civil servant, was born on 29 September 1889 in the village of Caverswall near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, the son of Benjamin Stuart and Anne Jane Heath. His father Benjamin worked as a 'potter's flower painter' and later a railway porter.

Walter was one of eight children and the youngest son, first working as a pit boy before joining the Royal Navy in 1907 on his eighteenth birthday. His service record describes him as having grey eyes, dark brown hair with a fair complexion and 5-foot 4½ inches tall.

In his twelve years in the Royal Navy, he rose steadily through the ranks to become a petty officer. When the First World War broke out Stuart was serving in HMS Berwick, part of the 4th Cruiser Squadron on the North America and West Indies Station. He was still in service in HMS Dartmouth when she arrived in Stanley on 6 January 1920, departing for South Georgia one week later and arriving on 4 February. The Island must have made a strong and favourable impression upon him.

On 12 February the ship sailed for Montevideo and on the next day Stuart's appointment as a police constable under the authority of the Falkland Islands Governor was confirmed by telegram. Dartmouth arrived in Montevideo on 6 March where it was recorded in the ship's records that "One Petty Officer was discharged to the Thorpe Grange under Capt. AW Barker.”

Stuart arrived back on the Island in the Thorpe Grange on 14 March 1920 and his duties as "Police Constable in the Dependency of South Georgia" began the next day. In a confidential report two years later Magistrate Edward BINNIE stated that "I find Stuart the same good officer as he was in the past, cannot give him too good a recommendation, he is most suitable for the work in the Dependency, and although I would gladly recommend him for a change, would not like to part with him indefinitely, in the peculiar circumstances in which officers placed in South Georgia, the mixed duties to be performed and all living under the same roof, I find him an excellent officer, his strict Naval training probably stands him in are good stead"

With effect from 5 November 1923, he was appointed Assistant Customs Officer, South Georgia and Customs Officer from 1 January 1926. From 30 January 1928 Stuart served temporarily as Receiver of Wrecks for South Georgia. From 16 May to 7 November 1928 and from 25 May to 20 December 1929 he was called upon to act officially as Magistrate on the Island.

As acting deputy postmaster at the time, it is believed that it was Stuart who in February 1928 provided the necessary practical assistance to Alfred Nelson JONES to handstamp a quantity of 2d. stamps to create a provisional 2½d. value that was needed during a temporary shortage of ½d. and 2½d. stamps. Subsequently both men benefited financially from the later sale of these to collectors and dealers.

The Postmistress in Stanley, Maude CAREY, later speculated that Stuart may have made as much as £1,700 from the personal sale of these scarce stamps.

In 1930 Stuart, granted four months leave to return to the UK, was absent from the Islands from 11 March to 8 September. He was appointed Whaling Officer for the South Orkneys, taking passage on 8 October 1930 from Husvik, South Georgia to the South Orkneys in the Tønsberg Hvalfangeri factory ship Orwell under her master and expedition manager Søren BERNTSEN. At the end of the whaling season, he returned to South Georgia in the Orwell on 22 March 1931.

In 1932, together with Wilfred David Arnold Jones and Ernest Vine Dixon, he was reappointed briefly as a constable for the Falkland Islands and Dependencies for the special purpose of enforcing the legal arrest of the SS Fleurus, accompanying the ship during her voyage from South Georgia to Stanley. Concerns had been raised that her new master, the replacement for the highly respected Captain Lauritz CARLSEN, was addicted to alcohol and unfit for command.

Stuart left the Islands in the Fleurus on 17 April 1932, his official retirement from public service and pension commencing on 1 October that year. He returned to England and later worked as a printer's assistant, living with his widowed mother in Stoke-on-Trent. During the Second World War he was recalled to service as a War Reserve Constable.

Stuart did not marry and died on 29 March 1958. He was buried at St. Filumena's Roman Catholic church in Caverswall.

Despite the spelling discrepancy the Stewart Strait, a 2-mile-wide body of water between Bird Island and the Willis Islands at the western end of South Georgia, earlier known as Willis Sound by sealers and whalers, is believed to have been renamed in honour of Walter Stuart when recharted by the Discovery Investigations expedition of 1930.