Founders of the British Ornithologists’ Club: 4. Philip Crowley (1837-1900)

Businessman, celebrated botanist, horticulturalist, entomologist, and ornithologist, Philip Crowley was a versatile polymath. Born in Alton, Hampshire on the 28 August 1837, his life spanned the Victorian era. He rose to be elected to some of London’s premier scientific associations, including the Linnean, Zoological, and Royal Entomological Societies in addition to his election as a chairman of the Royal Horticultural Society. He helped found the British Ornithologists’ Club and was its Vice Chairman at the […]

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Founders of the British Ornithologists’ Club: 3. Howard Saunders

Trite, but true to say, is that Howard Saunders, the first Secretary and the first Treasurer of the Club, was born in 1835 in London into a very different world.  Dickens was writing the Pickwick Papers and King William IV was on the throne.  Saunders’ business role as a merchant banker saw him travelling widely.  From 1855 to 1862 it took him to Brazil and Chile.  He studied the birds of Spain and Italy during […]

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Henry Seebohm lives on in the splendid British Ornithologists’ Club Gavel

The BOC Gavel Many years ago, while attending a BOC supper meeting at Imperial College, London, to give a talk on Cinereous Vultures in Mallorca, I was struck by the sight of a wonderful wooden artefact sitting on the table in front of the chairman. Curious, I picked it up and was even more surprised to see the object in detail. The gavel was presented to the BOC by Richard Meinertzhagen at the April 1951 […]

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Founders of the British Ornithologists’ Club: 2. Henry Seebohm (1832–1895)

Henry Seebohm was a distinguished writer, traveller, collector, ethnographer, and theorist and was instrumental in the founding and management of many of the learned societies of the day. Early Life He was born into a Quaker family in Bradford, Yorkshire, on 12th July 1832, the oldest child of a wool merchant, and was educated in the Quaker community in York. After working as a grocery assistant, he soon embarked on a life in business, initially […]

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Founders of the British Ornithologists’ Club: 1. Richard Bowdler Sharpe

Richard Bowdler Sharpe (RBS) is unquestionably the outstanding bird curator in the history of what are now the Natural History Museum (NHM) collections. Born on 22 November 1847, the son of the publisher of “Sharpe’s London Magazine”, he was a brilliant scholar with a deep love of natural history and when still young began to assemble a substantial bird skin collection. His father viewed these interests with disfavour and, on leaving school in 1863, RBS […]

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Herbert Stevens (1877-1964): Collector, Benefactor and Enigma

Herbert Stevens (1877-1964): F.Z.S., F.R.G.S.,M.S.P.F.(M.F.F.I.), M.B.O.C. Collector, Benefactor and Enigma. By Amberley Moore February 2023 At the meeting of the British Ornithologists’ Club on November 12 1924, a new Member, Herbert Stevens, was introduced by the Chairman – “Mr Stevens has been collecting birds and mammals in Tonkin (Vietnam) for the British Museum under the Salman Godman Fund.  Unfortunately, through the capsizing of a river steamer, Mr Stevens lost all his notes and photographs, and […]

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