Samuel Butcher, Scholar, Is Born in Dublin

  • April 16, 1850

Samuel Henry Butcher DCL LLD FRSE FBA (16 April 1850 – 29 December 1910) was an Anglo-Irish classical scholar and politician.

Samuel Henry Butcher was born in Dublin to Samuel Butcher, Bishop of Meath and Mary Leahy. He was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire and then received a place at Trinity College, Cambridge, attending between 1869 and 1873 where he was Senior Classic and Chancellor’s medalist.

Elected fellow of Trinity in 1874, he left the college on his marriage, in 1876, to the daughter of Archbishop Trench. From 1876 to 1882 he was a fellow of University College, Oxford, and tutored there.

From 1882 to 1903 he was Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh succeeding Prof John Stuart Blackie. During this period he lived at 27 Palmerston Place in Edinburgh’s West End.

He was succeeded at the University of Edinburgh by Prof Alexander William Mair