Alfred Bowyer Barton was born at Bungay, Suffolk, in 1825, and entered University College, London, in 1844. After qualifying in 1847 he joined the West India Mail Steamship Service and worked through the yellow fever epidemic in the West Indies in 1848. In 1853 he was in the Peninsular and Oriental Company's service as a medical officer and worked in the East until 1855. He then went to the Crimea where he was in charge of the transport of the sick and wounded from Balaclava to Scutari. At the end of the war he sailed for India, and on the way was shipwrecked along with Sir Henry Havelock, then on his way to command the forces suppressing the Mutiny. Barton next saw service in the China war of 1860, and afterwards practised for a time in Shanghai. In 1861 he joined Captain Blakiston and Colonel Sarel in an exploration of the Yangtsze-Kiang River, then an almost unknown river above Hankow. The party reached Pingshan on the Tibet border but were forced to return by the rebels. For their work each of them received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. After his return to England Barton took the MD degree of the University of St Andrews (1866), and the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, by examination (1865). He lived in retirement in Brechin Place, South Kensington, until his death on July 4th, 1905. Further biographical information can be found in A Doctor Remembers by Dr Edwin Alfred Barton, son of A B Barton (London: Seeley, Service & Co Ltd, c.1950). See also 'Notes on the Yangtsze-kiang' by A B Barton, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 1862.
From the guide to the Papers of: Barton, Alfred Bowyer (1825-1905), 1853-1858, 1861-1862, 1967, (Wellcome Library)
