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| Peter Chalmers Mitchell |
I have never been able to make up my mind about Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell FRS (1864-1945). At the Zoological Society he was treated as a god; icons of his reign as Secretary between 1903 and 1935 were still around the offices in the 1990s. His biographers and obituarists concentrated almost entirely on his work running the Zoo and in his life in Spain during the civil war rather than as a scientist or writer on biological questions of his day.
The more I read about Mitchell (he adopted his second first name, his mother’s surname, to make a non-hyphenated double-barrelled surname in the Scottish style) I realised he was a skilful political manipulator and self-publicist with modest scientific credentials, even by the standards of the times.
What I did not know was his involvement—clearly on the wrong side—in a major bird protection and conservation measure of the early 20th century. Only when I read William T. Stearn’s (1911-2001) 1981 book on the history of the Natural History Museum a few years ago did I come across the story.
Sir William Flower when Director of the Natural History Museum became concerned at the vast numbers of birds being killed around the world to satisfy the fashion of adorning women’s hats with feathers, wings and even the skins of whole birds. A Bill to prohibit the importation of skins and feathers passed through the Lords but was rejected by the House of Commons in 1908. And the numbers really were vast—millions of birds each year.
Six years later, in 1914, the Trustees of the Museum supported another Bill to suppress the plumage trade on the grounds of protection (the killing of adult birds with young left to die in the nest) and conservation. However, the trade was highly profitable and trade organisations galvanised their supporters against the Society of Protection of Birds, formed specifically to lobby for abolition. A major supporter of the trade was, amazingly, the Selborne Society, named for Gilbert White and Britain’s first national conservation organisation, dedicated to the ‘preservation of birds, plants and pleasant places’. Equally amazingly, Mitchell was fielded by the group formed by the trade to oppose the proposed legislation. Instead he and many of the great and good who were members of the Selborne Society argued in favour of the trade and argued it could be supported by captive breeding:
…to consider and suggest to those interested the best means to protect, maintain and encourage the increase of all useful species including those used in the feather trade, so as to ensure a regular supply without endangering any.
Stearn takes up the story:
The opponents of the Plumage Bill, then before Parliament, accordingly convened a meeting at Burlington House, Piccadilly, against the proposed legislation. At this meeting C.E. Fagan, Assistant Secretary of the Natural History Museum, Sidney Harmer and Ogilvie-Grant represented the Museum’s Trustees in their attempt to prohibit the import of feathers. Rather surprisingly, Dr (later Sir) Peter Chalmers Mitchell (1864-1945), Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, chose to appear on the platform in support of the plumage traders and, by reason of his office, thereby implied that the Zoological Society likewise supported them against the Natural History Museum and the bird protectionists. Fagan therefore requested Mitchell to state publicly before he addressed the meeting whether he was about to speak in his official capacity as representing the views of the Zoological Society’s Council in opposition to the Bill, or whether he was about to express his own personal opinion. Being pressed for a definite and unequivocal reply, he was forced to admit that he had no mandate from the Zoological Society and attended merely in a private capacity. This was all the Museum representatives wanted. An eye-witness recorded that ‘after the meeting Mitchell, livid with rage, stepped down from the platform and, coming up to where we were sitting, stopped in front of Fagan and positively hissed out “I demand of you a public apology!” He got an appropriate reply but no apology, public or private’. Thereafter Mitchell refused to shake hands or even to speak to Fagan. The retirement of Fletcher in 1919 as Director [of the Museum] provided the opportunity of revenge. The Plumage Bill did not, however, receive royal assent until 1921 and not until 1922 did it become operative.
Fellows of the Zoological Society were clearly disturbed by Mitchell’s behaviour and they found a spokesman in Sir Harry Johnston (1858-1927)--of Okapi fame—who wrote several letters to The Times. One, 18 February 1914, concluded:
It was further announced with some emphasis that an address on the economic preservation of birds by Mr. S. L. Bensusan, presided over by the Countess of Warwick and supported by Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, F. R. S., would take place on February 16. From the brief Press notices of the meeting published to-day, I can discern no reason why bird-lovers should abate their hostility to the unreasonable developments of the plumage trade. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, a very distinguished biologist and the Secretary of the Zoological Society, is president of the Committee for the Economic Preservation of Birds. But unless he disavows the statement made in the pages of the Selborne Magazine that his committee deprecates legislation for tho protection of birds or would postpone it to some vague future period, he is not acting fairly towards the numerous Fellowship of the Zoological Society; for there are, I am convinced, in that society a great many persons besides myself who consider that, if the Zoological Society Is to intervene in the question at all, it should be to range itself on, the side of the Government and of the advisers of tho Government in the Natural History Museum, and assist in bringing forward as soon as possible a measure which shall on behalf of Great Britain close the now open market for the traffic in the skins of rare, beautiful, or useful wild birds.
The Countess of Warwick, incidentally, was Daisy, mistress of the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) and others.
The eventual outcome of the plumage Bill was that the Selborne Society, the first on the scene for conservation in England, was completely eclipsed by the (later Royal) Society for the Protection of Birds which now has more than one million members.
Five years later, in 1919, Mitchell certainly did have his revenge on the staff of the Museum who were sent by the Trustees to oppose him and who challenged his representation of the Zoological Society in 1914. Fagan, an able administrator, had effectively run the Museum under the less than effective efforts of two Directors. However, his pay was low. The Trustees therefore proposed with the the support of scientists in the museum to appoint Fagan as Director for a couple of years until his statutory retirement and the appointment of another scientist to the job. Mitchell organised a protest from the Royal Society and a letter to The Times signed by 20 FRSs. It would have been an easy matter to get them to sign. Here was a proposal to appoint an administrator, who was described as a ‘member of the clerical staff’ to a scientist’s job. The Trustees had to back down but they did appoint Sidney Frederic Harmer—a member of the team opposing Mitchell over the plumage Bill. Harmer, already a strong candidate, had written to Nature in support of Fagan taking over for a few years and had stated that he would not run against him. William Robert Ogilvie-Grant (1863-1924), Curator of Birds at the Museum and the other representative of the Museum who opposed Mitchell wrote to the Times:
[The Trustees] might certainly be supposed to know better what is for the benefit of the Museum than a number of university professors who, however individually able, deal with a side of natural history which has little or no connexion with the making and improvement of museum collections...I served under Owen, Flower, Lankester, and Fletcher, and have had more than thirty years’ experience of Mr Fagan as an enthusiast for the Museum, an encourager of scientific work, and as an administrator, and I should most warmly welcome his promotion to the post of which he has already done so much of the work.
Two hours before he retired the very ill Director, Sir Lazarus Fletcher FRS, in a letter wrote:
The present agitation is probably being stirred by Chalmers Mitchell who is very skilled in the memorialistic method and knows by experience and success all its possibilities. He got his own post by a successful use of the method. Nearly all the signatories have attacked the Trustees in the same way again and again…I have been a Fellow of the Royal Society for thirty years and know the line the Fellows will take.
Despite the open hostility of a number of Fellows of the Zoological Society during the feather war of 1914, Chalmers Mitchell survived as Secretary—he was skilled in packing the Council with supporters—and sailed on. Here indeed was a Scotsman on the make.
Clarke R. 2005. Informal adult education between the wars. The curious case of the Selborne Lecture Bureau. Birkbeck College, Faculty of Continuing Education Occasional Papers No. 6
Stearn WT. 1981. The Natural History Museum at South Kensington. London: Heinemann
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