; 2nd ed. 1907), his publications include The Navy and the Nation (1897) and Imperial Defence (1898), besides handbooks on military subjects.