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Researching Staffordshire soldiers I came across the above officer & gentleman, although his first wife would probably have described him as an officer and a cad.

Harold (Harry) William Barlow was a scion of a well connected family and born 2 February 1864. His father died when he was a few years old and his mother when he was 11. His mother left a considerable fortune and there was a family feud about what happened to it. He then came under the guardianship of his uncle who was a Civil Service mandarin. He was educated at a school in Germany, followed by a couple of years at Clifton College, Bristol and then Sandhurst.

On leaving Sandhurst Harry joined the South Staffordshire Regiment in November 1884. He took part in the Nile Campaign and was awarded the Khedive’s Star.

By 1887 he was back home and on 28 July married Mabel Moore in Pedmore Church, Stourbridge. Notices of the wedding reported she was the eldest daughter of Joseph Moore of Wychbury House, Stourbridge.

Their daughter was born in October 1889 in Gibraltar but by 1898 he had been forced to resign his commission for reasons that will become apparent later.

In 1900 he enlisted in the 74th (Dublin) Company of the Imperial Yeomanry and was given the rank of Captain. The 74th Coy IY set sail for South Africa on 14 April 1900 aboard the Canada. Just over a year later Harry was invalided home leaving South Africa on 23 April 1900 aboard the Lake Erie. He was subsequently awarded the Queens South Africa Medal with 4 clasps (Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal & South Africa 1901).

Back home his wife started divorce proceedings against him and the Illustrated Police Budget of January 1902 reported the court case in detail under the following headlines:

CAPTAIN AND ACTRESS / RESULTS OF DRINKING / UNPACKING THE LUGGAGE.

The article also bore the following likeness of the petitioner:



The article continued:

Mrs Mabel Barlow sought a divorce by reason of the cruelty and adultery of her husband, Captain Harry Barlow, formerly an officer in the South Staffordshire Regiment, and lately of the Imperial Yeomanry. There was no defence.

Mr H B Deane KC, who appeared for the petitioner, said that the parties were married on July 28,1887, at Pedmore Parish Church, Worcestershire. They lived together at Gibraltar, Aldershot, and other places where the regiment happened to be quartered.

In 1895 the respondent obtained an adjutancy of a Volunteer Corps near Walsall, and lived there until, owing to his habits of excessive drinking, he was removed from the Volunteer Corps to his regiment.

Eventually, owing to his continued drinking, he had to send in his papers as an officer. The parties lived together for another two years, until 1900, and then he went out to South Africa as an officer in the Imperial Yeomanry.

This year [1901] he returned invalided, and the particular acts then occurred which led to the petitioner leaving her husband and presenting her petition for divorce.

From the first after the marriage the respondent was in the habit of taking stimulants excessively, with the result that very often while in that state he got into a violent temper and assaulted his wife on many occasions.

As to one of those occasions, in 1897, Mrs Barlow slept in a separate room, into which the respondent broke forcibly with a poker in his hand, and so frightened her that she was prematurely confined.

After his return from South Africa petitioner joined her husband at Southsea, and while unpacking his luggage she came across some letters and photographs which attracted her attention.

The letters were addressed to “Captain Barlow, Queen’s Hotel, Kimberley” and were from Miss Ada Branson, an actress.

While petitioner and respondent were staying at Southsea he became so excited by drink that she grew frightened, and asked Colonel Savage, who had been her husband’s commanding officer, to come in and protect her.

After this incident petitioner left the respondent and brought this suit.

Petitioner was called and bore out the opening statement of counsel.

Dr George James Silva of Aldridge, near Walsall, and Colonel Savage were called in for corroboration of the cruelty, after which evidence was given of the respondent visiting Miss Ada Branson in Kensington.

Mr Justice Barnes granted a decree nisi, with costs.

Harry married Ada Branson as soon as his divorce allowed him to. There then seems to have been a bit of re-establishment of his credentials coupled with their removal from British Society. By 1905 he and Ada were living in South Africa where Harry was employed as the Military Administrator for the District of Britstown. The next year with the blessing of the British Government he was appointed tutor and companion to the son of the Raja of Sirmur, a still, at the time, independent principality in India. I think Harry’s uncle and elder brother, who by this time also moved in Government circles, plus Ada’s father, an eminent lawyer in India had a hand in this.

In 1909 whilst on a train journey to Bombay to meet up with Ada, Harry was struck down with cholera and died on 21July in Nahan Hospital. He was buried in Nicholson Cemetery, Old Delhi.

A word or two about Ada. As already shown she belonged to a well connected family. In 1892 she took the theatre going public by storm when she played Donna Lucia D’Alvadorez in the original production of “Charley’s Aunt”. She lived to celebrate her 90th birthday having spent much of her life dining out as the original Charley’s Aunt. A couple of her 1954 death notices added that she served as a nurse in the Great War and was taken prisoner in the Balkans by the Germans. I have been unable to verify this but have discovered there was a group of British & Australian nurses working in Serbia in the early stages of the war who were taken prisoner by the Austrian Army.

Below a notice for Charley’s Aunt at the Royalty Theatre, London and proof that Ada also attracted the attention of the well known photographers, Messrs Bassano of 25 Old Bond Street.





Although Harry died 5 years before the Great War started the boy he had tutored had become the Raja and had no hesitation in offering his Indian Troops to fight for the Allies – was this Harry’s greatest contribution to the Empire?

Sources:
Clifton College Website
A Barlow family online blog (apparently no longer actively added to and discovered 6 years ago by Berenice Bayham when she posted brief details of divorces involving officers who fought in South African War of 1899-1902).
Newspapers of the Day.
Wikipedia for the Royalty Theatre notice & info on the Raja of Sirmur.
National Portrait Gallery for the photos of Ada.