Irving Carruthers

Carruthers was born in Samoa in 1884, one of five children of Richard and Matua Carruthers. His father was a Scottish solicitor who had immigrated to Samoa from Melbourne in Australia,[2] and worked for Robert Louis Stevenson.[3] He attended the Marist Brothers school in Apia, after which he went into business,[4] leasing a cocoa plantation in Malaedono.[5] He became a member of the committee of the Chamber of Commerce and the Planters Association.[5]

Carruthers married Anne Jennings from Swains Island and had five children. Anne died in the early 1900s. Carruthers later married Vaopunimatagi Seumanautafa in 1919.[2] After his second wife died, he married Moe in 1934, with whom he had three children.[2] In 1929 he established I.H. Carruthers, a cocoa and copra merchant company. The business was later renamed Eveni Carruthers.[3]

Carruthers contested the 1932 elections to the Legislative Council with the support of the Chamber of Commerce and the Planters' Association. He was elected alongside his brother-in-law Alan Cobcroft.[4] He was re-elected in 1935, but did not stand in the 1938 elections.[6]