Richard Keatinge, one of the judges of the High Court of Justice in Dublin, and some years afterwards settled in Bournemouth for the benefit of his health.
In 1882 he settled in Edinburgh, and two years afterwards he helped to found the Geographical Society of Scotland for the purpose of diffusing and popularizing that important branch of knowledge in the northern kingdom.
In 1886 he visited Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Australia, thereby gaining a personal knowledge of that part of the world which made him a competent authority on geographical and other questions connected therewith.
He had for some years previously taken a keen interest in such questions, especially in the island of New Guinea, the extension of British influence over which found in him a warm advocate.
He also read a paper on New Guinea at the meeting of the British Association in 1883, and a more extended account of the existing knowledge of the great island was printed in the R.G.S.