He was the son of the Reverend William Mitchell Carruthers of Holbrook, and was an explorer in the Middle East in the early 1900s.
[1] Carruthers took part in the British Museum expedition to Rwenzori Mountains in the Congo, 1905–1906 and sent home specimens of birds and mammals.
[3][better source needed] She died in 1948, and on 3 September 1948 he married Rosemary Arden Clay (born 12 August 1908 in Banstead, Surrey).
[1] In 1910 Carruthers was awarded the Gill Memorial, and in 1912 the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, which he was to serve as Honorary Secretary from 1916 to 1921 and as a Fellow from 1909 to 1962.
He wrote many books, and collected a large number of specimens, some of which are still the only samples of those species in the British Museum, and some bear his name, "nnn Carruthersi".