MacGregor, John

MacGregor, John, canoeist and philanthropist, eldest son of General Sir Duncan MacGregor, was born at Gravesend, January 24, 1825, and a few weeks later was the first to be handed out of the burning Kent, East Indian man. He was educated at various private schools, at Dublin, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated as a wrangler, and took his B.A. in 1847. In the same year he entered the Inner Temple, and was called to the bar in 1851. He did some writing and sketching for Punch in 1845. His desire to travel led him to make a tour of Europe, Egypt, and Palestine (1849-50); and a subsequent visit to the United States and Canada bore fruit in Our Brothers and Cousins (1859). The rise of British canoeing has been largely due to his example and influence since 1850. He published an account of a canoe journey in 1865, under the title of A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe (1866). Other narratives of canoe voyages on the Baltic, Zuider Zee, and Jordan followed. He was captain of the Canoe Club (1866), and contributed papers on Marine Propulsion to the British Association. He was a member of the London School Board for Greenwich in 1870, and again in 1873; when chairman of the Industrial School Commission, he sug- gested the founding of the London Shoeblack Brigade; and he gave the profits of his books and lectures—£10,000—to philanthropic schemes. He died 16th July 1892. See Life by Hodder (1894).