After Barrington suffered a paralytic stroke in early 1919, he was unable to perform. He spent the rest of his life in poverty, although his fellow actors held benefits and made other efforts to help him, and his brothers and his neighbours in East Hagbourne, Berkshire, helped him as he became increasingly disabled and eventually unable even to speak. He died in 1922 while living at the St. James's Infirmary, Balham, in South London, at the age of 69 and is buried in Lower Morden Lane at the Morden Cemetery, also known as Battersea New Cemetery, in Surrey. On the 75th anniversary of Barrington's death, a granite monument with a photoplaque of Barrington as Pooh-Bah was dedicated to him at the Morden Cemetery, by members of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society and others.