Peter Scratchley
Major General Sir Peter Henry Scratchley (24 August 1835 – 2 December 1885) was special commissioner for Great Britain in New Guinea 1884–1885 and defence adviser for Australia. Biography Scratchley was born in Paris, thirteenth child of Dr James Scratchley, Royal Artillery, and his wife Maria, née Roberts. He was educated in Paris and at the Woolwich academy and then began a career as an Officer of Engineers in the British Army. Scratchley served in the Crimea and Indian Mutiny and in October 1859 was made a captain. He then had several tours of duty in the Australian colonies advising on defence. In 1860 he was sent to Victoria to plan a system of defence for that colony, but after working on this for over three years his plan was not adopted as a whole. Scratchley had, however, constructed batteries around the coast of Port Phillip by expending a comparatively small sum. Following the withdrawal in 1870 of British garrison troops from Australia, Major General Sir William Jervois and then Lieutenant Colonel Scratchley were commissioned by a group of colonies to advise on defence matters. They inspected each colony's defences and produced the Jervois-Scratchley reports of 1877. Not surprisingly given