Hon. Sir Reginald Talbot KCB

The Hon Sir Reginald Talbot KCB (1841-1929), army officer and English MP, was governor of Victoria from April 1904 to July 1908. Born into the English aristocracy, he was educated at Harrow, entered the army in 1859, and was elected Conservative member for Stafford in the House of Commons in 1869. He served in the Zulu War, in Egypt and on the Nile expedition of 1884-1885, and commanded the 1st Life Guards from 1885 to 1886. Having spent the first half of the 1890s in Paris as military attaché, he returned to command the Cavalry Brigade in 1896. He was Major-General in charge of the British army of occupation in Egypt from 1899 to 1902. Appointed KCB in 1902, he was governor of Victoria from 25 April 1904 to 6 July 1908. Talbot was a practical man and worked in great harmony with his premier, the humbly-born Thomas Bent, to effect the thrifty improvement of Victoria. He travelled extensively throughout the region, understood its history and population, and was pleased to track statistics for the colony over the period of his governorship. His wife Lady Talbot was first president of the subsidized charitable institution the Talbot Colony for Epileptics; the Lady Talbot Milk Institute dispensed milk to approved needy recipients. In March 1907 Lady Talbot officially opened the College of Domestic Economy, which she had long championed. Over their last decades in London, which comprised the years of the First World War, Talbot retained the utmost public respect as a model army officer of the old school.