Animals Names: a Capital idea?

In introducing the new edition of Clinton Keeling’s book, Where the Lion Trod, the editor made the point that Clin had a set of rules on names and abbreviations that he followed and expected everybody else to do so too: ‘These include starting all animal names with a capital letter’. This rule was not just for the common name of a species or the scientific name of a formal group but everything. I just pulled these out of the book at random: Monkeys, Antelopes, Opossums, Marmosets, Doves, Macaws. Modern usage would be: monkeys, antelopes, opossums, marmosets, doves, macaws.

But where did Clin get the idea that such names should be capitalised. Well, he was the complete autodidact and read anything on animals that he could get hold of in his early years. The style he acquired and kept for life was actually the one used by Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Thus we have Oldfield Thomas describing in 1911 the results of the Duke of Bedford’s Exploration by Malcolm Playfair Anderson and his colleagues:

He has been especially fortunate in discovering novelties among the Shews and Voles, while the peculiar little Insectivores…

I do not know when the change to modern usage occurred in that Journal (now Journal of Zoology) but anybody in the Zoo Library could quickly find out.

I once spent a fascinating afternoon with typographic designers while on the editorial board of a journal undergoing a revamp. Because capitals stop the eye from moving freely down the page they are an impediment to speed reading. The message was to keep capitals to a minimum. However, some book and journals styles take that too far and use lower case letters for names of species, arctic fox instead of Arctic Fox. Such usage can cause confusion; common toad can be a toad that is common or a Common Toad. When faced with such house rules the sub-editor can usually be made to change them by pointing out that old-saw of the bird-watcher being asked to identify the birds in a beginner’s telescope. ‘You, madam, have a pair of Great Tits’ can have an entirely different meaning from ‘You, madam, have a pair of great tits’.

Where the Lion Trod. C.H. Keeling. Zoo history - a new re-publication of the 1984 book, edited by John Adams for the Bartlett Society

My old friend, Clinton Keeling (1932-2007), after a series of misfortunes, some of which it has to be said, were of his own making, reinvented himself as a historian of British zoos*. Beginning in 1984 he produced a series of booklets over the next 19 years with particular attention to a number to zoos that had long been closed. There were two problems why these booklets remain relatively unknown. The first was that they were self-published as typewritten cyclostyled sheets and so never reached conventional publishing and retailing channels. The second was that their content was not obvious from the title (e.g. Where the Leopard Lazed, Where the Macaw Preened, Where the Penguin Plunged). The booklets were known to very few people and the numbers sold must have been very small. Those surviving in circulation must also have dwindled. I suspect the few that I had in the 1980s got bundled with similarly-bound reports and ended in that open-ended receptacle in my office that was sooner or (rarely) later the final resting place of A4-sized documents received from government departments.

The Bartlett Society, which Clin founded in 1984 for zoo history enthusiasts, has made the brave decision to republish the first of Clin’s books, Where the Lion Trod, but this time as hardback. Brave because the information it contains is dated, not surprisingly since sources of information were far harder to access in the 1980s, and brave because it is difficult to predict whether such a venture would be other than a financial drain.

Zoo histories come as two sorts. The first sort which look outwards are produced by social historians and tell you all about the milieu in which the zoo operated, its supposed social significance and why everything is all down to colonialism. The second tell you a lot about the animals kept, the people who set them up and something about the layout and architecture. Clin’s books fall firmly into the latter category; the first sort would have had him foaming at the mouth. His prejudices, both about how animals were kept and should be kept, and about the world in general, shine through so that those who never spent time in his company will get some idea of his diatribes against those who ran zoos in Britain, his loathing of popular culture and his hatred of ‘The Great British Public”.

Clin’s research and musings covered twenty extinct collections/zoos dating from the 13th century (the menagerie in the Tower of London) until 1959 (the date of closure of Maidstone Zoo). Various chapters consider, for example, the long-gone zoos in Liverpool, Manchester before Belle Vue, Edinburgh before the present Edinburgh Zoo, Hull (where a pub still recalls the zoo that closed in 1862), Southport, Cardiff, Halifax, Oxford, Sheringham and Southend.

The original format has been followed so that this hardback reprint bears a striking resemblance to the original typed version. I feel that was an error since I had the feeling of reading a dissertation for a degree rather than a published book. The editor has also added a few notes of explanation or correction as well as a list of known species kept at each establishment; the latter I finds adds little.

I must end with this paragraph on Maidstone Zoo (1934-1959) and its owner, the brewer Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake (1881-1964):

Sir Garrard was nothing if not a character. When I met him I almost did a double-take in amazement, so astonishing was his likeness to Charlie Chaplin. He invited me into the manor, gave me a glass of beer and after talking to me for a time said ”Hmmm, you know a bit about animals”, which I took to be praised indeed. Then suddenly he said “Well I must ask you to go now Mr Keeling—I want my lunch!” And that was that.

You can buy the book from the Bartlett Society here.

*Those who knew Clin Keeling will realise I risk his posthumous wrath. He never called a zoo a zoo, always a ‘zoological gardens’. I also visit the bot in Hong Kong and also, on occasion, the bot in Edinburgh and the bot at Kew.

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1914/15: 9. C.R. Walker and Mons. de Southoff

I reach the end of this series of posts with failure. I have been unable to find any more information on two donors. This is what Clin Keeling wrote in A Short History of British Reptile Keeping:

First there was one C.R. Walker, F.Z.S., of The Vivarium, West Bromwich, near Birmingham, who during the early days of the war sent, and received on an exchange basis, quite a lot of material to Regent's Park; for example one consignment of his consisted of twenty-five assorted Skinks, Geckos (including the New Zealand species) and Tree Frogs, while during research in another direction I made the fascinating discovery that on 15th October 1913 London's first Soft-shelled Turtles (Trionyx) came from him. As far as we're concerned just who and/or what he was must, pro tem, remain a mystery, although it sounds very much to me as though The Vivarium was a shop that specialised in animals of this kind – in which case it must have been one of the very first in the country and possibly indicative that even at that period there was more demand for them than wenow realise  – or it could even have been some kind of reptile display, or both. As things stand, though, we must leave it there in the shadowy land of speculation.

The only thing I do know is that C.R. Walker was not a Fellow of the Zoological Society in 1910 or 1913. There is a speculative geographical connexion with Herbert Tomlin Pollitt (23 June 1013 post) but that is all I have been able to find. This one needs more work in the Zoo Library because it would be very interesting to shed more light, for the reasons Clin explained, on just who Walker was and what The Vivarium did.

Finally, I have also been unable to find anything about the Mons. de Southoff who donated European salamanders and snakes.

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1914/15: 8. Herbert Tomlin Pollitt

Again, and nearing the end of this series of posts, this is what Clin Keeling wrote in A Short History of British Reptile Keeping:

H. Pollit of 7 Grosvenor Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, gave an Alligator, an Eyed Lizard and a European Pond Tortoise…

Thanks to a search of the 1911 Census, a family history on ancestry.co.uk and the keeper of that history, Any Pollitt, I have identified this ‘H. Pollit’ as Herbert Tomlin Pollitt. He was born in 1897 in Irlam, Lancashire. In 1911, aged 13, he was living at the address shown in the Zoo’s records. His father, a chemist, was manager of a soap works; he worked for Lever Brothers (now Unilever).

Herbert had ‘a very colourful life’. In 1917 he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant from the Indian Army’s Cadet College at Quetta (now in Pakistan). The Cadet College occupied the buildings of the famous Staff College which was closed for the duration of the war. By the end of the war it appears he was with 20th Deccan Horse, an Indian Army cavalry regiment (renowned for its charge on the Somme in 1916) on the western front.

He became a garage owner (authorised Morris dealer) in Birmingham, and is shown as living on a farm near Droitwich. Thrice-married, he was killed, along with a son from his second marriage and a son from his third marriage, in November 1965, aged 68.

So here we do seem to have somebody who may have given his reptiles to London Zoo before joining the army. We do not know if he retained any interest in animals after the war or at the farm where he lived near Droitwich.

We also do not know where he got his reptiles in the first place. It seems unlikely that they come from his father’s travels For Lever Brothers since one was North American and the others European. However, I cannot help wondering if they came from a local source. Clin Keeling mentions C.R. Walker from “The Vivarium”, West Bromwich (I will deal with him in a later post) as a donor of reptiles to London Zoo over this period. Handsworth is adjacent to West Bromwich. Was there a connexion?

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1914/15: 7. Bernard Tucker and William Waldegrave

Again, in this series of posts, this is what Clin Keeling wrote in A Short History of British Reptile Keeping:

Mr. W.B. Tucker of Hillside, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, got rid of a Brazilian Tortoise, a Spanish Terrapin and a Scorpion Mud Turtle (this latter one of the Box Turtles), and I was intrigued to discover that a few months later he sent, from Chewton House, Chewton Mendip, near Bath, two Radiated Tortoises, a Rough Terrapin (!) and three more Scorpion Muds on behalf of Lord Chewton. Was the latter, I cannot help wondering, an earlybut self-effacing practical herpetologist who had persuaded Mr. Tucker, who he knew to be similarly-minded, to come westwards in order to look after his collection - some surplus of which he decided to donate to the Zoological Society of London?

A few searches soon showed that somewhere there has occurred a transposition in the initials. W.B. Tucker is, in fact, B.W. Tucker — Bernard Tucker (1901-1950), the renowned ornithologist and lecturer in Zoology at Oxford. All the facts fit: educated at Harrow (Hillside was, apparently, one of the smaller houses at Harrow); family connexion with Chewton Mendip; a keeper of reptiles and amphibians in his rooms at Oxford.

Bernard Tucker

An account of Bernard William Tucker’s life was written by David Lack. Originally published in Ibis in 1951 it was reproduced in his book, Enjoying Ornithology (Methuen, 1965). I can do no better than to quote from it:

With the death of Bernard William Tucker on 19th December 1950 after a long illness, British ornithology loses it central figure. This position Tucker had come to fill, in characteristically unobtrusive fashion, partly through the width of his interests, which ranged from the identification of rare waders to the physiology of feather-growth, and particularly through his varied services to ornithology. He was Reader in Ornithology at Oxford University, Editor of British Birds, a former Vice-President of the British Ornithologists’ Union, and Vice-Chairman of the British Trust for Ornithology. 

Born on 22nd January 1901, at Northaw in Hertfordshire, Tucker spent most of his boyhood at Chewton Mendip in Somerset; and his first publication was on the birds round Chewton Mendip in the report of the Wells Natural History and Archaeological Society in 1918. He was educated at Harrow School, where he won the Lord Claud Hamilton Biology Prize in 1918 and the William Roundell Leaving Scholarship in 1919. He went up to Oxford in 1919 with a demyship (senior scholarship) at Magdalen College, and obtained 1st class honours in Zoology in 1923. He then obtained the Oxford scholarship to the Stazione Zoologica at Naples, where he worked on parasitism in crustacea for a year, paying later brief visits to Naples in 1925, 1927 and 1928. At Naples, also, he met his future wife, Gladys Allen, whom he married in July 1925. In the same year he was appointed a Demonstrator in the Zoological Laboratory at Cambridge, Professor Stanley Gardiner’s intention being that he should fill Gadow’s place as lecturer in vertebrate anatomy. When Gadow unexpectedly postponed his retirement, Tucker in 1926 returned to Oxford under Professor Goodrich, and he became a University Demonstrator and Lecturer in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the following year. This post he held for the rest of his life, becoming Browne Research Fellow of the Queen’s College 1944-47 and Reader in Ornithology in 1946.

Tucker once told me that he differed from most ornithologists in that he did not develop an overriding interest in birds until unusually late, about his eighteenth year. At school, botany had been a major interest, and as an undergraduate he was noted for the variety of reptiles and amphibia which he kept in vivaria in his rooms…. 

In the zoology department at Oxford, Tucker lectured mainly on the vertebrates, including of course the birds, and he was one of the first in Britain to supplement the orthodox lectures on anatomy with others on habits, including migration. He was noted for his skill both in dissection and in anatomical diagrams, some of the latter being published in De Beer’s Vertebrate Zoology, which became a standard textbook for students… 

Tucker has had an extremely important influence on British ornithology in three different ways, through his work with local ornithological societies, through his work on field characters, particularly as published in the Handbook of British Birds, and through his work for the Edward Grey Institute at Oxford… 

In B.T.O. affairs, however, Tucker’s greatest service was at Oxford, for he, more than anyone else, was responsible for getting University support for the Institute…

In the obituary, Lack states that Tucker’s original publications on birds are few and unimportant. He does not mention that Tucker dissected the head of London Zoo’s last Thylacine after its death in 1931*. Typically, I suspect, he did not publish this study but his notes and the head are in the university’s museum at Oxford.


Tucker would have been 13 when his gave his chelonians to London Zoo. Were they too difficult to keep at school?

Viscount Chewton then was William Edward Seymour Waldegrave (1882-1933). He later succeeded to the title, 10th Earl Waldegrave. He was the son of the 9th Earl (William Frederick Waldegrave) and Mary Dorothea Palmer. The family seat is at Chewton Mendip, where Bernard Tucker spent his boyhood. Waldegrave died, unmarried, at the age of 50. He became a Fellow of the Zoological Society in 1913 (aged 31). One can only assume that Tucker and Waldegrave developed a common interest in reptiles, especially chelonians, at Chewton Mendip. Whether Waldegrave continued his interest beyond the 1st World War, I do not know.

*http://bit.ly/17GJmex

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1914/15: 6. Charles Edward Colston Frost

Again, in this series of posts, this is what Clin Keeling wrote in A Short History of British Reptile Keeping:

...while C. Frost, who lived at 213 Bexley Road, Northumberland Heath, Bexley, Kent, made a handsome gift of no less than eight long-nosed Crocodiles which, it was recorded, had come from the Great Kwa River in Nigeria.

I searched the 1911 Census and found that the occupier of 213 Bexley Road was Charles E.C. Frost, aged 37, a gun fitter working for a gun manufacturer. Could be him but how did he come to have eight crocodiles from Nigeria? Or was it another Frost, a father or brother perhaps? Only very recently have I found the answer. On the offchance a Google search might show up something, I typed in Charles E C Frost. On the first page of results I found the solution. A family history website showed that Charles Edward Colston Frost of the above address had ‘worked in Africa for Crown Agents’. So that’s how he got the crocodiles. He was born in Bristol in 1873 and died in 1942 in Bexley, aged 69.

Unfortunately, the e-mail link to the compiler of the family history is dead so I do not know if the family has any more information on when he worked in Africa and why, or of his job with the Crown Agents. A search of the Zoo’s records would also show if he was a regular donor of Nigerian animals.
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NOTE ADDED 23 January 2016
I was contacted by a friend of his daughter, Betty, who was able to provide further information. Charles Edward Colston Frost was an engineer who worked for Vickers in Erith (now part of London); Vickers sent him to Africa. He later became a Crown Agent. When World War I started, he joined the army in Africa and was eventually invalided home with malaria. Betty, who was born years after the war ended, says that her father loved Africa and lived there for seven years.

I have been able to find something about his goings to Nigeria. Shipping records show his departure from Liverpool to Lagos on 17 May 1911 on the SS Mendi; he is shown as a Government Servant (i.e. he worked for Crown Agents). He is to be found leaving Liverpool for Lagos again on 20 September 1916 on board the SS Elmina; he is shown as an Armourer Sergeant. Army medal record show that he was an Acting Sergeant in the 3rd Nigeria Regiment. I presume he fought with the 3rd Nigerians in the East Africa Campaign to which they were transported by sea. I wonder if he was the 'armourer-sergeant' referred to in With the Nigerians in German East Africa by W.C. Downes (London: Methuen, 1919):

     Sleep in the afternoon was often a little difficult at the after end of the good ship "Berwick Castle", owing to rifle fire being carried out on one side, machine-gun fire on the other, and bugle practice by all the buglers of both battalions in the centre. These were the main disturbing elements, but there were lesser troubles to compete with, such as the armourer-sergeant hammering on what sounded like a tin tray...

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1914/15: 5. M.C. Myres

Following up this series of posts, this is what Clin Keeling wrote in A Short History of British Reptile Keeping:

For instance, there was one M.C. Myres of The School House, Sherborne, Dorset, who presented two Horned Toads (as ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will know, these are Lizards actually) and an Undulated Lizard on 27th October 1914 — I imagine before going into the Army…

I am pretty sure M.C. Myres was Miles Claude Myres, the son of Professor Sir John Linton Myres, the archaeologist and Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at Oxford. Earlier in 1914 we find him, aged 14, accompanying his father plus a large portion of the British scientific establishment, on the Orient Line’s Orvieto en route to Australia for the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held throughout August. The ship left England on 3 July. Also on board were the incoming president, Sir Oliver Lodge FRS, the physicist and spiritualist (well, he was a physicist) who, at the time, was the first principal of the University of Birmingham. There was also the former president, Sir Edward Schafer (later Sharpey-Schafer) FRS (1850-1935), physiologist and author of Essentials of Histology which was used as a textbook into the 1960s [first year physiology students at Sheffield in 1962 were recommended to buy Hewer’s histology textbook instead, although a number of us had used Sharpey-Schafer at school].

Myres must have donated the lizards to London Zoo soon after his return from Australia. From the address given, it would appear that he had them at school. Horned ‘toads’ (Phyrnosoma) were not known for their longevity in captivity. Was he given them on his return from Australia but then decided not to keep them? Since these lizards are from North and Central America, it is likely that the ‘Undulated Lizard’ was Sceloporus undulatus.

Shipping records show that Miles C. Myres became a farmer in Southern Rhodesia, paralleling the life of John C Dendy, who featured in this series (see my post of 27 October 2012). Both Myres and Dendy were sons of professors; both kept reptiles; both gave the reptiles to London Zoo; both became farmers in Southern Africa. 

Miles Claude Myres, according to a family history website, died in 1931. He was married with children. Shipping records show his widow and children travelling from Liverpool to Montreal in 1940. It appears that some of his descendants are in Australia.

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1915: 4. Harold Duncan Foster

The first example of an amateur reptile keeper I have found so far from the list given by Clin Keeling of those individuals who donated specimens to London Zoo around the time of the beginning of the First World War is Harold Duncan Foster. He gave two Slow Worms, a Delande's Gecko†, a Green Lizard, two European Tree-frogs, a Fire-bellied Toad, a Yellow-bellied Toad and two Great Crested Newts.

In the 1911 Census he is shown at the same address, namely, 43 Queen's Grove, St John's Wood — only a short walk from the Zoo. Born in Marylebone, he was a colliery owner, single, and employed a parlourmaid, another servant and a cook.

He married Alice G Anderson at Marylebone in 1913. Was it a coincidence that his reptiles and amphibians went to the Zoo in 1914? Or was it a case of me or those creatures? Alice died in Hampstead in 1934 aged 52.

Harold Duncan Foster died, a widower, in Hampstead in 1955, aged 71.

There is information on his family history at:
http://www.dannebrog.biz/whieldon/furley.pdf

†Delaland's Gecko?

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1915: 3. Guy Aylmer

Following up this series of posts, this is what Clin Keeling wrote in A Short History of British Reptile Keeping:

It's 8th August 1914 and one Guy Aylmer of Risby Manor, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, enriches the 1883 reptile house with two Black-collared Cobras, an African Rock Python, a Green Night Snake, a Burrowing Viper, a Rufescent Snake, an Emerald Tree Snake (Boa?), a Smoky Snake (Tropidonotus fuliginoides), four Tree Frogs (species not stated), and a Senegal Chameleon. Again, we hear no more of him, and once again I suspect here was someone entrusting his stock to good and experienced hands before going off to face the foe; the contest was less than a week old, and this makes me wonder whether he was possibly an officer on the reserve list. Through the helpful offices of Mrs. S. Greening of the Barrow (a nearby village) local History Society, I've discovered he was the son of Colonel Henry Leycester Aylmer, who was living at the Manor in 1912, which rather strengthens this idea. The fact remains, though, that zoology has heard no more of him, so in all probability he was soon to find a far-off grave.

In fact, Guy Aylmer not only survived the war but achieved lasting fame as a falconer, as we shall see.

Guy Aylmer was born on 20 April 1887 at Corsley House, Warminster, Wiltshire. He was educated at Winchester (he was at the school on the day of the 1901 census). He sent many reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates to London Zoo from Sierra Leone. In view of his later career and the fact that references are made to him with respect to the trees of Sierra Leone, I strongly suspect he was working in the Colonial Service in connexion with forestry in the years before the the war.

There is a reference to his having collected Picathartes gymncephalus (White-necked Rockfowl) in Sierra Leone in 1912. He also played a key part in showing that the Servaline Cat was not a separate species but a a colour form of the Serval. He found a litter with both forms present.

Mr. Guy Aylmer, F.Z.S., exhibited some skins of mammals from Sierra Leone, including those of a Serval (Felis capensis) and of a Servaline Cat (F. servalina), and stated that a native had brought him two kittens, almost certainly from the same litter, one being spotted like the Serval, and the other obscurely speckled like the Servaline Cat. This he regarded as proof that the differences between the Servals and Servaline Cats are of no systematic importance.

The many reptiles and amphibians presented to London Zoo at this time proved to be of wider interest. There is no evidence he was other than a temporary keeper of reptiles and amphibians. Edward G. Boulenger, Curator of Reptiles at the Zoo (not to be confused with his father, George Albert Boulenger FRS 1858-1937 of the British Museum (Natural History)), reported in 1915:

Among a collection of Reptiles and Batrachians collected by Mr. Guy Aylmer, F.Z.S., in Sierra Leone last year and presented by him to the Society, I found two frogs of the genus Rappia which have not hitherto been recorded. I propose for one the name of Rappia aylmeri, after its discoverer, for the other Rappia chlorostea, from the green colour of its bones, visible through the skin…

Sadly for Aylmer, R. aylmeri disappeared as a synonym of Hyperolius fusciventris. R. chlorostea, however, survives as Hyperolius chlorosteus.

Guy Aylmer was commissioned as a temporary (i.e. he was not a regular solider) 2nd Lieutenant in September 1914 and served with 12th Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He was promoted to Lieutenant virtually immediately. The 12th (Service) Battalion was part of Kitchener’s New Army. It was formed at Winchester on 21 September 1914. It landed at Boulogne on 22 July 1915. Aylmer survived the Somme, Passchendaele and Cambrai. From the 22 battalions in the regiment 12,824 men were killed and more than 123,000 were wounded.

He was promoted to Captain on 10 February 1915. He then moves up and down between Captain and, when employed as second-in-command of his battalion, Acting Major. Then on 27 November 1917, the London Gazette stated that he had resigned his commission to resume employment under the Colonial Office with effect from 1 December 1917 and that he was granted the honorary rank of Major.

During the war, he married Christabel Henrietta Rushbrooke on 12 January 1916. A son was born in 1925.

I have not been able to find anything of his activities in the 1920s, other than that in 1922 he published a paper, The Snakes of Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone Studies 5, 7-37). There are other possible references to a Major G. Aylmer in the Indian Army from 1919 until 1924 but I do not know if it is the same person. Similarly, a Major G Aylmer was chairman of a company that was wound up in 1925.

In the 1930s, there is much more information and this is where he achieved fame amongst the falconers. There are numerous comments on internet fora but this one sums up what he achieved in inventing, with a Bill Ruttledge, the ‘aylmeri’ jess:

Every day since I have flown my hawks and eagles, I have thanked Major Guy Aylmer for the peace of mind his invention has given falconers like myself, who religiously use the aylmeri jess. He came up with the idea whilst he was Conservator of Forests in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In his spare time he was not only Master of the Khartoum Foot Foxhounds, but flying his eyas and wild-caught Red-Headed Merlins. It was whilst flying, that these merlins, with their jesses trailing, attracted the unwanted attention of piratical birds, thinking the merlins were carrying snakes etc. His idea was to fly his merlins with just the anklets, leaving the field jess behind in the grip of the falconers glove. Little did he realise what a great contribution he would be making to future falconry, and that countless hundreds of hunting hawks and falcons lives would be safer. For this alone his name should live on as long as falconry.

http://www.eaglehunter.co.uk/Articles/Thank-you-GuyAylmer.htm

Aylmeri jesses are sold by falconry suppliers.

I then came across a fascinating account, published in 2007, by Mary Keenan of her tracing the steps of her mother’s cousin who was part of an expedition to the Sudan in 1933-34 (Sudan Studies 2007, 35, 3-17)(http://www.sssuk.org/SS/SS35.pdf). The sustained efforts she made to do so would put most people to shame.
Her mother’s cousin was James Edgar Dandy (1903-1976) then an Assistant at the Natural History Museum but eventually Keeper of Botany. The original expedition comprised the leader, Cecil Graham Traquair Morison (Agricultural Chemistry, Oxford), Dunstan Skilbeck (Soil Science, Oxford) and Dandy. Descendants provided Mary Keenan with the expedition diary and photographs.

When in Khartoum (arrived 16 December 1933), Dandy stayed with Guy Aylmer and his wife. They showed the nearby zoo and Sunt Forest, as well as the sights of Khartoum, Omdurman and Shambat.

Mary Keenan was shown the house, which was recognised from a photograph, when she was tracing the steps of the expedition in 2007.

Aylmer’s work (including an unpublished checklist of the trees and shrubs) in Sudan is quoted in botanical reviews and floras, for example, Flora of the Sudan-Uganda Border East of the Nile by I Friis and K Vollesen (Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 1998).

In 1935, the following notice appeared in the London Gazette:

Whitehall, January 21, 1935

The KING has been pleased to give and to grant unto Guy Aylmer, Esq., Conservator of Forests, Sudan Government, His Majesty’s Royal licence and authority to wear the Insignia of the Fourth Class of the Order of the Nile, which Decoration has been conferred upon him by his Majesty the King of Egypt, in recognition of valuable services rendered by him.
By 1939 he was back in England. My guess is that he would probably have retired in 1937 at the age of 50, the then usual age for retirement in the Colonial Service.

The Chelmsford Chronicle of 3 February 1939:

Otter Hounds Kill 38

At the annual meeting of the Eastern Counties Otter Hunt, held at Colchester...The Hunt Committee for the 1939 season consists of...Major G Aylmer…The Master reported a successful season, during which hounds were out on 81 days, finding 63 otters and accounting for 38 of them...Prospects for the coming season were excellent, and reports as to otters working the country are most satisfactory.

The Times of 15 September 1947:

Lost Falcon Found

The trained falcon lost by Major Guy Aylmer, of Risby, near Bury St. Edmunds, which is thought might have been shot on Thursday by a gamekeeper who saw a bird attacking partridges on the Denston Hall Estate, Newmarket, has been found in the Kentford district...

There is a report on an internet forum that he also lived in Spain.

Guy Aylmer died in 1954, aged 66. He was clearly a man of his class and of his time: a falconer and a hunter as well as a naturalist. His wife had died in 1951, aged 64. There is a gravestone for Christabel, her father and Guy Aylmer in Rushbrooke, Suffolk. He appears to have married again, to Beryl E Bland, in 1952; there is a matching death for her in 1959.

Aylmer Close in Risby, Suffolk is named after the family.

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UPDATE—December 2014

Professor Bryan Tyson read the original post and provided the additional information:

I met Guy Aylmer in 1943, when he was living with his wife and son Michael (who had just started at Cambridge)  in Risby Manor—a large house a little further down the Green than ours (which is today called “Little Manor" but was, in those days, known as “Shepherd Elmer's cottage" where we lived throughout the War.) His house was majestic enough, with its white half-timbered frontage and  large well-cultivated grounds.  He took me on many a trip when I was about ten years old, showing me the nests of garden warblers and blackcaps, whose eggs were a little difficult to distinguish from one another; and upstairs in the rather cold house, where a pair of house martins had actually nested against the glass of his study windows, so that you could see into their nest! I remember he also had the head of a Tiger that he had shot on safari, and a big model Malayan house-boat.His wife used to make a fuss if mud was walked into the house, and we had to take our shoes off, I recall, before we went upstairs. His egg-collection was an absolute dream: all set out in cabinets with glass-topped drawers that slid open at the touch. I remember shyly offering the information I had received from a boy at school that it was impossible to “blow” kingfishers’ eggs, as their shells were too frail. For answer he opened a cabinet drawer to reveal a line of little round kingfishers’ eggs like a row of smiling teeth. He taught me a great deal about birds on our expeditions, and I remember his envy when I showed him my Stone Curlew’s egg (he didn’t have one).

On one occasion, he called over at our house with his son Michael, to see if I would accompany them to play in a scratch team, in a cricket match somewhere. I said yes, and we drove there in his car. The experience was positive, though I do not remember scoring many runs; but I remember observing that Michael—who was about eighteen at the time—breathed through his mouth with a slight panting. He had a heart condition, which had prevented him following his father into the Army, and which threatened to curtail his career in farming (he was reading something to do with Agriculture, I believe.) The irony is that he survived and prospered, while his father, the Major, fell dead one day in 1954,  at age 66, while gardening; and it transpired that he had the same heart defect as his son, but  it had gone undiagnosed all his life. Mrs. Aylmer, whom I recall as a very tanned lady, predeceased him, dying of cancer in 1951 at the age of 64,  shortly after we left the village. You mention his grave in Rushbrooke cemetery; but there is a gravestone for Guy Aylmer in Risby churchyard (where my own parents are buried.) It reads simply “Guy Aylmer. Falconer and Gentleman."

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1915: 2. John C Dendy

In the last post I described what I had found on Albert L de Lautreppe. This week, it is the turn of John C Dendy.

This is what Clin Keeling wrote:

All I know about Master J.C. Dendy (as he was described in the Occurrences Book) was that he lived at Vale Lodge, Vale of Health, Hampstead, London N.W.1, that he kept a large herpetological collection and that, on 16th July 1915, he presented it to the Society. It comprised Chicken, Wolf’s [sic], Tessalated [sic], Dark-green, Say’s, King, Aesculapian and Corn Snakes, Seps (a primitive skink believed by the Arabs of North Africa to be poisonous, in fact the word “septic” is derived from its name), Green and Six-lined Lizards, Horned “Toads”, two terrapins, and Edible Frogs. As I say this is all I have to go on, but I rather suspect he was a public school boy who, adding a few non-existent years to his age, had decided to go to war — a state of affairs by no means rare in the early stages of the conflict — and such evidence that there is suggests he did not come back.

Well, John C Dendy was clearly John Cantaned Dendy, the then 15 year-old son of Professor Arthur Dendy (1865-1925), Professor of Zoology at King's College, London. At the 1911 Census, the family was living in Weybridge, Surrey.

Arthur Dendy, with a degree from what became the University of Manchester, worked on sponges collected by the Challenger Expedition at the British Museum (Natural History), then at the University of Melbourne, Canterbury College, New Zealand (where John C was born) and Capetown, South Africa, before being appointed to the Chair at King's in 1905. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1908. Although his main work was on sponges and planarians (he collected extensively in Australia in New Zealand), he also worked on Peripatus and on the development of the Tuatara (Sphenodon). There are a number of websites covering Arthur Dendy (his obituary was in Proceedings of the Royal Society B 99 xxxiii-xxxv, 1926):

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dendy-arthur-5951
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dendy

Arthur Dendy FRS

But what of John, born circa 1901 in New Zealand, who donated his collection to the Zoo at the age of 15? I can find no evidence of any involvement in the First World War or that he failed to survive. Indeed, his father's obituary states that he settled in South Africa. One of his journeys can be seen in the shipping lists available on family history websites. He and his wife arrived at Southampton in December 1949 from Captetown and returned four months later. His employment is shown as farmer. Did he retain an interest in reptiles while farming in South Africa? Was his early enthusiasm for reptiles gained from his father who worked on reptiles on New Zealand and in South Africa?

Donors of Reptiles to London Zoo 1915: 1. Albert L de Lautreppe

Clinton Keeling (1932-2007) in the later years of his life published a number of his own books on the history of zoos and the keeping of wild animals in captivity. He often referred to the books kept by London Zoo which listed the daily happenings. The books provide more than a glimpse into social history as well as the history of the Zoo and the Zoological Society of London.

In one of his books, A Short History of British Reptile Keeping, published in 1992, he referred to a few of the donors of reptiles and amphibians to the Zoo and bemoaned the fact that only in a few cases had he been able to trace who those donors where and what became of them. These are extracts from his book:

In my book They All Came Into The Ark I mentioned a number of people who had deposited reptiles and amphibians at the London Zoological Garden during the period covered by the first world war, and I can see no great harm in doing so again here, perhaps in a little more detail… 

...Albert L. de Lautreppe, 1 Ravenna Road, Putney, London S.W. presented quite a large collection of lizards (Horned Toads…) and terrapins - particularly Diamond-backs. 

All I know about Master J.C. Dendy (as he was described in the Occurrences Book) was that he lived at Vale Lodge, Vale of Health, Hampstead, London N.W.1, that he kept a large herpetological collection and that, on 16th July 1915, he presented it to the Society. It comprised Chicken, Wolf’s [sic], Tessalated [sic], Dark-green, Say’s, King, Aesculapian and Corn Snakes, Seps (a primitive skink believed by the Arabs of North Africa to be poisonous, in fact the word “septic” is derived from its name), Green and Six-lined Lizards, Horned “Toads”, two terrapins, and Edible Frogs. As I say this is all I have to go on, but I rather suspect he was a public school boy who, adding a few non-existent years to his age, had decided to go to war — a state of affairs by no means rare in the early stages of the conflict — and such evidence that there is suggests he did not come back.

The history of keeping reptiles and amphibians in captivity has received little attention, particularly in the private, i.e. non-zoo, sector. I was intrigued by Clin’s examples and realised that by using a combination of genealogical sources and Google, of course, it should be possible to uncover more about the donors than Clin had managed. I chose the above extracts because on these cases I have been able to shed more light.

Albert L de Lautreppe

Lautreppe’s story starts easily enough but then gets more complicated.

He arrived in London on 14 January 1915 from New York, a 1st class passenger on S.S. Minneapolis. He had entered the U.S.A. from Mexico at El Paso, Texas on 5 December 1914. Lautreppe is shown as being 58, a mining engineer of French nationality and a permanent resident of France. Incidentally, the S.S. Minneapolis had only just returned to her Atlantic run after transporting the British Expeditionary Force to France at the outbreak of the First World War. In February 1915, she returned to military transport, and was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean on 23 March 1916.

All the reports show that Lautreppe was a mining engineer and a plant- and animal-collecting naturalist who operated first in Peru and then Mexico. I think we can assume that he acquired the lizards and terrapins in Mexico and the U.S.A. or the U.S.A. as he travelled to New York. On this occasion, he had been in Mexico since 1914. He was en route to Mexico when he arrived from Le Havre in New York on S.S. La Lorraine on 13 April 1914.

We find him also crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S. in 1906.

There are a number of references to his plant collecting and of specimens arriving at the New York Botanical Garden. In the botanical literature he is listed as a collector from 1902 to 1905 in Mexico and Peru. Examples of references to him are:

Mr Albert de Lautreppe who was commissioned last year to obtain material for the Garden during his visit to Peru on a mining errand, has recently returned, bringing with him a notable collection of small cacti which have mostly been incorporated into the public series— in conservatory house No 5, a considerable number of other living plants and over two hundred packets of seeds which have been sown in the propagating houses. He also secured some herbarium specimens, principally of lichens. Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, volume 3, 1902.

Plants for the conservatories from Chihuahua and Rio Balsa, Mexico. Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, volume 5, 1904.

The average rainfall of Zacatecas for the past ten years, as stated by Mr Albert L. de Lautreppe, who has made a special study of the weather records in connection with his business venture...U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Bulletin 102, 1907.

The following are from Addisonia (New York Botanical Garden), volume 1, 1916.

Lautreppe clearly had an interesting time in Peru. An article syndicated to a number of U.S. newspapers in 1902, dealing with the financing of rubber ventures by J.P Morgan and his associates in South America, discussed the border conflicts between Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. It continued: 

But Peru has a plan to get in far ahead of them all and build a railroad that shall tap the rich country and carry its products to the Pacific Coast over the mountains.
To ascertain the best route, that nation commissioned a French engineer, Albert de Lautreppe, of Paris, to explore the country and find a road. He led an expedition and reported that the plan was feasible.
Now he has arrived in New York with remarkable news. He found immense rivers spanned by wonderful bridges made of basket work by the natives. More remarkable than all, he found tribes of cannibal Indians, whose boast was that they would never allow white men to pass through their country. By diplomacy and generous presents he managed to win, if not their friendship, at least suffererance, and he reached his objective point after many dangers but without being harmed.

The long article goes on to describe his encounter with the tribes and ends with the following paragraphs:

De Lautreppe says tha he can not tell why they permitted his party to cross their territory alive. “the Chunchos,” he says, “told us that they had massacred three white men in Carabaya just before we arrived. Just why we escaped trouble I can not explain, as they were entirely fearless and our firearms caused them neither surprise nor alarm. Somehow we had the luck to a peace which neither of us broke. It may be they were convinced that we were not after their women, which seems to be a great cause of tribal wars there. Most tribes are short of women, and, therefore, they raid each other frequently.” 

All the tribes that he found exist solely by hunting and rove over great extents of territory. De Lautreppe says that the country throughout shows evidence of great wealth in gold, and that Peru can open it by building less than 400 miles of railroad, part of which, indeed, is already under construction.

Lautreppe also patented inventions. For example:

Albert Le Cocq de Lautreppe, a citizen of France and a resident of New York ...have invented certain new and useful improvements in Stills. U.S. Patent 744367, 17 November 1903.

After the war, on 19 June 1919, he was granted a patent in London for an invention submitted on 29 May 1917. Wireless control of distant apparatus. Improved means of controlling movement in two directions from a distance (GB 127848). The example in the patent is the control of a rudder by radio. Shades of drones to come.

One and the Same Person?

Things now get more complicated. In a letter from Vailima, his house on Upolu in Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

We have two guests in the house, Captain-Count Wumbrand and Monsieur Albert de Lautreppe. Lautreppe is awfully nice — a quiet gentlemanly fellow. Gonfle de Reves, as he describes himself — once a sculptor in the atelier of Henry Crosse, he knows something of art and is really a resource to me.

The question is, of course, whether this Lautreppe, the former sculptor, is our Lautreppe, the mining engineer and naturalist, in later life. I strongly suspect that he is since the writer S.R. Lysaght (1856-1941) describes visiting Vailima on Easter Sunday 1894 and meeting Lautreppe, a French naturalist [my emphasis]:

At dinner in the evening, when all the household was assembled, Mrs Stevenson and Mrs Strong, Lloyd Osborne and Count Wurmbrand, a charming and cultivated Austrian soldier acting at the time as chief cowherd on the Stevenson Farm, with the addition on one or two occasions of M. de Lautreppe, a French naturalist on a visit to the island, a delightful companion, we were a merry and odd-looking party. The Living Age, Boston, 10 January 1920.

Gonfle de Reves which, I think, translates as 'inflated dreams' implies that he had tried to be a sculptor and now did something different.

Robert Louis Stenvenson only survived a few months after this visit; he died on 3 December 1894.

Vailima in 2008, Robert Louis Stevenson's House in Samoa

Vailima is good for seeing wildlife. This skink is I think Emoia nigra
and the Flat-billed Kingisher (Todirhamphus recurvirostris) can be found
in the tress surrounding the lawns.

It would also seem that our Lautreppe is also the author of an article on American Samoa: Our Samoa Station. The Island of Tutuila, The Latest Acquisition of the United States in the Pacific. This was published in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, July 1900, and a summary appeared on several U.S. newspapers at the time. He also had an article on Samoa in the French periodical, L’Illustration, in 1898.

The only reference to a sculptor Lautreppe I have found is in L. Farrer’s Biographical Dictionary of Medallists volume 3, published by Spink and Son in 1907. Felicien William Albert Le Coq de Lautreppe, pupil of Henry Cros, exhibited a medallion depicting Sir William Gladstone at the Salon in 1883.

The last reference I can find to Albert Le Coq de Lautreppe is his arrival in New York (aged 62 years, 3 months) with his wife, Olga (61 years, 10 months) on 28 February 1919 from Le Havre on S.S. Rochambeau.

There are other possible references in the U.S. newspapers to Lautreppe. M. Le Coq Lautreppe organised talks on French songs with an accompanying singer. When he cancelled the event, the singer displayed great and public outrage at her treatment.

Lautreppe had presented animals to the zoo before 1915. A very incomplete search shows that on 25 September 1893 (remember he was, if it is the same Lautreppe, in Samoa on Easter Sunday — March 25th — 1894) he gave the zoo the gerbil, Gerbillus longifrons from Tunis (now included in Meriones crassus, Sundevall’s Jird) and Long-tailed Field Mouse (Mus [Apodemus] sylvaticus). Since the latter also occurs in north Africa, I would imagine he thought he had something less common than a species that could be caught in Regent’s Park.

Finally, and before dealing with Master Dendy in the next post, why did he collect and donate animals to London Zoo and why, in 1915, was he staying at 1 Ravenna Road, Putney? In the 1911 Census, 1 Ravenna Road was divided into flats. Was he staying in one of the flats on his return from Mexico in 1915? Was his stay in London connected with the patent application for a radio-controlled rudder? Help is needed from a French genealogist to take the story any further.