The simple death notice in The Times of 11 August 1967 or the account of a subsequent memorial service would have meant little to most readers. However, to the aficianado of parrots it was the end of an era. Emily Maud Knobel or Miss E. Maud Knobel, as she was known as, had in her 96 years made herself into an expert on their care in captivity and on their morphology, plumage and identification. She had a particular interest in those from South America, the Amazon parrots.
Miss Knobel became secretary of the Avicultural Society in 1922. That Society (still extant) comprised a vast social range within its membership, from the aristocracy with their estates, vast paddocks and aviaries, through zoo professionals, professional scientists including those from museums, industrialists, the comfortably off middle class and the nouveau riche to a few of the working class. All had an interest in, passion for, or obsession with, keeping and studying birds from all parts of the world. She was praised highly for sorting out the affairs of the Society and when she stood down from the honorary post was made a Vice-President. Then, from 1964 until her death she was President, officiating at meetings until shortly before her death.
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| Avicultural Magazine 54, Sept-Oct 1948 |
I always had Miss Knobel down as a highly gifted bird keeper who had the money to pursue her hobby. However, when looking for something else entirely I found she had worked as a visitor in the Prosectorium at London Zoo. For much of her life she lived on Regents Park Road near the north gate of the zoo and she is known to have spent a great deal of time there talking to the keepers and with the birds.
The reason she worked in the Prosectorium was to follow up observations on how to determine the sex of parrots. While in some species of parrot, the Eclectus (Eclectus roratus) and the Little Malay Parrot (Psittinus cyanurus) for example, the sexes are very different in appearance, in many, including the Amazon parrots in which Miss Knobel had a particular interest, it is not possible for the human observer to tell male from female. She, encouraged by the use of the method by pigeon fanciers, began to palpate the abdomen in order to estimate the distance between the publc bones. In adult parrots the distance between the pubic bones is much greater in the female than in the male, the argument being that the egg has to pass between the two on its way to the outside world. In her own words: ’in my live birds I have never made a mistake, but I was very anxious to prove this method by examining the pelvic bones of dead birds’.
In the eight species of parrot (varying in size from a lovebird to a macaw) she examined, the gap between the pelvic bones was 1.3-4.4 times greater in the female compared with the male. She published her results in Proceedings of the Zoological Society in 1924.
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| The tips of the pubic bones can be palpated through the body wall From Knobel 1924 |
Miss Knobel’s method of sexing adult parrots was used for decades. However, in immature females the inter-pubic gap is similar to that of the males; her method therefore did not work in young birds.
Emily Maud Knobel was born in 1871 at Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire. She was the eldest child of Edward Ball Knobel (1841-1930). At the time of her birth, her father was working for the brewers, Bass & Co as an analytical chemist; he became head brewer. He had started out to follow his father into the legal profession but had swapped to science at the School of Mines (later incorporated into Imperial College London). After Bass, he became chief dye chemist for Courtaulds and manager of their crepe silk factory in Essex. In 1893 he moved on and joined the company of a ‘distant relative’, Alfred Harman, as a director. Harman retired the following year and Knobel became managing director of what was to become the major British player in the burgeoning photographic industry, Ilford Ltd. Harman’s company was originally making gelatine dry plates and called Britannia Works; the name changed to Ilford in 1900. Knobel and his board twice turned down takeover bids from Kodak, based in the U.S.A. However, as far as Knobel was concerned something went wrong and he was ousted by the board in 1907.
Within the Knobel family there was a rift between Edward and his younger daughter, Margaret Hilda (1874-1966). An interview with Margaret in connection with the history of Ilford Ltd revealed why she had become known as Miss Knobel-Harman and why, when she was often shown as Maud’s guest at meetings of the Avicultural Society, that rather mysterious name appeared in the list of those attending the dinners. Margaret said that when Harman’s wife died in 1902 and knowing that she, Margaret, was not on good terms with her family, Harman offered to adopt her provided that she agreed to change her name by deed poll. She accepted and lived in Harman’s palatial mansion in Surrey until he died in 1913; she was one of two executors of his will.. Part of the disagreement with her father was her insistence on becoming independent. To that end she trained as a sanitary inspector.
Margaret Knobel-Harman remarked during the course of the interview that at 92 her sister was even older: ‘Twenty of these birds [parrots] share her small home in St John’s Wood’ and ‘conversation is difficult’.
Maud Knobel shared her father’s interests in science and technology. He was a noted amateur astronomer and was awarded an Honorary DSc by Oxford. He served as secretary, treasurer and president of the Royal Astronomical Society. Father and daughter, Emily Maud, attended lectures at the Royal Institution where they were both members.
Dr Maurice Amsler* in an article noting her demitting the post as secretary of the Avicultural Society in 1948 described the development of her interest in birds:
A gift of a pair of Doves started this little lady on the fascinating road of aviculture at the tender age of two years; then followed a Canary which lived for twenty years, a good proof of the meticulous care which she has ever since bestowed on her birds and other pets.
The Canary was followed by hand-reared Blackbirds, Thrushes, a Magpie, and a Rook, but the most remarkable was most certainly a Sparrow, a species which, although cheeky and fearless in the wild, does not lend itself well to cage life. This bird learned the song of the Canary, and when liberated found himself a mate and reared a family which he brought back to his old cage-home for food.
Finally, in 1911, the first Parrot, a Blue-fronted Amazon, was purchased, and this started a series of birds of this tribe for which Miss Knobel has become justly famous. Of the forty-two species of Amazons, she has kept twenty-seven, and there have of course been many African Greys, Cockatoos, Parrakeets, Lovebirds, Budgerigars, and so forth—but one with so catholic tastes could not resist such charmers as Shamas (no pun intended), tame Bulbuls, small seed-eaters, Roller Canaries, and a pack of Pekingese.
To clinch her position as an authority on Psittacins [sic], she studied skins and skeletons at the Natural History Museum and also at Tring. It was during these investigations that she discovered the sexual differences in the pelves of Parrots.
The reason for her resignation in 1948 was to the modern world quite extraordinary. Dr Amsler explained:
…it is hardly necessary to remind members that for the past nine years [war and postwar austerity] aviculture has for various reasons become increasingly difficult, and it was therefore thought that a business man would be better able to deal with the various authorities who control the distribution of food and the importation of birds.
Emily Maud Knobel clearly devoted a great deal of her time to her birds; I can find no record of her ever having had to work for a living. She attributed her success to providing constant activity and amusement for her birds. She was essentially a keeper of pet parrots, not a breeder, and wrote articles on all aspects of their care.
Palpation of the pubic bones was the only method known for sexing parrots in which the sexes were otherwise indistinguishable. It was used for decades by those attempting to breed parrots. However, because young birds showed no difference, young females were often misidentified. In order to overcome that problem, laparotomy using an endoscope came into fashion much later in the 20th century. However, the risk of death under anaesthesia was always present but many sellers and breeders took that risk and could then advertise a bird as ‘surgically sexed’. Now, commercially available DNA sexing is the norm, using tiny samples from a freshly plucked feather, mouth swab or even the egg membranes of a hatchling.
To those who knew her Miss Knobel was known as ‘Maudie’. She appeared in a number of newspaper photographs surrounded by her parrots and often with cue in hand at her snooker table—she was by all accounts no mean player.
Emily Maud Knobel died on 9 August 1967.
*Albert Maurice Amsler (1877-1952) was born a Swiss subject but naturalized in 1912. Until his retirement in 1935 he was a general practitioner in Eton with a particular interest in obstetrics. He bred bull-terriers, raised plants and kept birds in his garden aviaries.
Amsler M. 1948. Maud Knobel. Avicultural Magazine 54, 137-138.
Knobel EM. 1924. Some remarks on the pelvic bones of parrots. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1924, 789-792.
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| Festive Amazon By Keulemans 1891 Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum |
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