Walter St George Burke

A carte-de-visite portrait of Walter St George Burke (1842-1916).

Born on 27 April 1842, he was the third son and the seventh of the twelve children of barrister James St George Burke. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the service of the Royal Engineers.

On 6 June 1877 at Holy Trinity Church in Richmond he married Mary Ann Amy Macrae Cockburn, daughter of George Ferguson Cockburn of the Bengal Civil Service. Their marriage produced ten children.

Lieutenant-Colonel Walter St George Burke died on 17 February 1916, aged 73. He left an estate valued at £32,389.

According to his short obituary in The Times (23 February 1916): ‘The funeral of Lieutenant-Colonel Walter St George Burke, of Auberies, near Sudbury, Suffolk, took place last Monday at the parish church, Bulmer. Lieutenant-Burke was the third son of James St George Burke, QC. Born in London on April 27, 1842, he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1862, and retired with the rank of honorary lieutenant-colonel in 1882. He succeeded to the estates in 1881 on the death of his brother, Hubert Plunkett Burke, lieutenant-colonel, 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars. He was a Justice of the Peace for the counties of Essex and Suffolk, and took a keen interest in all local affairs. He married in 1877 Mary Ann Amy Macrae, daughter of George Ferguson Cockburn, ICS, formerly a Commissioner in the province of Bengal. He is succeeded by his eldest son, Redmond St George Burke, now serving in the Indian Forest Service.’

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 29 March 1862.