James Patrick Muirhead

James Patrick Muirhead FRSE (26 July 1813 – 15 October 1898) was a Scottish advocate and author, best known as the biographer of James Watt.

Life

Born at The Grove, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, he was son of Lockhart Muirhead; George Muirhead was his great-uncle. He was educated first at Glasgow College. Gaining on 3 February 1832 a Snell exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford, he matriculated there on 6 April 1832; spending his long vacations in alpine expeditions, and in the study of German rather than in working for honours, he took a third class in lit. hum. on graduating B.A. in 1835 (M.A. 1838).

Admitted advocate at Edinburgh in 1838, Muirhead practised law in Edinburgh. He lived with his family at 26 Heriot Row in Edinburgh's New Town.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1841, his proposer being Sir John Robison.

His wife found the climate of Edinburgh too cold, and in 1846 he gave up his career at the Scottish bar, and in 1847 settled at Haseley Court, Oxfordshire, a property in his wife's family. and the third son Colonel Herbert Hugh Muirhead, R.E., Their daughter Beatrix Marion (later Sturt) would write her father's biography, mentioning her brothers but not herself.