1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, Sir Charles Rivers

WILSON, SIR CHARLES RIVERS (1831–1916), English public official, son of Melvil Wilson, was born in 1831, and educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He entered the Treasury in 1856, was private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Robert Lowe) 1868–73, and was Royal Commissioner for the Paris Exhibition of 1878, having been already appointed Comptroller General of Office for Reduction of National Debt in 1874. Whilst holding this position, he visited Egypt in 1876 and early in 1878 was selected as vice-president of the Commission to enquire into the Egyptian financial situation. Some months later he was nominated Financial Minister in Egypt and, in 1879, he and the Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, were the victims of a serious outrage by the mob in the streets of Cairo— an incident which was the direct precursor of the Arabi revolt and the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. In April 1880, on the fall of the Khedive Ismail and the inauguration of his son Tewfik as Khedive, Rivers Wilson was appointed president of the Commission for the Liquidation of the Egyptian Debt, with full powers to regulate the financial position of Egypt. On the conclusion of this duty he returned to his post in London, and in March 1885 he became joint British Representative on the Suez Canal Board. On retiring from his post as Comptroller General of the National Debt Office in 1894, he became in 1895 president of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. He was created a K.C.M.G. in 1880 and was promoted G.C.M.G. in 1895. He died on Feb. 9 1916.