Sir George Barlow, 1st Baronet

Sir George Hilaro Barlow, 1st Baronet, (20 January 1763 – 18 December 1846) served as Acting Governor-General of India from the death of Lord Cornwallis in 1805 until the arrival of Lord Minto in 1807.

Career

He was appointed to the Bengal Civil Service in 1778, and in 1788 carried into execution the permanent settlement of Bengal. In 1812 he was recalled, and lived in retirement until his death in Farnham, Surrey, in December 1846.

He was created a baronet in 1803. In October 1806 he was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (KB), which on the reconstitution of the Order in 1815 became Knight Grand Cross (GCB).

He was portrayed in a bust by Bertel Thorvaldsen when he visited the sculptor in Rome Spring 1828.

Personal life He married Elizabeth, daughter of Burton Smith, in Calcutta on 16 April 1789 and had fifteen children. They returned to England in 1813. Not long after, Miss Page, the children's governess, surprised Lady Barton in a compromising position with Major George Pratt Barlow, a young kinsman who had been Sir George's aide-de-camp. Miss Page later intercepted love letters, and faced with the evidence, Lady Barlow admitted that one of their children had in fact been fathered by her lover. The marriage was dissolved in 1816.