The Life of General Pitt Rivers
General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers had an abundance of names; he kept his father's surname (Lane Fox) until 1880 when he succeeded, unexpectedly, to the estate of his great uncle and assumed the name Pitt Rivers. For clarity we will use the name Pitt Rivers throughout. This biography is based largely on the two published biographies of Pitt Rivers (Thomson 1977 and Bowden 1993) and W.R. Chapman's unpublished D.Phil thesis (for further details, see bibliography).
Pitt Rivers was born in 1827 in Yorkshire to a wealthy landowning family. In 1841 he entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards in 1845. E.B. Tylor, in his entry for Pitt Rivers in the Dictionary of National Biography, explained, 'He soon showed a talent for organization and experimental research which led to his being employed in investigations as to the use and improvement of the rifle in the British Army. These investigations were carried on by him at Woolwich, Enfield, and Hythe after 1851.' (DNB vol xxii supplement:1141). In 1852 he toured France, Belgium and Piedmont (Italy) to study their methods of musketry instruction.
When soldiers were first shipped out to the Crimean War, Pitt Rivers was transferred to Malta to serve at the School of Musketry. Later he accepted the post of Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General to the Second Division and served in the Crimea from April until October 1854 when a medical examination found him unfit for service. During the short time he was in the Crimea he was present at the battle of Alma and siege of Sebastapol, promoted Brevet Major for distinguished service in the field and mentioned in dispatches.
In 1855 he returned to active service in Malta training soldiers in the use of the new rifle (the French designed Minié). In 1857 he was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel by purchase and returned to England. In 1861 Pitt Rivers and the first battalion of Grenadier Guards were sent to Eastern Canada following the 'Trent incident' (The Trent incident was part of the American Civil War [1861 - 1865]. On November 8 1861 Mason and Slidell, commissioners of the Confederate States to Great Britain and France were taken off the British steamer Trent by the Federal steamer San Jacinto. There were sharp protests from Great Britain and danger of war. Reinforcement troops were sent from Britain to Canada. The commissioners were given up in accordance with the principles of international law). Six months later he returned to Europe to serve at Cork, Ireland where he held the post of Assistant Quartermaster General for four years (from 1862–1866) and became involved in the British attempts to defeat 'the Fenians'.
In July 1867 Pitt Rivers purchased a Colonel's commission (with money provided by his mother), went on half pay and, for the next six years, did not take an active part in military affairs. In 1873 he returned to duty as the commander of the West Surrey Brigade Depot in Guildford, he held this post until 1877 when he was promoted to Major-General. He finally retired in 1882, at the age of 55, with the honorary rank of Lieutenant-General. He remained on the active list until 1896.
So much for his professional career. In his private life Pitt Rivers seems to have been a solitary man, with few close friends. Bowden suggests that only three men were close to him during his life: Colonel Alexander Gordon (an Army colleague); Professor Rolleston (Linacre Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Oxford); and a Dorset landowner, John Mansell-Pleydell (Bowden, 1991:8). Pitt Rivers has been described as 'a man of fierce temper, not untinged with violence, of considerable energy and enthusiasm, unsociable with his peers, a domestic tyrant and yet approachable to his labourers, a dominant and aloof father figure in the grand Victorian manner, though possessing a dry sense of humour' (Bowden, 1991:7).
More favourably, an archaeological colleague, Harold St George Gray, in a memoir published after the General's death, tells us that '.... [he] was a most able conversationalist, and would pour forth from his abundant treasure house of knowledge the most varied information, provided that he was in scientific company or with those who were genuinely anxious to learn. The extraordinary variety of his knowledge and the rapid way in which he could turn from one subject to another, reminded us on several occasions of Mr Gladstone. We can call to mind one occasion ... when, well within the hour, he discoursed most learnedly and clearly on forestry, on Mexican pottery, on Egyptian painting, on modern brass bands, on the forms of the Christian cross and on simony in the Church.' (Gray, 1905:xxxv)
Pitt Rivers married Alice Stanley, eldest daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley in Cheshire, in February 1853 and they had nine children. In 1880 Pitt Rivers unexpectedly inherited the Rivers estate and name from his great uncle. The inheritance made a substantial difference to the family who moved from Earl's Court to Grosvenor Gardens in London and to Rushmore, the country seat, in Cranborne Chase, Dorset. The country estate was a substantial one of approximately 27,000 acres, and Pitt Rivers also received an annual income of a little under £20,000. For the remainder of his life Pitt Rivers was a wealthy landowner, who left the day-to-day management of his estates to an agent but kept a strong control of his affairs.
In 1861 Pitt Rivers joined the Ethnological Society of London and later the Anthropological Society. These societies later joined together to form the Anthropological Institute (now known as the Royal Anthropological Institute). In 1864 he was elected to the Society of Antiquaries. These societies gave him the opportunity of meeting many of the leading men in these fields. In 1881–2 Pitt Rivers was elected President of the Anthropological Institute and in 1886 the University of Oxford awarded him an honorary D.C.L.. Pitt Rivers died in 1900, at the age of 73.
The text above is taken from Petch 1998 (see bibliography)