Name Alfred Turner Died November 20, 1918 | Education Westminster School | |
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Major-General Sir Alfred Edward Turner KCB (3 March 1842 – 20 November 1918) was a British Army officer of the late nineteenth century, who served in administrative posts in Ireland.
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Early life
Turner was born on 3 March 1842, the eldest son of Richard e. Turner and his wife Frances (née Johnstone). Richard Turner was a barrister and a bencher of the Inner Temple. Alfred attended Westminster School and then the Addiscombe Military Seminary, entering the Royal Artillery in 1860. In 1865, he married (Emma) Blanche Hopkinson.
Staff service
In 1882, Turner was appointed an aide de camp and military private secretary to Earl Spencer, the Viceroy of Ireland; he held the post until 1884, when he was given the position of deputy assistant adjutant-general in the Nile Expedition, for which he was mentioned in despatches. In 1885, he returned to a staff appointment in Dublin, as the assistant military secretary to Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and the following year was appointed the private secretary to the Viceroy. From 1886 to 1892 he served as a Commissioner of Police in various Irish counties, and was created a Companion of the Bath in the civil division.
From 1895 to 1898, Turner was the assistant adjutant-general for the Royal Artillery, for which he was created a Companion of the Bath in the military division, and from 1900 to 1904 he was the Inspector General of Auxiliary Forces, receiving a knighthood in 1902. His first wife had died in 1899, and he remarried in 1902 to Juliette Whiting.
Spiritualism
Turner was interested in psychical research and identified as a spiritualist. He was a member of the International Club for Psychical Research.
He attended séances with the materialization medium Cecil Husk. He became convinced that Husk could materialize spirits and defended the medium in various newspaper articles. During one of the séances he stated that he had witnessed the materialization of W. T. Stead. Turner also claimed to have experienced apports and spirits in his own home.
Later life
In retirement, he was the chairman of the Alliance Franco-Britannique, a director of the North Borneo Chartered Company and the Manchester North Borneo Rubber Company, and chairman of North Borneo State Rubber. He wrote two books of military history, on Napoleon's invasion of Russia (The Retreat from Moscow and Passage of the Beresina) and on the Franco-Prussian War (From Weissenburg to Sedan), and a volume of memoirs, Sixty Years of a Soldier's Life (1912).
He died on 20 December 1918, survived by two sons and a daughter.