HEAD, SIR EDMUND WALKER, Bart. (1805-1868), English colonial governor and writer on art, was the son of the Rev. Sir John Head, Bart., rector of Rayleigh, Essex. He was educated at Winchester school and Oriel College, Oxford, and taking his degree with first-class honours in classics, he became fellow of Merton College. On his father’s death in 1838, he succeeded to the baronetcy as 8th baronet. His services as poor-law commissioner, to which post he was appointed in 1841 after five years as assistant-commissioner, procured for him in 1847 the office of lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, whence he passed in 1854 to the governor-generalship of Canada, which he retained till 1861. The following year, having returned to England, Head was nominated a civil service commissioner. In 1857 he was sworn of the Privy Council, and in 1860 was decorated as K.C.B., while in the course of his career he received the degrees of D.C.L. at Oxford and LL.D. at Cambridge. He died in London on the 28th of January 1868, the baronetcy becoming extinct, as his only son had died in 1859.
Sir Edmund Head wrote the article “Painting” in the Penny Cyclopaedia; A Handbook of the Spanish and French Schools of Painting (1845); Shall and Will, or two Chapters on Future Auxiliary Verbs (1856); and Ballads and other Poems, Original and Translated (1868). He also edited F. T. Kugler’s Handbook of Painting of the German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, and French Schools (1854) and the Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain (1864), written by his lifelong friend, Sir George Cornewall Lewis. His translation from the Icelandic of Viga Glum’s Saga appeared in 1866.
HEAD, SIR FRANCIS BOND, Bart. (1793-1875), English soldier, traveller and author, son of James Roper Head of the Hermitage, Higham, Kent, was born there on the 1st of January 1793. He was educated at Rochester grammar school and the Royal Military Academy, whence in 1811 he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers. He was for some years stationed in the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815, being present at the battle of Waterloo. He went on half-pay in 1825, when he accepted the charge of an association formed to work the gold and silver mines of Rio de La Plata. In connexion with this enterprise he made several rapid journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes, his Rough Notes of which, published in 1826, and written in a clear and spirited style, obtained for him the name of “Galloping Head.” On his return in 1827, he became involved in a controversy with the directors of his company, and in defence of his conduct he published Reports of the La Plata Mining Association (London, 1827). He was soon afterwards restored to the active list of the army as a major unattached, mainly owing to his efforts to introduce the South American lasso into the British service for auxiliary draught. In 1830 he published a life of Bruce, the African traveller, and in 1834 Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an Old Man. In 1835 he was knighted, and in the following year created a baronet. In 1835 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection. Shortly afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the home government, he resigned his post and returned to England, via New York (see Quarterly Review, vols. 63-64). Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, chiefly for the Quarterly Review, and to hunting. He rode to hounds until he was seventy-five. In 1869 Sir Francis Head was made a privy councillor. He died on the 20th of July 1875, at Duppas Hall, Croydon.
Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and displaying both acute observation and genial humour. His principal works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative of his Canadian administration (1839), were The Emigrant (1846); Highways and Dryways, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849); Stokers and Pokers, a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849); The Defenceless State of Great Britain (1850); A Faggot of French Sticks (1852); A Fortnight in Ireland (1852); Descriptive Essays (1856); comments on Kinglake’s Crimean War (1853); The Horse and his Rider (1860); The Royal Engineer (1870); and a sketch of the life of Sir John Burgoyne (1872).
His brother, Sir George Head (1782-1855), was educated at the Charterhouse. In 1808 he received an appointment in the commissariat of the British army in the Peninsula, where he was a witness of many exciting scenes and important battles, of which he gave an interesting account in “Memoirs of an Assistant Commissary-General” attached to the second volume of his Home Tour, published in 1837. In 1814 he was sent to America to take charge of the commissariat in a naval establishment on the Canadian lakes, and he subsequently held appointments at Halifax and Nova Scotia. Some of his Canadian experiences were narrated by him in Forest Scenery and Incidents in the Wilds of North America (1829). In 1831 he was knighted.
He published in 1835 A Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts of England, and in 1837 a sequel to it, entitled A Home Tour through various parts of the United Kingdom. Both works are amusing and instructive, but his Rome, a Tour of many Days, published in 1849, is somewhat dull and tedious. He also translated Historical Memoirs of Cardinal Pacca (1850), and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (1851).
HEAD (in O. Eng. héafod; the word is common to Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch hoofd, Ger. Haupt, generally taken to be in origin connected with Lat. caput, Gr. κεφαλή), the upper portion of the body in man, consisting of the skull with its integuments and contents, &c., connected with the trunk by the neck (see [Anatomy], [Skull] and [Brain]); also the anterior or fore part of other animals. The word is used in a large number of transferred and figurative senses, generally with reference to the position of the head as the uppermost part, hence the leading, chief portion of anything.