Early Life
Bowers was born on 29 July 1883 in Greenock, of Scottish descent, and was raised alone by his mother after his father died in Rangoon when he was three years old. By January 1896 the family had moved to Streatham, in South London, and lived at 19 Pathfield Road where Mrs Bowers was still residing in 1899. Whilst living in Streatham Bowers attended Streatham High School for Boys in Pinfold Road in 1896-7. The building survives today as the Computer Centre behind Streatham Library on which a plaque was placed by The Streatham Society on 29th March 2012 to commemorate the centenary of his death. He went to sea first as a cadet in the merchant service, training on HMS Worcester and sailing around the world four times on the Loch Torridon. He then enlisted in the Royal Indian Marine Service in 1905, appointed sub-lieutenant serving in Ceylon and Burma, and commanding a river gunboat on the Irrawaddy. He later served on HMS Fox, preventing gun-running in the Persian Gulf.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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