His father worked in the Bengal Civil Service and served for a time as a judge at Bhagalpur.
He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1859 and graduated in 1863 after being admitted to Lincoln's Inn in London to study law in 1861.
[4] Alexander had played in the Cheltenham cricket XI and at university,[5] although not for the full Cambridge side, as well as for Town Malling and the Gentlemen of Kent.
He abandoned a legal career in favour of engineering, becoming an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1868 and taking up a position at the London, Chatham & Dover Railway's Longhedge Locomotive Works at Battersea.
[2][4] In later life he appears to have suffered from some form of mental collapse and was living in private medical care at both the 1901 and 1911 census.