George Young

Sir George Young, 3rd Baronet (1837–1930) was a British governmental administrator and scholar.

Early life George Young, 3rd Baronet (1837–1930) was born at Cookham on 15 September 1837, the oldest of the five sons of Sir George Young, 2nd Baronet and Susan Praed, the sister of Winthrop Mackworth Praed.

Young succeeded his father to the baronetcy in February 1848 at the age of ten. He attended Eton and then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was elected president of the Cambridge Union in 1860. He stood again for Plymouth in the general election of April 1880 and in the bye-election held there in June 1880 (after the conservative Edward Bates had been unseated on the grounds of illegal payments by his agents).

The commission's work involved spending several months in British Guiana, whilst there he joined a small group, led by Charles Barrington Brown, exploring the Kaieteur Waterfall on the River Potaro.

UK civil service After his return from British Guiana he married and began work as the secretary to the Bessborough commission on the working of the 1870 Irish Land Act. He drafted the commission's report, which made radical proposals for increasing the rights of tenants in Ireland. The report was published in 1881 and the year after its publication he accepted an invitation to become private secretary to Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly installed chief secretary for Ireland; Young's telegram of acceptance was in Cavendish's pocket when he and Burke were murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

In the summer of 1871 he became one of six assistant commissioners appointed to a Royal Commission to inquire into the working of friendly societies and charged with making a report with recommendations for further consolidation and amendment of the Friendly Societies Acts. but Young's work on various government commissions continued, these included an appointment in 1875 as secretary to the Royal Commission, led by Sir James Fergusson, inquiring into the operation of the Factory and Workshop Acts. and later a permanent position with the Charity Commission.

UK education Young was a member of the Council of University College, London from 1875 and appointed President of the Senate (1881–86).

In 1882 he was appointed Charity Commissioner under the Endowed Schools Acts

Personal life Alpinism Young was a keen mountaineer and "one of the pioneers of the Alps", being active in the Alps from his early twenties. Before the construction of the Jungfraujoch railway tunnel, the approach from the glaciers on the south side was very long. This new line became the established route until the opening of the Jungfraujoch tunnel.

However, in 1866, after he and two of his brothers had reached the summit of Mont Blanc, they took a slip on an icy slope; although it was a short fall and two of them were only slightly injured, their youngest brother, Bulkeley Young (1843-1866), broke his neck after landing badly and was killed. George Young was leading this party without guides and felt responsible for the incident; he never went mountaineering again and "If the Alps were mentioned in his presence, inadvertently, by a visitor, he would rise quietly and leave the room".

Young died on 4 July 1930.