Robert George Crookshank Hamilton

Sir Robert George Crookshank Hamilton was born in Bressay, Shetland, Scotland, the son of Rev. Zachary Macaulay Hamilton. He attended King's College in Aberdeen, and in 1857 he received a Master's Degree, followed by a Doctor of Laws in 1885. In 1863 he married Caroline Jane Ball and had four children.

Hamilton enlisted and served in the Crimean War as a commissariat clerk. After the war, he became a bureaucrat. In 1868 he published Book-Keeping. In 1869 he was an accountant for the Board of Trade. In 1875, his wife Caroline died. In 1878 he was appointed as accountant-general of the Royal Navy.

In 1877 Hamilton remarried Teresa Felicia, and had three more children. In 1879 he was appointed to Earl Carnarvon's royal commission on colonial defences. In 1882 he became the permanent secretary of the Admiralty. He next became under-secretary to the Irish administration. In 1883 he received his Companion to the Order of the Bath (CB) and in 1884 he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB). In 1886, after advising that Ireland should receive home rule, he lost his position as under-secretary.

In 1887 he was appointed as the sixth Governor of Tasmania, where he worked toward Australian federalism and the establishment of the University of Australia. However he disliked living in a colony, and in 1893 he and his wife returned to London. He returned to the civil service, working on royal commissions and on the Board of Customs.