Thomas Alexander Barns
| Thomas Alexander Barns | |
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Thomas Alexander Barns at the Hill Museum in 1920.
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| Born |
Thomas Alexander Barns 4 June 1881 Bletchingley, Surrey, England |
| Died | 4 March 1930 (aged 48) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Cause of death | struck by taxi-cab |
| Other names | T. A. Barns, T. Alexander Barns, Alexander Barns |
| Education | St John's College, Oxford |
| Occupation | naturalist |
| Known for | expeditions in Africa |
| Spouse(s) | Margery Cory |
| Children | son, daughter |
| Parent(s) | Rev. William Amos Barns, Eva Cecilia Buckworth |
Thomas Alexander Barns FZS FES, also known as T. A. Barns and T. Alexander Barns, and in his private life as Alexander Barns (4 June 1881 – 4 March 1930), was an English business man, explorer, big game hunter, author, artist, naturalist and lecturer connected with the opening up of Central Africa by Europeans in the early 20th century.
The amateur entomologist James John Joicey commissioned Barns to collect specimens of lepidoptera in Africa on his behalf.
The second son of the Rev. William Amos Barns, by his marriage to Eva Cecilia Buckworth, Barns was born at Bletchingley, Surrey, in 1881 and educated at Cranleigh School. His father was a Church of England clergyman and a graduate of St John's College, Oxford. His mother, Eva Cecilia Buckworth, was the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Everard Buckworth (born 1822), Rector of Norbury, Staffordshire, whose mother Helena Hare Clarke was one of the sisters of General Sir John Clarke (1787–1854), a veteran of the Peninsular Wars. In 1868, at the age of thirteen, Eva Cecilia had been awarded the Royal Humane Society's Silver Medal for saving her ten-year-old sister Blanche Rosa from drowning in a pool of the River Erme at Ivy Bridge, Devon. She then needed to be saved herself by her governess.
In 1898, at the age of seventeen, Barns went to Africa as an assistant manager to the Nyasaland Coffee Company. From 1900 to 1903 he was agent for the Tanganyika Concessions in Northern Rhodesia, where he also worked in ranching and organised expeditions to German and Portuguese East Africa, shot elephants, traded ivory, and collected zoological specimens for museums, such as a large African elephant for the South Kensington Museum.
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