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 […]

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 […]