General Sir Charles Bonham-Carter, (25 February 1876 – 21 October 1955) was a British Army officer and later Governor of Malta.
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Early life
He was born on 25 February 1876 in Kensington, London, into the prominent British Bonham Carter family, the ninth of eleven children of Henry and Sibella Charlotte Bonham-Carter. His father was a director of an insurance company. He was educated at Clifton College near Bristol and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
Military career
Bonham-Carter was commissioned into the British Army as a second lieutenant in the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment on 29 February 1896, and was promoted to a lieutenant on 10 July 1898. Serving in the 2nd Battalion of his regiment, he was in early 1900 posted to South Africa for active service in the Second Boer War. Together with 1030 officers and men of the battalion, he left Southampton on the SS Bavarian in March 1900, and on arriving in South Africa was part of the 17th Brigade, 8th Division. He took part in operations in the Orange Free State (later Orange River Colony) from April to November 1900, including the battles of Biddulphsberg (29 May 1900) and Wittebergen (July 1900), then transferred to the Cape Colony, South of Orange River, from late 1900. While in South Africa he was promoted to captain on 16 November 1901 and transferred to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He attended Staff College, Camberley in 1903.