Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire. Educated at Aldenham School and/or Mill Hill School and at Cambridge University. Emigrated to Australia to take up the position of Second Mathematical Master at Sydney Grammar School in 1881. He remained in this position until 1891 when he was appointed Principal of Ascham College in which post he continued until 1914.
In his obituary of Carter in EMM, 76, 1940,159, K.G.Blair recorded that: 'it was not until after his arrival in Australia that he developed an interest in entomology, an interest that was to a large extent spurred on by the enthusiasms of his growing family. Realising from experience the need for revisionary work of what scattered knowledge there was rather than the continued accumulation of long lists of new species, Carter devoted his energies mainly to work of this nature, in the course of it himself describing some hundreds of new species. His revisions of the Australian Tenebrionidae and Buprestidae... as well as of certain groups of the Cerambycidae, and latterly of the Dryopidae and Colydiidae, will long form the basis of all future work on these sections of the Australian fauna'.
Musgrave, A. (1932), lists some fifty or so articles by Carter, and Carter's own Gulliver in the Bush, 1933, provides a vivid account of his collecting trips and of the entomologist friends he made in the course of his work. He also explains that while Carter sold his first beetle collection to the Museum at Melbourne (the National Museum of Victoria) in 1923, he subsequently (1936) presented a collection to the Australian Museum (Sydney), and bequeathed his last collection to what is now the CSIRO, where it formed an important beetle nucleus of the Australian National Collection. There are also many specimens given by him in the NHM.
Musgrave (1932) lists some 50 or so articles by Carter, and Daniels (2004) lists 75, adding a further 7 in joint authorship with E.H. Zeck. Upton (1997) lists over 20 bibliographic references (including obituaries). Gilbert (1977) lists four other obituaries, and Musgrave mentions an entry in Who’s Who in Australia, 1922. (Many thanks to Kim Pullen for information about Carter). (MD 1/O2, 12/06)