| Harry Kirk | |
| Birth Name: | Harry Borrer Kirk |
| Birth Date: | 9 March 1859 |
| Birth Place: | Coventry, Warwickshire, England |
| Death Place: | Hamilton, New Zealand |
| Occupation: | Government school inspector, biology professor |
| Relatives: | Sarah Jane Mattocks (mother) Thomas Kirk (father) Thomas William Kirk (brother) Lily May Kirk Atkinson (sister) Cybele Kirk (sister) |
| Children: | 2 |
Harry Borrer Kirk (9 March 1859 - 15 July 1948) was a New Zealand school inspector, biologist and university professor.
He was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England on 9 March 1859 to Sarah Jane Mattocks and Thomas Kirk. The family emigrated to New Zealand arriving in Auckland on 9 February 1863 and Wellington in 1874 when Thomas Kirk was appointed to Wellington College. Harry studied for University of New Zealand exams at home, gaining a BA in 1882 and a MA 1883, after which he joined the Department of Education first as a clerk and then as an inspector of native schools. As an inspector, he spend almost two decades traveling the country, collecting botanical specimens as he went.
As was typical at the time, Kirk saw Pākehā education as a force for 'elevating' Māori.[1] The 1880 Native Schools Code held that te reo Māori was only to be used to 'learn English more effectively' and Kirk stated in a report:
In 1903 Kirk was appointed inaugural chair of biology to Victoria College (now Victoria University of Wellington)[2] and he largely devoted the rest of his life to building up the biology capabilities of the university.[3] [4]
During the First World War he produced several innovations in military camps for to reduce fly contamination,[5] and he is said to have refused a Captain's commission.[6]
Kirk married Annie Lamont (or La Monte[7]) on 10 July 1885 in Dunedin. They had two children Ethelwin Gladys Kirk (died 1957) and Hilda Gyneth Hall (died 1973), both of whom are buried in Karori Cemetery next to Kirk's parents. His wife Annie died in March 1927. After he retired in 1944, he was cared for by his unmarried sister Cybele Kirk, who had been active, along with their sister Lily May Kirk, in the women's suffrage movement. The family were active in the Baptist Union of New Zealand, with Harry being a listed as a Mortgagee in the Baptist Union Incorporation Act 1923[8]
Kirk died at Waikato Hospital in Hamilton on 15 July 1948. He had been at Tauranga with leg fracture which did not heal properly.[9]
Two buildings on the Kelburn campus of Victoria University of Wellington are named after Kirk, called the Kirk Building and the Old Kirk Building[10]