Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949) was a highly-praised collector for the Natural History Museum in London as well as an all-round naturalist. Counting just birds he added over 10,000 specimens to the Museum. Lowe wrote two books on the various expeditions of which he had been part and there are summaries available online on what he did and where he went. However there is little of his life and background. He travelled with interesting, important and infamous people in pursuing the zoology of the day. In an endeavour to provide a fuller picture of Lowe I have scoured family trees (often inaccurate or incomplete), original material available on genealogy websites (again thanks to clerical errors sometimes inaccurate), newspapers and the like. There are still important gaps and I hope readers will contact me if they have more information. To make that job more manageable, I am splitting Lowe's life into parts. This is the 6th part. Links to the other articles can be found at the end.
Willoughby Lowe set off for East Africa on 12 August 1912. On 15 September he arrived at Mombasa on a German ship. While on board the Captain had predicted that before long Germany and Britain would be at war and “we shall take all your colonies away from you”. That evening Lowe took the sleeper train to Nairobi, getting up early the next morning to see the vast numbers of mammals and birds alongside the track.
On arrival at Nairobi I found Captain Cosens with Mr Wm. Judd, the celebrated big game hunter, who had shot as much game as, or more than, any other white man. He was to be one of our party and his services were invaluable, as he had a through knowledge of the natives and their languages, and on safari nothing was an obstacle.
They met at the Norfolk Hotel.
It would seem that this was the first of what would become a familiar arrangement to Lowe. The expedition was financed by a wealthy individual, in this case, Cosens. That person would be in contact with the Natural History Museum in London who would suggest a collector, in this case Lowe. The specimens would then be presented to the Museum by the financial sponsor. This was an admirable arrangement as far as the Museum was concerned since it brought in new specimens at minimal or possibly no cost. What I have not found out is whether Lowe was paid at all or by whom. In this case, Judd would have been engaged by Cosens.
But who was Captain Cosens and how could he afford to fund this collecting expedition through East Africa ?
Captain Cosens
Gordon Philip Lewes Cosens was born on 14 October 1884 in London. He was the son of Philip John Cosens (1862-1919) and Alice Manuelle (1860-1891). His grandfather, Frederick William Cousens, co-founded Silva & Cosens, port producers in Portugal and merchants in London, in 1862. Philip John followed his father into the business which was highly successful and expanded. A member of the Warre family joined in 1868 and the company merged with the smaller Dow & Co in 1877. The merged companies decided they would be known as Dow’s—and the name lives on in 2026. The success of the company can be judged by the will of Frederick. In 1889 he left an estate of £203,000; that is around £33 million in 2026 terms.
Educated at Eton, Gordon Cosens began his life in the army as a part-time subaltern in the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, a militia regiment, in October 1902 at the age of 18. Two years later he transferred to the 1st (Royal) Dragoons, a regular army regiment that in 1969 was amalgamated with the Royal Horse Guards to become the Blues and Royals, the second most senior regiment in the army. In 1908 he was promoted to Lieutenant and in April 1914 to Captain. Therefore in 1912 when Lowe met him in Nairobi, Cosens was Lieutenant Cosens. and he is so described in short newspaper articles covering the expedition. It seems to have been Lowe’s habit when writing in his book to use the rank he had known the individual to have risen to. Cosens would have travelled to Nairobi from South Africa where his regiment was stationed at the time.
Because the expedition headed north to Khartoum I wonder if Cosens knew that he was to be seconded to the Egyptian Army, the British-officered and British-controlled organisation. He was still there in April 1914 when he was promoted. On his medal card from Army Records he is shown as being in Egypt as a theatre of war from November 1914. From then the records show him to have been a General Staff Officer on the Headquarters Staff of 53rd Division as Captain and then Brevet Major (from 1915), then back to the Royal Dragoons (Brevet Major) and then again on the Staff at Headquarters of the 3rd Cavalry Division and the Cavalry Corps. The 53rd Division took part in the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 and was evacuated back to Egypt. He was unusual in that he (nor 53rd Division) fought in France during the war.
The final entry is HQ ‘L of C’ and then HQ Aldershot Command as temporary Lieutenant Colonel. He was awarded the DSO in January 1918. From announcements in the London Gazette it can be seen that he rose in the grades of Staff Officer From GSO3 to GSO1 seemingly in the Adjutant General’s branch which managed personnel matters like discipline, medical and sanitary services.
In August 1920, aged 35, he married Gwladys Ethel Mawer (1890-1962) daughter of Mrs. Oswell MacLeay, of Ascot Lodge, Ascot, and the late Captain F. G. Mawer, Welch Regiment. Also in August came the news that Cosens had retired from the army after 16 years as a regular soldier, retaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Thanks to working with working with two retired officers I learnt enough of the arcane practices to interpret that at a regimental level Cosens was still a captain and brevet (temporary) major while holding a post on the General Staff two grades higher.
In his short retirement Colonel and Mrs Cosens travelled to Japan in 1921 via the Panama Canal and the USA and to Tangier and Lisbon in 1924. After that we know that illness supervened. He died on 29 March 1928. His death notice in The Times: ‘result of an operation, following four years of illness, courageously borne…of 34 Hans-road, S.W., aged 43’. He suffered heart failure after the operation to remove a brain tumour. From his estate of £60,832 (worth about £5 million in 2026) he left £100 to the Royal Dragoons' Aid Fund, £100 to St Dunstan's Hostel, one year's wages to each of his servants who had been in his service for two years.
William Judd
William ‘Bill’ Charles Ernest Judd was a well-known big game hunter based in Kenya. His entry in the website Europeans in East Africa contains accounts of his activities by the writers of books, including Willoughby Lowe. Judd was born in Portsmouth in 1872. His father, William Archibald Judd, was a petty officer in the Royal Navy and can be found in the 1861 Census as ‘Captain of the Main Top’ on board HMS Sidon, a paddle frigate driven by steam or sail. He retired on a pension in 1882 but in 1881 was already working as a boatman and living in Greenwich. In the 1891 census William senior was a ‘barge owner and lighterman’ while William junior was his apprentice.
Sometime in the early 1900s young Bill went to South Africa where he fought in the 1993-4 Matabele War and is said to have worked as ‘an intelligence agent’. He must have returned to life on the River Thames because in 1897 he married Eleanor Jane Maslen Gostling of Loughton, Essex. In the same year William senior died and it would seem that Bill took over the business. In the 1901 Census he was living in Northfleet in Kent with his wife, daughter and son; he was a ‘barge owner and lighterman.
The date shown for his arrival in East Africa is 1902 but he was not South African as suggested. We know from Lowe and others that he had a coffee farm near Kikuyu. That would be the historic Fort Smith he bought in 1908, the year his family joined him. He also owned a ‘ranch’ at Naivasha and a trading store on the Amalo River.
Judd was killed by an elephant he was hunting on 21 December 1927.
Accounts of the safaris
The two safaris are described by Lowe in chapters 4 and 5 of The Trail That Is Always New. They are also described in an account in the first of three papers written by Claude Henry Baxter Grant (1878–1958) using notes provided by Willoughby Lowe on the bird specimens that reached the Natural History Museum in London. All three papers were published in the same volume of The Ibis in 1915. Unfortunately, in the first paper G.P.L. Cosens is referred to as G.S. Cozens. Lowe was clearly disappointed that a fourth paper on the passerines never appeared.
The map prepared for the Ibis paper was printed in two halves; I have joined them the best I can and added in colour the route of the two safaris. The Ibis paper also contains a detailed itinerary.
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| Routes in Red (1st Safari) and Blue (2nd) |
In Nairobi Lowe employed a trapper, who had just finished working for Theodore Roosevelt on the latter’s well-known safari, and a man to do the skinning. After shooting a few birds for the collection at Judd’s coffee farm, between 21 and 23 September, the party set off for Kijabe where they gathered extra porters. Safaris in these pioneering days of the industry had the reputation of being vast affairs, involving lots of porters, wagons, ox-carts, mules, horses, camping gear and camp staff. Nowhere have I found how many people in all were involved in either stage of this one, although there are comments such as how many camels, how many porters, and the like, at some stages of the journeys. The days seemed to consist of travel, camp, shoot, skin and prepare specimens, pack up and continue. I will therefore pick up a few snippets from Lowe’s account. He praised Jubb highly:
…his services were invaluable, as he had a thorough knowledge of the natives and their languages, and on safari nothing was an obstacle.
First Safari
Our plans were to move south-west to as far as the then little known Amala River, thence passing south-cast along the German East African boundary to Mount Leganisho, and eastward to the great soda lake Magadi, after which we were to return to Nairobi, crossing the Mau Escarpment by the southern end of the beautiful Lake Naivasha, and thence on to the railway. Judd had some splendid large black dogs which he used when shooting; they were cross-bred between Collie, Retriever, and Airedale. They were still very plucky in spite of having been nearly torn to pieces by lions and leopards, as could be seen by the scars of wounds which had been sewn up. These dogs, if well trained, are invaluable to the big game hunter, especially if he wishes to follow up a dangerous wounded animal, for they will hold the quarry at bay by barking and so allow the sportsman to give the coup de grâce. We also took some natives armed with rifles to guard our camp at night, but I fear they often went to sleep until awakened by a lion's roar.
The water at Mount Suswa was very bad, being taken from a water-hole in the rocks, which was badly contaminated by baboons and other animals; but with the aid of alum, boiling and filtering, it made a fairly good whisky-and-soda, and almost anything seemed palatable in such a dry spot!
By Ist October we were on the southern Guaso Nyiro, and passed on to the Loita Plains and Lemeck Valley to the real game section of the Amala River. In this lovely park-like country one saw literally thousands of Zebras, Gnus, Kongoni, Impala, Grant's and Thompson's Gazelles, Reedbuck, Giraffes and Ostrich, whilst smaller animals, such as Dik-dik and Steinbuck haunted the patches of bush. I could not have imagined that such troops of animals existed. The outstanding feature was their tameness. I always thought that people who had been to Africa and brought back so many trophies must of necessity be mighty hunters; but now I formed quite a different opinion, though some beasts are difficult to come by on account of their habitat, whilst others are dangerous, but the bulk of game in Kenya at that time was not more difficult to shoot than cows would be in an English field!
…I was interested to find an animal here resembling the small skunk of North America, and having the same dreadful smell; it is scientifically known as Ictonyx….[Ictonyx striatus, Zorilla]
Our camp at night looked very picturesque, with the white tents surrounded by a circle of brilliant fires, and the dark figures of our boys squatting round cooking chunks of zebra meat. An African night is always very impressive, with its wonderful blue-black sky, illuminated by the myriads of radiant stars…
On 2Ist November the Rhino was at last secured, a fine old bull, shot at fifteen yards' range. His head-skin entailed a lot of work in paring down. We cooked his tongue and tail; the former, well boiled, was excellent eating, whilst the tail made very good soup.
…we proceeded northwards for Naivasha station, following the southern Guaso Nyiro River, where one morning we were surprised by seeing a lady riding in her pyjamas. We spoke to her as we passed, and she told us that she had been sitting up for lions over a killed zebra, and that she had been very successful, having shot eight with the aid of a flash-light from her thorn zereba. She told us that she and her friends were camped nearby, and very kindly asked us to meet them. We accepted the invitation and lunched with Mr Greswolde-Williams and his family.
I suspect Lowe included that reference because Francis Wigley Greswold Williams (1873-1931) had a scandalous reputation (HERE). In 1928 he was carried from the Muthaiga Club in Nairobi under the arm of another member for offering cocaine (which he imported to sell to the Happy Valley Set) to the Prince of Wales between courses at the dinner table. The future King Edward VIII (until his abdication) was on a Royal Tour. His response to the offer appears to have gone unrecorded. Greswolde-Williams’s solecism of course came in two parts: the offer of cocaine was one; that it was made before the loyal toast was the other.
Lowe noted that the water at Naivasha ‘none too good here, tasting strongly of Hippo, of which we saw quite a number’. That line brought back memories of a lakeside hotel in Naivasha in 1991. The water from the bathroom taps had the a powerful odour and was we suspected more than capable of being used as liquid plant fertiliser.
From Naivasha the party travelled back to Nairobi by train, arriving on 9 December 1912. There they were busy packing the specimens collected thus far (615 birds, 124 mammals plus reptiles and insects) for shipment to London.
Captain Lambert, a brother officer of Cousens, had been busy in Nairobi making arrangements for the trip north in which he also took part.
Captain Lambert
Henry McLaren Lambert was born on 25 July 1879 at Sevenoaks, Kent, the son of Edward Tiley Lambert, a hydraulic and gas engineer, and Janie McLaren. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he like Cosens, served in the local volunteers until being gazetted as a subaltern in the 1st (Royal Dragoons) in 1899. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1900 and Captain in 1907. He served in the Boer Way in 1899-1902 and was then ADC to two successive Viceroys of India. He retired from the army in 1908 thereafter spending most of his time in East Africa and with his brother owned an ostrich farm. He was an early member of the Muthaiga Club (founded in 1913). On the outbreak of the First World War he rejoined his regiment and went to France in October 1914.
Captain Lambert was killed on 13 May 1915 at the Second Battle of Ypres, aged 35. He left £26,085 (approximately £3.5 million in 2026 terms).
Second Safari - One-way via Uganda to the Sudan, and home
The second journey turned out to be tough. The four plus their staff of unstated number set off by train, with ox-wagons and a dozen porters by road, on 16 December for Nakuru where Lambert joined the party. On Christmas Day they reached Lake Hannington (now Lake Bogoria) where they transferred the bags to six camels under the charge of eight armed Somalis. By the time they reached Baringo they realised that six camels were not enough and succeeded ‘with great difficulty’ in buying two more plus a couple of donkeys. Lowe’s two accounts of the journey, one in notes given to Grant and the other in his book, vary slightly in respect of where the donkeys and camels came from but the upshot was that they considered they did not have enough camels to pass through country infested by tsetse flies. At the last outpost of British administration, N’gabotok, the District Commissioner, a Captain Booth (Raymond Mitchell St. John Booth (1879-1955) King’s African Rifles) organised more water bags since he was concerned they had insufficient. One camel had already died, perhaps suggesting they were not in the finest condition. The only sources of water were wells in dry river beds.
Lowe had a frightening encounter with a large Black Mamba which passed at high speed through deep leaf litter five feet away from him. He plucked up courage to see where it had gone, spotted it in a bush and shot it. Another one for the museum.
At their last camp on the Turkwell River before turning west into Uganda they were met by a number of Turkanas who seemed excited to see the camels. It turned out that these very camels were ones they had given to the Uganda government in lieu of payment of a tax. They had also been placed under an obligation not to molest the neighbouring Karamojana but who they, claimed, were raiding them from the mountains to carry off their cattle and women. Since the expedition had ‘their’ camels its members should fight the Karamojans or grant permission for the Turkana to do so themselves, went the demand. Talks went on for hours until it was agreed that a list of grievances should be written down and the document then handed to the first government official the expedition came across. The fact that the first meeting would probably be on the Nile was possibly not mentioned. After a lengthy drafting process and a display of intimidatory fighting prowess by the Turkana the party quickly moved on. A rapid tactical withdrawal was decided upon and the expedition set off during the moonlit night to put as many miles between them and the Turkana as they could before dawn.
After that local difficulty, conditions became really tough for a simple reason. They were fast running out of water and as they pressed on as quickly as possible to find a well some the camels were falling by the wayside with exhaustion and fly-bite. More weight was put on the surviving camels on a long climb towards Mount Maroto. The camels once down could not get up and moving again and so were shot. At one stop and with no water left, a party was sent ahead to try and find water with instructions to light a fire if and when they were successful. That evening the supper was tinned food and the champagne kept for medicinal purposes but Lowe found that did not quench his raging thirst. He also had birds to skin but could not use arsenical soap as prservative since he no water to wash his hands. He used powdered tobacco instead. Near dawn a fire was spotted. Water had been found.
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| Sketch map sent by Cosens to the War Office British Library |
A two-day camp was agreed to eat, drink and rest. They also added to the map of the country through which they had passed. That map Sketch Map (Plane Table) of Country from "Ngabotok to the Nakwai Hills", Shewing Route followed by Expedition - Jan. & Feb. 1913.' Signed by 'G.P.L. Cosens Lt. The Royal Dragoons.’ was sent to the War Office in London. The map is now in the British Library.
Cosens and Lowe climbed Maroto, an extinct volcano of 10,115 feet. At the peak they buried a message in a bottle. Has that been found? On the way down they found a very narrow path which led to a Karamojan village where the men were friendly and showed a great interest in fire-arms which were used to shoot baboons and klipspringers on the surrounding rocks.
On the track again, camels continued to die and water could only by obtained by digging ‘often to a considerable depth’. Eventually they came across a village where they camped for two days. The old chief came to watch Lowe preserving skins and asked about the white powder. When told it was arsenic the chief asked for and then begged for some, offering Lowe everything from houses to women for sufficient arsenic to kill his enemy.
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| Signature on the sketch map |
With too many of the pack animals dead, some local men were recruited as porters with payment in brass wire, cloth, salt and tobacco carried for that purpose. Another mule died on the first leg, leaving only Lowe’s. At Kittagoom, an outpost of the King’s African Rifles, they reduced their kit to the essentials and recruited just enough porters to get them to the Nile. At Nimule they found fresh porters and parted with the last few camels.
Along the river bank and beyond they were plagued by tsetse flies and they moved north well away from the river since they had been told of ticks in old encampments which could cause serious illness or even death. They marched 112 miles to Gondokoro in southern Sudan. Lowe described that last lap as the worst. It was very hot and the soft hot sand made progress difficult and tiring.
At last on 5th March we reached a small rest-house near the river and sank exhausted on the floor. We rested, had a good meal, and slept. Early the next morning we found some old scissors and cut off our beards. How unpleasant shaving is after a long growth of hair. My razor had been sent by water with the rest of our kit to meet us at Khartoum so I borrowed a "safety," the worst thing possible for such an occasion; and I vowed never to use this modern convenience again, but to continue with my old-fashioned "cut-throat," which is cheaper and never fails to give satisfaction…
The steamer to carry them north the 750 miles to Khartoum arrived at 3 pm..
What a relief to be on board with all our belongings, and to receive months of mail. This was my first trip down the Nile, and I much looked forward to it…We all enjoyed the ease and comfort of the boat, with nothing to trouble us, watching the scenery of the Nile with its many interests in animal and bird life, with one's feet on the taffrail, enjoying a cold glass of beer and a pipe of good tobacco…
Lowe described the large herds of ‘game’ which gradually gave way to vast flocks of water birds. In Khartoum they had two nights at the Grand Hotel. Then he and Judd continued down the Nile by steamer and then by rail. At Luxor Judd met an old acquaintance on boarding the train and introduced him to Lowe. That was Abel Chapman and with both returning to Britain on a P&O ship from Port Said, the two plotted another collecting trip. How and to where Cosens and Lambert travelled after Khartoum were not mentioned.
On this second trip, from Nairobi to Gondokoro, Lowe had approximately doubled his collection of specimens. The grand total was over 1200 birds, 227 mammals besides reptiles and insects.
He ended his account of what proved to be an arduous trip after a comparatively easy one in southern Kenya with:
Travelling via Cairo and Port Said, we landed in England after nearly seven and a half months' absence, during which time not one of us had had a day’s illness.
Of the four members of collecting expedition only Lowe survived beyond 1928. Lambert was killed in 1915 aged 35, Judd was killed by an elephant in 1927, aged 55, and Cosens died of natural causes in 1928 aged 43.
Specimens
As described above some of the birds (474 species or subspecies in all) sent to the Natural History Museum were identified by Grant in his three papers.
The mammals that reached the museum were the subject of a report by Guy Dollman in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1914. Dollman listed 69 species or subspecies. He wrote:
In working out this collection I have found it necessary to describe six new forms, the most interesting of which, the new Gerbil (Gerbillus cosensi), I have named in honour of the generous donor. Another interesting novelty, Taterillus lowei, I have called after Mr. Willoughby Lowe, the collector.
Taterillus lowei is now regarded as a junior synonym of T. harringtoni. The case of Cosens’s Gerbil is more interesting. It has been and is currently shown as a synonym of the Agag Gerbil, Gerbillus agag. However, I read that there is considerable opinion that it really is a separate species but that more work is needed.
The specimens presented by Cosens and currently in the catalogue can be found in the Data Portal of the Natural History Museum simply by searching for ‘cosens’. They are often shown with scientific names accepted as valid at a time after Grant and Dollman published their papers.
But what about the rhino
One noticeable absentee from the list of mammals is the rhinoceros, the one which provided rhinoceros-tail soup. Did the skin and skeleton leave Kenya and if so where did they end up?
Since my earlier articles appeared an article in English on Willoughby Lowe has been published on Wikipedia (HERE). Some of my articles are cited but it contains a number of serious errors.
Dollman G. 1914. Notes on a Collection of Fast African Mammals presented to the British Museum by Mr. G. P. Cosens. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1914, 307-318.
Grant CHB (with Field Notes by the Collector, Willoughby P. Lowe). 1915. On a Collection of Birds from British East Africa and Uganda, presented to the British Museum by Capt. G. S.Cozens.—Part I. Struthioniformes—Pelecaniformes. Ibis 3 (10th Series), 1-76.
Grant CHB (with Field Notes by the Collector, Willoughby P. Lowe). 1915. On a Collection of Birds from British East Africa and Uganda, presented to the British Museum by Capt. G.P. Cosens.—Part III. Accipitriformes—Cypseli. Ibis 3 (10th Series), 235-316.
Grant CHB (with Field Notes by the Collector, Willoughby P. Lowe). 1915. On a Collection of Birds from British East Africa and Uganda, presented to the British Museum by Capt. G.P. Cosens.—Part III, Colii—Pici. Ibis 3 (10th Series), 400-473.
Lowe WP. 1932. The Trail That Is Always New. London: Gurney and Jackson.
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| A view from the Mau Escarpment into the Rift Valley Kenya 1991 |
LINKS
Miss Waldron's Red Colobus. Finding Miss Waldron
