John Macgregor

Born at Gravesend on 24 January 1825, John Macgregor was the eldest son of Scottish officer Major Duncan Macgregor (later General Sir Duncan Macgregor, KCB) and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Dick of Prestonfield. Following his education at the King’s School in Canterbury, Trinity College in Dublin and Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated in 1847 and later became a barrister. A staunch Christian, he also became an open-air preacher and was much involved with the Ragged Schools movement, helping to launch its Shoeblack Brigade in 1851 (which provided boys from the schools with the means of earning their own living).

In 1848 he travelled through Europe and the Middle East, where he visited Egypt and Palestine. He was called to the Bar in 1851 but soon ‘gave up the law and devoted his life to travel and philanthropy.’ He shortly departed on his travels again, this time in Russia, Algeria and Tunisia, and subsequently in Canada and the United States, where he was introduced to canoeing. On his return to England he designed his own canoe, based on the kayak of North America, which he had built in Lambeth. This he named the Rob Roy — he claimed a family connection with the famous Scottish outlaw — and used it, and its various successors, to travel in the Levant and the Baltic, visiting Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Heligoland. He eventually became synonymous with the boat, and was himself known as ‘Rob Roy.’ He did much to establish canoeing as a sport on both sides of the Atlantic; in 1866 he founded the Royal Canoe Club in Great Britain and in 1880 the American Canoe Association.

His books about his travels proved hugely popular, as did his related lectures, and earned him large sums of money, which he used to finance his philanthropic endeavours. In 1866 he published A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe, later followed by The Rob Roy on the Baltic (1867) and The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red Sea, & Gannesareth, &c (1869). These he illustrated with his own drawings. His many other published works include books on mountaineering, Eastern music, open-air preaching and the Ragged Schools.

On 4 December 1873 he married Annie Bethia Caffin, daughter of Admiral Sir James Crawford Caffin, KCB.

In 1891 he was living with his wife Annie, their two daughters and four servants in Bournemouth on the Dorset coast.

He died there, aged 67, on 16 July 1892, leaving an estate valued at £21,756. He was buried in Wimborne Road Cemetery.

Photographed by Elliott and Fry of London.