Henry Babington Smith

Sir Henry Babington Smith GBE CH KCB CSI (19 January 1863–29 September 1923) was a senior British civil servant.

Smith was born in Jordanhill, the son of the lawyer and mathematician Archibald Smith. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read classics. In 1887 he joined the Department of Education as an examiner, but in 1891 became principal private secretary to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Goschen. In 1894 he became private secretary to Lord Elgin on his appointment as Viceroy of India. He returned to Britain in 1899 and was immediately sent to Natal as Treasury representative in the South African War. In 1900 he became British representative on the Council of Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt, becoming its chairman in 1901. In 1903 he returned home to become secretary to the General Post Office, but in 1909 he returned to Constantinople as president of the National Bank of Turkey, which he was instrumental in establishing.

The First World War saw him holding a variety of posts connected with finance, including deputy governor of the British Trade Corporation, and in 1918 he accompanied Lord Reading to the United States as Assistant Commissioner and Minister Plenipotentiary.

After the war, he chaired the Indian Finance and Currency Committee in 1919 and the Railway Amalgamation Tribunal in 1921. He was appointed a director of the Bank of England in 1920.

Smith was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours for his services in the United States.

References

*Obituary, "The Times", 1 October 1923