Background
Barrett was the son of a farmer of Wheeler Street, a small hamlet in Surrey.
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George Barrett
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At an early age, although engaged in daily labour, he made, unaided, considerable progress in mathematics, taking special interest in the class of problems connected with the duration of human life. He afterwards, during a period of twenty-five years (1786–1811), laboured assiduously at his great series of life assurance and annuity tables, working all the while, first as a schoolmaster, afterwards as a land steward, for the maintenance of younger relatives, to whose support he devoted a great part of his earnings. In 1813, he became actuary to the Hope Office, but retained that appointment for little more than two years.
In the worldly sense his life was all failure.
