When I look for information on people who were zoologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries I can often find an outline of their lives and of what they did. However, it is more unusual to see an outline of their backgrounds and how they came to pursue their interest in zoology. I am attempting to shed such light on John Lewis James Bonhote as an example of a ‘gentleman scientist’. Such men in Britain were those able to pursue their scientific interests without having to find the financial means to do so. They were wealthy individuals and some achieved great things and very great things, with Charles Darwin of course being the prime example.
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| J. Lewis Bonhote |
The Bonhote family, of French ancestry, made its money as part of a consortium of European families producing and exporting sugar and other commodities from the Dutch East Indies mainly to the Netherlands but also to Britain and elsewhere. The Bonhotes originally had one brother based in Java, the other in London. John Lewis James Bonhote’s grandfather, also John Lewis, ‘formerly of Java’ died in London in 1867, leaving an estate of ‘under £120,000’. Had he left, say, £100,000 that would represent a fortune of over £14 million in 2026.
John Lewis James Bonhote (he usually omitted the ‘James’ but published as J. Lewis Bonhote) was born on 13 June 1875 in London, the son of John Bonhote (1851-1920) and Christian Grace Mitchell (1851-1898). In 1870-73 John Bonhote was a professional soldier, serving as Ensign and Lieutenant in the 57th and the 84th Regiments of Foot. In 1977 he joined the militia (3rd) battalion of what became the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment as a captain. He worked his way up to become Colonel of that regiment.
John Lewis James was educated at Harrow and, from 1893, Trinity College Cambridge. He had though been gazetted as a subaltern in his father’s regiment of militia in 1893—a popular route of getting a career as a regular officer—but he then cancelled the appointment a month later. It looks like it was Cambridge or the army and Cambridge won. He graduated with an Ordinary degree in zoology in 1897, the most popular route to a degree amongst the affluent students. Cambridge being Cambridge that degree was upgraded to an M.A. in 1901 by means of an appropriate fee. At Harrow he showed great interest in natural history and in conjunction with his friend, Nathaniel Charles Rothschild (1877-1923) who became an avid amateur entomologist and father of two famous zoologists, wrote a pamphlet on the butterflies and moths of Harrow.
Alfred Newton (1829-1907) was then—and the first—Professor of Zoology at Cambridge. Newton was an ornithologist and spanned the backgrounds of British ornithologists of the day, from wealthy amateurs devoting a great deal of time, enthusiasm and resources to their often full-time hobby to the few professional zoologists in the universities and museums. It is not surprising that Newton had a great influence on Bonhote and helped with his student’s research and activities until he died in office.
Bonhote was drawn to studying birds in captivity and built an aviary in a field near Cambridge. I can find no information on where that was sited. Bonhote joined the Avicultural Society immediately on its formation in 1894 and eleven months later used the pages of the magazine to describe the aviary and its inhabitants—and they were not the usual ones one might associate with amateur aviculture:
The size of my aviary is 15 feet by 8 feet by 6 feet high, having a pond 3 feet by 2 feet, I foot deep at one end. It is provided with two good broad perches.
In this aviary I have kept for some eighteen months, one Bittern (Botaurus stellaris), one Night Heron (Nycticorax griseus ) and three Purple Herons (Ardea purpurea). I should, however, not advise anyone to keep more than one species in an aviary, as they are very much given to fighting. My birds have their respective portions of the aviary, and any intrusion beyond these imaginary limits is at once strongly resented. The Purple Herons own one end, the Bittern the other, and the Night Heron one perch. The food of these birds in confinement is fish; it is best procured by arranging with the fishmonger for him to let you have the cuttings and cleanings of the fish, for which he will probably make you no charge.
Bonhote’s address in 1895 was 27 Trinity Street, Cambridge. A year later it was simply Waterbeach, Cambridgshire, six miles to the north and I wonder if that is where his aviaries were—aviaries because it was clear from a report in Avicultural Magazine on the 1896 breeding season that he had others built. That report shows he was keeping Black-headed Gull, Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Green Plover (Lapwing), Beared Tit, Barn Owl, Greenfinch, Tree Sparrow, Great Tit, Quail and Corncrake. He succeeded in breeding the corncrakes.
Birds in the wild were not ignored. There was a collecting trip to Norway in 1895 and around Britain in search of birds.
Next came a complete shift. He left Cambridge for the Bahamas in 1897 on his appointment as Private Secretary to the Governor. He was 22. I have found no explanation for his move into such a role which was often the presage of a life in public administration. Was it parental pressure and influence to get a real job? Or did it present an opportunity to pursue his real interest in somewhere exotic?
In the Bahamas he lost no time in travelling around to study and collect the fauna, including spiders (one of which is named after him), but particularly the birds. He travelled back there 1901-02. Also in the Bahamas he acquired a wife, the daughter of the rector of Nassau cathedral who was formerly a vicar in Cornwall. She was Mary Baxter Meeres (1876-1951) and the wedding was in the cathedral on 27 December 1898.
Ditton Hall is an extended medieval manor house, now grade II listed, on the outskirts of Cambridge in Fen Ditton. It would seem that he rented the property since it was bought by Caius College in 1898 for letting to academics. It was there that the newly married couple set up home and where they built aviaries and pens, most notably for the breeding experiments on ducks for which Bonhote became well known. The grounds already had ponds and was probably an ideal place to keep ducks. His breeding experiments ran for at least five years.
After arriving in Cambridge he became a member of all the key societies for those with interests in the life of birds and other animals. In addition to the Avicultural Society, he was a Member of the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) (Alfred Newton was a founder in 1858), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. He published in all their journals. He also became known for running society affairs. He was elected to the Council of the Avicultural Society at the age of 20, subsequently becoming secretary and treasurer. The BOU elected him to its committee in 1903 and by 1907 was treasurer. He was secretary of the Migration Committee of the British Ornithologists’ Club from 1905 and became a council member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
In his early years as a member of the Avicultural Society he was an avid contributor to its Avicultural Magazine. He wrote frequent articles on new bird arrivals at London Zoo and reported on bird shows which were frequented by all levels of society, from the canary fancier in his terraced house to the aristocrat in the conservatory or on the lake of his stately home. He also bred for the first time in Britain the African Spotted Eagle-owl (now Bubo africanus) and was awarded a medal by the Society for having done so.
The Bonhotes are shown at Ditton Hall in the 1901 census along with Mary’s brother, a ‘student of classics’. They had three servants in residence: cook, housemaid and parlour-maid. In 1904 Bonhote was caught driving a motor tricycle and trailer without a number plate on the latter; fined 2/6d (£20 in 2026).
Given Bonhote’s rapid rise in ornithological circles and his willingness to take on administrative tasks it is perhaps not surprising that he was made joint secretary of the Fourth International Ornithological Congress which was held at the Imperial institute in London in June 1905. The other joint secretary was Ernst Hartert (1859-1933), Lord Walter Rothschild’s in-house ornithologist at his museum at Tring. The two men also had the job of editing the proceedings which were published in 1907.
At the Congress Bonhote presented a long paper on his experiments on duck hybridization. He made it clear that it was done at the suggestion and keen interest of Alfred Newton. In fact there was sufficient material there for a PhD had that degree been awarded by Cambridge at the time. He began with:
The following notes are the first fruits of a series of experiments which I have been carrying on during the last few years. To many, hybrids convey an idea of uninteresting mongrels, or possibly those, who may have heard of the work being at present carried out in this country by Mr. Bateson and others, will expect to read of a further series of experiments in Mendelism. In my experiments I have purposely avoided the question of the Mendelian Laws, nor have I hitherto made any attempt to prophesy as to the results of any particular cross, but my object has been rather to try and effect many crosses with a view of testing their fertility, and by very carefully watching the results, to attempt to throw further light on some of the great and fundamental problems that underlie and permeate every branch of the science of Zoology, such as variation, heredity, reversion, and so forth.
Although it is as yet far too early, in the course of these experiments, to attempt to enunciate any laws or lay down any definite theories with regard to these problems, yet these notes will, I hope, show that the first five years’ study has not been wholly without result.
Five species (modern names) were used: Mallard (now Anas platyrhynchos); Indian Spot-billed Duck (Anas poecilorhyncha) (iii) Pacific Black Duck (Anas superciliosa), Meller’s Duck (Anas melleri) and the Northern Pintail (Anas acuta). So complicated were the crosses which sometimes resulted in hybrids involving all five species that Newton asked the Professor of Anglo-Saxon and philologist Walter William Skeat (1835–1912) to suggest a suitable terminology. Skeat came up with, later to be highly appropriate root gen, with digen, trigen, tetragen and pentagen for hybrids between two and five species.
Most of the crosses were produced by Bonhote himself. However, he did receive a pair of Pintail x Mallard—a digen—from John Henry Gurney (1848 -1922) another noted ornithologist who kept birds on his estate at Norwich. Gurney was from the family of bankers who had merged their extremely wealthy bank into Barclay’s in 1896. W.S. Gilbert immortalised the family as his judge in Trial by Jury became ‘as rich as the Gurneys’.
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| These plates showing hybrid ducks in eclipse and full plumage illustrated Bonhote's paper in the Proceedings of the Congress of Ornithology |
These were the very early days of the science of genetics and many of Bonhote’s observations on the coloration of the feathers in the various hybrids could not be interpreted in any meanigful way. However, some results were clear. Surprising at the time, hybrids involving all five species were found to be fertile thus demonstrating that where these species meet in the wild mechanisms other than major genetic differences form a barrier to their mating. When isolated with ducks of another species, the drakes will mate with whatever duck comes to hand. Bonhote showed that although the sex ratio at hatching was 1:1, the female hybrids were more likely to die at an early stage of life, suggesting some small degree of genetic incompatibility. A hundred and twenty years on from Bateson the genetic differences between different duck species and the effects of hybridisation are still being studied by means of genomic analysis. Sadly, and reflecting the fact that those doing biological research in the 21st century are often completely unaware of the history of their own subjects, in the three relatively recent papers I looked at Bonhote is not even mentioned.
Bonhote developed a life-long interest in the heritability of coat colour in mammals and of feather coloration and pattern in birds.
Mary Bonhote was also a member of the Congress and indeed a visit to Ditton Hall was on the programme:
On Tuesday an excursion was made to Cambridge. Prof. Newton, assisted by Dr. Gadow, received the Members at the Museum, where many rare books, and specimens of birds and eggs, were on exhibition. Luncheon was served at Magdalene College…After luncheon most of the members drove to Fen Ditton, while some who had not been to Cambridge before went round the Colleges. Mr. and Mrs. Bonhote received the party at their residence, Ditton Hall, showing them the aviaries containing a fine collection of British birds, as well as the hybrid ducks used in Mr. Bonhote’s experiments. After tea the party returned to Cambridge in time to catch the special train for Bridlington.
Mammals were a major interest. I have previously described his work on the rodents of China with the first part appearing in 1905, the year of the Congress of Ornithology. He worked at the Natural History Museum and his output on the taxonomy of mammals, particularly rodents and small carnivores, was considerable, with more than 35 papers published over 12 years.
By the time the proceedings of the Congress were published in 1907 the Bonhotes had moved house and had left Cambridge. They moved to Gade Spring Lodge or simply Gade Spring, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. As far as I can determine the house is 109 Piccott’s End. Bonhote also had a house in London at 113 Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill. They were sufficiently settled in Gade Spring by July 1906 for the Avicultural Society to be invited for its bi-annual meeting. Writing continued apace. In 1907 his book, Birds of Britain, was published.
In the winter of 1908-09 Bonhote spent three months at the Giza Zoo in Egypt, as the guest of the Assistant Director, Michael John Nicoll (1880-1925). This visit was the first indication of a major change for Bonhote in the future.
On 2 April 1911, the day of the census that year, John Lewis Bonhote was one of only two guests staying at the Belle Vue Hotel, Royal Avenue, Lowestoft. The other guest was Bonhote’s birding friend and later executor, Claud Buchanan Ticehurst (1881-1941), another Alfred Newton protege, who was medically qualified and then working in a partnership in Lowestoft and as a surgeon at the local hospital. In his paper to the Ornithological Congress in 1905 Bonhote had described tracts of feathers or of hairs as ‘poecilomeres’. I think he must have been winding the hotel manager up when he described his occupation for the census as ‘poecilodermatologist’. Mrs Bonhote was at Glade Spring, seemingly the only person in the house that night.
The Strand magazine published an article on bird migration written by Bonhote in 1912. He was secretary of a special committee on migration of the British Ornithologists’ Club and described the historical background yo current knowledge, how ringing was enabling the routes and patterns to be established and then raised the question of how birds navigate.
In 1913 Bonhote left the country for Egypt resigning from the various roles he had in the societies, as editor and treasurer of the Avicultural Society, for example. He joined Nicoll as an assistant to Major Stanley Smyth Flower (1871–1946) at the Giza Zoo which a museum, an aquarium at Gezira, the zoological survey of Egypt and a role in conservation. The work became more demanding on the outbreak of war because Flower was recalled to the army and command of the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps. Bonhote published little over this period and I suspect he was doing most of the administration. Claud Ticehurst noted that he had done a great deal of good work on re-establishing egret colonies after the depredations of the feathers for hats trade and collected in the Nile Delta for the Giza museum in his spare time.
We do know that Bonhote continued to work on breeding and heredity, this time in domestic chickens. While away he remained on the electoral register with his address as 50 Piccott’s End. Whether that is Gade Spring or the cottage now shown as number 50 on the opposite of the street I do not know. In 1915 his book, Vigour and Heredity, which he says was in the hands of the publishers before the end of 1913, was published. At the time genetics was in its infancy with opposing views raging and evolutionary theory was in a mess. The ‘modern synthesis’ had not yet arrived. Unfortunately—and with the benefit of 110 years of hindsight—Bonhote’s book did nothing but create further confusion. There just was not the knowledge then to interpret, for example, his hybrids between species or to enable him to realise that his notion of ‘vigour’ was just wrong.
Bonhote returned home in 1919 and before long had set himself up at Park Hill House, Carshalton, a large house now broken into flats. Very quickly Bonhote found himself back as secretary and treasurer of the Avicultural Society. But then in November 2020 the local newspapers carried news of a scandal—and divorce in 1920 was a scandal—but an opportunity for newspaper editors to provide salacious details of the marital offence, like cruelty, desertion and especially adultery, which was necessary for a divorce to be granted. Thus the Mitcham Advertiser of 26 November reported:
CARSHALTON DIVORCE.
DECREE FOR AN INJURED WIFE.
The President of the Divorce Division (Sir Henry Duke) on Thursday heard the suit of Mrs. Mary Baxter Bonhote, for a decree to dissolve the marriage with Mr. John Lewis James Bonhote, formerly a civil servant in the Bahamas, because of his desertion and adultery. The misconduct was alleged at an address in Park Hill-road, Carshalton.
The suit was not defended.
Mrs. Bonhote said the marriage was on December 27th, 1898, in the Bahamas. She had afterwards lived out there and in Eton-square, London, and at Cambridge. Diferences arose between them and they separated. In March last she obtained a decree for the restitution of conjugal rights, which respondent did not comply with. math.
Mr Frederick William Smalley, of Blackheath, had known the petitioner and respondent for 19 years. He had visited the respondent at Park Hill House, Park Hill-road, Carshalton, and a lady was living there with him. Witness had stayed the night there on several occasions, and one evening respondent told him he had been served with the papers in the suit.
A decree nisi, with costs, was granted the petitioner.
Such divorces of course were often settled by the two parties with the connivance of their lawyers. It is clear that this is the case here with Bonhote supplying his friend as ‘witness’ to his misconduct.
The cause and date of the separation are not known. One can only guess that a move to Egypt in 1913 might have had something to do with it.
From 1918, when some women were allowed to vote, Mary Baxter Bonhote (née Meeres) can be found on electoral registers living at 8 Westbourne Street (later renamed Bourne Street) in Belgravia. Then in 1927 she married Augustus Andrews-Uthwatt (1879–1949) an Australia-born barrister who became a High Court judge in 1941 and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1946; he thus became a law lord as Baron Uthwatt. Lady Uthwatt, the former Mrs Bonhote, died in 1951.
The 1921 census taken on 19 June provides us with further information on the lady ‘living there with him’. She was Grace Nevinson, shown as aged 30 but more likely 32), born in London and who Bonhote described as a ‘Secretary of Societies’ and ‘working at home’. Bonhote described himself as ‘Zoologist. Student of Heredity. Poultry Farmer’ and as an ‘Employer’. The couple had a cook and a parlour maid.
A year later, in June 1922, came news from the Avicultural Society that Bonhote had been obliged to resign from his honorary posts because of ill health. That news was followed three months later by notice of his death.
John Lewis James Bonhote, aged 47, ‘of independent means’ died on 10 October 1922 in a nursing home, Earls Court, Gervis Road in Bournemouth, of pulmonary and abdominal tuberculosis. Present at the death and informant of the Registrar was Grace Nevinson.
Bonhote was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
I have been unable to find out out long John Lewis Bonhote and Grace Nevinson had been together or if she was with him in Egypt.
Nearly 50 years after Bonhote, Grace Nevinson died on 8 March 1973, her death registered under the name of Nevinson-Bonhote. She was living at 14 Palliser Court, Palliser Road, London W14 and left £8,259 (£130,000 in 2026); her date of birth was given as 6 April 1889. That date indicates that she was the daughter of Edmund and Louisa Nevinson who in 1901 were living at 29 Berners Mews, St Marylebone; Edmund was a foreman packer for a perfumier. Then in 1911 we find she was staying at a house in Walthamstow. She and the daughter of the house are shown as ‘stage artists’. The only newspaper report I have found is from the Derbyshire Courier of 20 May 1905. In a description of a show at the Corporation Theatre in Chesterfield Grace Nevinson is described as a ‘toe dancer’, i.e. a dancing act performed entirely on the tips of the toes. If that is ‘our’ Grace she would have been 16 at the time.
In his will, Bonhote left Grace £200 plus £600 a year and ‘certain furniture’; that would be an annual income of about £44,000 in 2026. His other bequests were: ‘his scientific collections, including mammal and bird skins and birds’ eggs, to Frederic William Smalley and Dr. Claud Ticehurst, his birding friends.
The residue of the £16,275 (about £1.2 million in 2026) was left in trust for the ‘forwarding of the Science of Heredity and "I especially desire that the benefit of the trust fund shall in no sense be confined to adherents of any particular school of thought," and he desired the trustees to act upon the advice so far as it may be available of the Professors of Biology at Oxford and Cambridge and the Director of the Natural History branch of the British Museum.
The executors of his will were Smalley and his solicitor, Michael Stileman Dawes. I do not know how much money ended up destined to support the science of heredity since the executors were obliged to provide an income of £600 per annum to Grace. That would either be done by using all or part of the capital to provide sufficient interest over Grace’s lifetime, with the capital going to the trust on her death, or by buying an annuity outright. While I do not know the sum involved I do know where the trust fund went. It formed the Bonhote Fund of the Linnean Society. In recent years it has been merged with other bequests and its funds still used to support research in systematic biology by means of small grants.
His executors deposited notebooks, including a studbook of his pigeon breeding experiments, at the Natural History Museum in London. The Museum’s archives also include a number of letters to and from Bonhote as well as published papers and books. A perusal of those could well enable a fuller biography of this gentleman scientist who worked hard on his zoological interests.
Claud Ticehurst wrote an obituary for The Ibis that was published in 1923. It began:.
By the death of Mr. J. L. Bonhote the British Ornithologists’ Union has lost one of its most ardent supporters and one of its most original thinkers. Suffering for seven months, he fought with hope and great courage to the last
against the dread malady which had struck him down and finally he passed to rest at Bournemouth (whither he had gone for a change) on the 10th of October last…
And ended with:
As a man, to know him was to love him; he was broad-minded and original thinker, and, though open to conviction
on any suhject, he never accepted anyone’s ipse dixit unless proof was forthcoming, and even when convinced, he loved to continue an argument for sheer love of looking at the point from a different angle. Though recognizing the fine distinctions of geographical races, he was far more interested in the general and wider questions of heredity, environment, vigour, and coloration. A man of ceaseless energy and methodical in his habits, lie was a great acquisition any committee, and the success of the Fourth Ornithological Congress in 1905 was largely due to his organizing capacity as joint secretary, and he was one of the best Secretaries the Union ever had. Our loss is great indeed!
