Sir John Kirk

Sir John Kirk, GCMG, KCB, FRS (1832 – 1922) was a Scottish physician, naturalist, companion to explorer Dr David Livingstone, and British administrator in Zanzibar, where he was instrumental in ending the slave trade in that country.

He was born on 19 December 1832 in Barry, Angus, near Arbroath, Scotland, and earned his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh.

Kirk’s daughter, Helen, married Major-General Henry Brooke Hagstromer Wright CB CMG, the brother of the famous bacteriologist and immunologist, Sir Almroth Edward Wright and of Sir Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright, Secretary and Librarian of London Library. Kirk’s son Colonel John William Carnegie Kirk was author of A British Garden Flora. The engineer, Alexander Carnegie Kirk, was John Kirk's elder brother.

From 1858 to 1864 Kirk accompanied the explorer Dr David Livingstone on the Second Zambezi Expedition as a botanist and experienced his work to end the East African slave trade. He found Livingstone an inept leader and in 1862 wrote I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr. Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader".

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