Henry Seton-Karr


Sir Henry Seton-Karr was an English explorer, hunter and author and a Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1906.
Seton-Karr was the son of George Berkeley Seton-Karr, of the Indian Civil Service; and his wife Eleanor, the daughter of Henry Usborne of Branches Park, Suffolk. He was educated at Harrow School and Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford gaining an MA in Law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1879. Seton-Karr owned a cattle ranch in Wyoming, USA and was a director of Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Co. He was an explorer, big game hunter and writer.
Seton-Karr was elected as the Member of Parliament for St Helens in the 1885 general election and held the seat until his defeat at the 1906 general election. He did not stand again in St Helens, but at the January 1910 general election he stood unsuccessfully in Berwickshire.
He became a Deputy Lieutenant of Roxburghshire in 1896, and was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in October 1902.
On 11 November 1880 Seton-Karr married Edith Eliza Pilkington, daughter of William Roby Pilkington and Elizabeth Lee Watson of Roby Hall, Liverpool. They had three children: George Bernard, Malcolm Henry and Edith Muriel. Both George and Edith Muriel died in their teens. After the death of his wife in 1884, he remarried in 1886 to Jane Jarvie Thorburn. They had two children: Helen Mary and Kenneth William.
At Grange Park Golf Club, St Helens an annual competition is still played in the name of Seton-Karr. This is the most prestigious competition in the clubs calendar.
Seton-Karr died in Canada's greatest peacetime maritime disaster when the Empress of Ireland sank in the St. Lawrence River when he was returning to England from a hunting trip in British Columbia. He was interred at the Mount Hermon Cemetery, Sillery.

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