In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the 11th in the series.
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The artist is not mentioned in the text of the accompanying article and I cannot make out the signature in the corner. The picture has been seen by some as a photograph rather than as a painting but the signature and composition, even allowing for the reproduction, seem to point to it being on canvas. As pointed out by Mike Curzon when he reported breeding this species at a now-closed bird garden in Rode, Somerset, it was a poor representation of the coloration. There are modern photographs of this species here.
The bird was unusual in captivity at the time because it is found in the Atlantic forest of Brazil which was not then the site of major collecting for the live parrot trade. Having later been subjected to the usual problems and habitat loss and over-collection, the population of the Red-tailed Amazon (Amazona brasiliensis) is now said to be increasing again. It is classified in the IUCN Red List as ‘Near Threatened’.
The article was written by Patrick ‘Pat’ Hall Maxwell who was well known in avicultural circles of the the 20th century.
A very short account of Maxwell’s life is given in The Eponym Dictionary of Birds (EDB). The reason his name appears there will become apparent below.
Patrick Hall Maxwell was born on 31 May 1912 in London. He was a son of the Raj. In 1912 his father, Percy Alexander Maxwell (1883-1951), who was born in Darjeeling, was a Captain in the Indian Army. Before transferring to the Indian Army’s 3rd Brahmans in 1903, after passing out of Sandhurst in 1902 Percy Maxwell served in the South Lancashire Regiment. During the First World War he served in the 3rd Brahmans and in 94th Russell's Infantry in the Mesopotamia Campaign, being promoted to Major in 1917. In 1919 he was appointed OBE (military) for services in Mesopotamia; he was then with the 1st Brahmans.. He retired as a Lieutenant-Colonel but I have been unable to fund the date when he finally returned to UK. The London Gazette though shows that he finally retired, from the Indian Army Reserve, on reaching the statuary age in 1938, i.e. at 55.
Patrick Maxwell’s mother was Mary Beatrice Game, the daughter of a farmer. She married Percy in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1909. In 1921 Major and Mrs Maxwell, presumably on leave from India, were staying with her parents in Evesham. Patrick was boarding at Eastacre, a preparatory school in Winchester.
Patrick Maxwell joined the Avicultural Society in 1929. His address is shown in membership lists as that of his parents: Ebberley Hill, St. Giles, near Torrington, Devon, until the 1944-45 volume of Avicultural Magazine.
It is clear that during the 1930s Maxwell kept birds in Devon, presumably at Ebberley Hill. Given his job as an assistant librarian in 1939 and his enormous support for the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter (see below) I do wonder if he was employed at the Central Library in Exeter after leaving school (which would have been around 1928). The library and museum were essentially the same institution and were located one opposite the other on the same street. Where else but a museum would a bird-mad young man spend his spare time during the working week?
In the 1939 Register, the emergency census, he was living in London, at 2 Queensway Place, Kensington; his occupation was ‘assistant librarian’. Notes in Avicultural Magazine over the wartime period show a variety of addresses in addition to the parental home. In 1941 came Palmer’s Dairy, Queen Street, Lynton, Devon—was he staying there on holiday? In 1942 the address was the National Central Library in London (later incorporated into the British Library). I think it is safe to conclude that in the war years up to 1944, Maxwell was employed as an assistant librarian in London. His notes indicate that his birds were ‘on deposit’ at Paignton Zoo and at London Zoo by 1940, suggesting his collection had been broken up by his move to London.
The EDB states that he worked as a keeper at Paignton Zoo. When this was and how it fitted into the rest of his life I do not know and have been unable to find out.
In 1944-45 he worked at London Zoo and provided notes on new arrivals to Avicultural Magazine. He then moved his postal address from that of his parents to The Salvation Army Red Shield Club, 28 Euston Square. He also donated birds and kept some of his own birds at the Zoo.
How he came to get the job at the Zoo is an interesting question. He was already well connected with the inner circle of the Avicultural Society. He was proposed for membership in 1929 by a fellow parrot fanatic Miss Emily Maud Knobel, of whom I have written previously and who, along with other members, were either employed by or had deep connections with London Zoo. Maxwell was sufficiently well known to be a founder member of the inner circle, the British Aviculturists’ Club, which met for the first time on 10 April 1946 at the Rembrandt Hotel in London.
In 1946 he moved to Whipsnade where he ran and probably set up the Parrot House (until its removal in 1958) which housed the zoo’s own birds, birds he had donated and others of his own. The Parrot House was a new addition to Whipsnade. The wooden building had been the Fellows' Tea Pavilion before the Second World War and then an Air Raid Wardens’ lookout post over the surrounding countryside. Maxwell’s parrots were a far cry from the building’s role in entertaining King George V, Queen Mary, the Duke of York (the future George VI) and Princess Elizabeth (QE II) on 23 April 1934, on the first royal visit to the zoo.
It is on Maxwell’s period at Whipsnade that there is more information recalled in 2021 by Bernard Sayers, another noted aviculturist, in a series of articles in Keeper Contact, the excellent and informative newsletter published by Paul Irven. Bernard Sayers wrote:
Patrick (Pat) Hall Maxwell (1912-1991) used to regularly attend meetings of the Avicultural Society and it was there that I met him. He was a small, intensely shy gentleman who was invariably sitting alone in a corner. I felt rather sorry for this seemingly lonely man and made a point of sitting alongside of him and engaging him in conversation, and I am very pleased I did because not only was he a lovely person, but he had enjoyed a very interesting life.
Pat came from a very wealthy family who owned extensive properties in London. Judging by his cultured accent and impeccable manners I deduced that he went to a public school. He always insisted on calling me Mr Sayers although I repeatedly urged him to call me Bernard. Being of independent means he spent his life working as a zoo keeper at Paignton, London (1944) and at Whipsnade (1946-1966) [Information from EDB].
Pat had a particular interest in the parrot family and with his considerable wealth, he would buy many of the rare species which came onto market. Yet, since he had no settled home or garden of his own, he could not keep them himself. Instead he loaned his birds to zoos and several went to Len Hill`s Birdland at Bourton-on-the-Water. These included the two female Lear`s macaws which, for many years, were the only examples of this species in this country. The only exception was a red-tailed Amazon parrot (Amazona brasiliensis) which he kept as a pet. At that time the National Exhibition of Cage Birds was held at Olympia around Christmas of each year. The exotic birds were exhibited on the balcony and for several years Pat showed his red-tailed Amazon parrot there. It created considerable interest because it was thought to be the only example of this species outside its native Brazil. Pat acquired this bird in the 1950s and it died in 1968. [It is his Red-tailed Amazon that was the subject of the article and plate in Avicultural Magazine.]
When I used to meet Pat Maxwell he was retired and living in a London hotel. I often regret that I did not get to know him better so I could have learnt more details of his remarkable life.
Half the parrots in the parrot house belonged to London Zoo (having been brought over from Regent`s Park) and the remainder were the property of Pat Maxwell. Pat was the keeper in charge of the parrot house and when it closed he wanted to continue on the bird section. Unfortunately, for some reason, Pat had an uneasy relationship with Harold Tong, Whipsnade`s Director, who instead transferred him to the camel section which did not please him.
Ernest Harold Tong (1908-1992), Superintendent of Whipsnade from 1947 was a land agent. The derision in which managers of zoos with little experience with, or a deep, even obsessive, interest in animals, are held by keepers continues to the present day. Maxwell was also a fish out of water. In the Zoological Society of London’s zoos, there was a strict hierarchy just like that in the armed services: Keepers were the private soldiers, Head Keepers the NCOs, Overseers the Sergeant Majors, Curators and Superintendents the Officers. Maxwell, of the officer class, was working as a keeper.
I was told by Clin Keeling (and may even have read somewhere) that Pat Maxwell was well connected with senior figures in ZSL in the 1940s and was part of the communist or extreme left-leaning and pro-Soviet cabal that existed at Whipsnade.
Between 1939 and 1951 he presented specimens—the EDB states over 300—to the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter, about 35 miles from his parents’ house in north Devon. The present catalogue of the museum shows that they now have 15: 12 birds and 3 mammals (see here). The birds range from a Rhea, Cassowary and Andean Corner to a Gouldian Finch and a Hummingbird.; the mammals are a Maned Wolf, a Saki and a Springhaas. Many are on public display. Some were professionally mounted by taxidermists; others were skins.
What I cannot determine is whether he actually collected any of the specimens from the wild. Although the catalogue has a few in which he is shown as the collector, I suspect there has been confusion as to whether he was donating birds of his or of others that had died in captivity. The Kea he presented falls into that category. Similarly, Maxwell recorded that he bought live birds brought to this country by the collector/dealer Wilfred Frost. Dead ones from the Frost and other collectors may have been bought by Maxwell and handed on to the museum. He certainly bought birds from other collections, possibly from salerooms or dealers; the original labels are still attached.
The EDB states that he travelled from the 1940s to 1970s to ‘Africa, Samoa and the Solomon Islands’. I do not know where this information came from but if inferred from the Exeter museum catalogue then that information could be wrong. I have failed to find any shipping records to indicate the dates of Maxwell’s travels or any record of their existence. The only mention he gave to travel was a note in Avicultural Magazine in 1967 about a trip to Jamaica, shortly after he retired from Whipsnade at the age of 54. He may, of course, have travelled more extensively by air after that. The only clue I have of his other travels is that in the letter to Avicultural Magazine reporting the death of the parrot in 1968 he ended with ‘I have travelled over a great part of the world’.
Maxwell as a member of the British Ornithologists’ Union and although there is no mention of his death in Avicultural Magazine there may be in its journal. Since there is no proper index to the minor items published in The Ibis and the relevant back issues are behind an expensive paywall it would cost a fortune to check in there online. A visit to a library with a full run on the shelves is needed.
Before moving on to his entry in the EDB it is interesting to note that his donations to the Exeter museum ceased in 1951. He had sent specimens, including his eponymous one, from London Zoo. It was around this time there was a great hoo-ha about the distribution of dead material from ZSL and of who had priority in getting their hands on it. In the ZSL there is an exchange of letters in 1949 between Maxwell and George Cansdale, then Superintendent at London Zoo, about sending dead snakes to Exeter.
I suspect Maxwell spent many hours as a young man in the Exeter Museum. Willoughby Prescott Lowe (1872-1949) was from the 1930s the honorary curator. In the 1939 Register, Lowe, living in Exmouth, described himself as ‘naturalist, working free for Exeter Museum). He was a famous collector for the Natural History Museum in London who in ‘retirement’ set out to improve the Exeter collection. That is where Maxwell played his part in donating specimens. It was Lowe who named a specimen provided by Maxwell after Maxwell. Under the title, A New Banded Rail from the Philippines, Lowe ended his note to the British Ornithologists’ Club with:
The Exeter Museum has recently received from P. H. Maxwell, Esq., this new Rail, which died in the London Zoo on February 29, 1944. It was obtained in Manila by the Hon. Anthony Chaplin, on the way back from Lord Moyne's expedition to New Guinea. It gives me pleasure to name this bird after Mr. Maxwell, who has generously presented to the Exeter Museum so many rare and valuable specimens.
The rail was named as a new subspecies Hypotaenidia torquata maxwelli.
The type specimen was given to the Natural History Museum in London in 1952. That catalogue has a different date for the bird’s death (31 March 1944) and Anthony Chaplin was then the 3rd Viscount Chaplin (1906-1981) who was Secretary of ZSL from 1952 until 1955. The fact that the Exeter Museum was giving specimens he had presented away (Lowe had died in 1949) may also have soured the atmosphere for future donations from Maxwell.
Sadly, but having read Lowe’s description, not surprisingly, Maxwell’s subspecies is no longer recognised as valid. It has been lumped into what is now Gallirallus torquatus torquatus.
After Maxwell left Whipsnade he is shown as living as a flat in London where he kept the parrot shown in the plate. After 1970 he lived in a variety of hotels, guest houses and care homes.
Patrick Hall Maxwell died on 17 October 1991 in a care home in Tunbridge Wells.
Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. 2014. The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. London: Bloomsbury.
Curzon M. 1995. Breeding the Red-tailed Amazon at the Tropical Bird Gardens. Avicultural Magazine 101, 49-51.
Lowe WP. 1944. A new Banded Rail from the Philippines. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 65, 5.
Maxwell PH. 1960. The Blue-faced or Red-tailed Amazon Parrot (Amazona brasiliensis (Linn.)) Avicultural Magazine 66, 1-2.
Sayers B. 2021. Whipsnade`s Parrot House, Pat Maxwell and the Blue Macaws (Part one). Keeper Contact Number 177 (November 2021), 13-16.
