The Curious and Sad Case of Joan Procter’s Honorary Degree

A serious and unfortunate error has crept into some accounts of the life of Joan Procter (1897-1931), Curator of Reptiles at London Zoo, about whom I have written several times before. Her entry in Wikipedia, repeated of course elsewhere, states that she was awarded an honorary D.Sc. degree by the University of Chicago in view of her contributions to herpetology. The Linnean Society, of which she was a Fellow, also put out the same information in 2018. However, the footnote in the Wikipedia entry itself shows that the information came from her papers, held along with those of her sister, Chrystabel, in the archives of Girton College, Cambridge. Not only does the footnote show where the information came from but that the entry in the main text is wrong. It was not an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago but the Intercollegiate University of Chicago which, as I found out, was something completely different, indeed an embarrassment.

As I delved into this curious ‘university’ I realised that an important clue lay in the account of her funeral at Golders Green crematorium on 23 September 1931. The Times reported: ‘The officiating clergy were the Archbishop of Antioch (the Most Rev. Dr. Churchill Sibley) and the Rev. Herbert Trundle.’ Herbert Trundle was chaplain of the crematorium and a Church of England cleric from St Alban’s in Golders Green who, for our purposes can be ignored. Sibley though is a different kettle of fish. He had founded a branch of the Intercollegiate University, based in Chicago, in England.

Reading further, I found that Sibley—the Archbishop of Antioch—belonged to a catholic sect that had nothing whatever to do with the one run from Rome and which seems to have gone under the name of the Orthodox Catholic Church. Sibley had been ordained in 1924 by the leader of the American Catholic Church, Frederick Ebenezer Lloyd, but ran his enterprise in England as a separate empire.

The various machinations by which Sibley assumed the title of Archbishop of Antioch are too tortuous to recount. He and others of his ilk have been described apparently with good reason as ‘religious confidence men’. Nevertheless, hagiographies of Sibley appear online, including on Wikipedia, containing claims and items of information that are blatantly incorrect. What is known is that Sibley was a church organist, conductor and music teacher who was born in Crewkerne, Somerset in 1858, the son of a house painter and glazier. In 1929, five years after his ‘ordination’ he was installed by Lloyd as Archbishop Metropolitan of the Orthodox Catholic Church in the British Empire. As far as I can make out the Antioch bit was added later by Sibley himself.

Articles on Sibley suggest he was attacked by clergy of the Church of England and that the magazine John Bull carried an exposé by a female undercover reporter. A search through old copies of that magazine might prove instructive.

In parallel with what some people might describe as the spiritual side of Lloyd and Sibley, they had a parallel commercial organisation, the Intercollegiate University, founded in Kansas but later based in Chicago, of which Lloyd held the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Lloyd took it over as President and then, with Sibley, expanded to England, where its base was on Thanet in Kent. It conducted correspondence courses, offering ““exceptional advantages to earnest students through its varied carefully arranged courses of study in theology, arts, music and practical business” with degrees conferred “after thorough preparation” at an annual service in St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, London”. The Intercollegiate University has been described as a ‘notorious degree mill’; in other words, conferring paid for ‘degrees’ with little or no study. Clergymen were the main recipients of the numerous doctorates on offer, and local newspapers took them to task in letters and articles questioning their validity. Extracts appear below. Sibley is said to have ‘scattered honorary doctorates on English clergymen’ to drum up trade.

John Churchill died in December 1938. Being a mere Archbishop was obviously too lowly and he was raised in status to Blessed Saint.

The question arises of how did Joan Procter, six months before her death, become involved in all of this? She was known to regard herself as an agnostic, with no religious inclination. My guess, without having looked at the papers in Girton College, is that her elder sister was involved with Sibley. Chrystabel Prudence Goldsmith Procter (1894–1982) was a gardener who after her sister’s death became head gardener and garden steward at Girton. Both sisters were known for their forceful personalities and I have found that in her middle years she was a catholic, not perhaps of the Roman kind but that propounded by Sibley and his few acolytes in England. His appearance in the lead at Joan’s funeral suggests a close link with the remaining (and, the cynic must add, wealthy) family. Had Chrystabel and/or her father taken it on themselves to suggest to Sibley that an honorary doctorate for her ailing sister would be a kind gesture?

However it came about, the honorary doctorate from the Intercollegiate “University” was not worth the vellum it may or not have been printed on. The record is best corrected and the whole affair quietly put aside. The geegaw added nothing to her achievements.

Two examples of articles and letters in the press:

Sheffield Daily Telegraph 8 June 1922

The letter of the clergyman who signs himself a “Bachelor of Divinity” of the unknown institution which he describes by the singular abbreviation, “Ch. Coll. Mus., Inter. Colleg. Univer., U.S.A.” is a piteous attempt to induce the public to believe that his “B.D.” “degree” has been conferred by a university of reputable standing. I have authoritative information before me of this co-called college. The extension of the curious abbreviation appended by your correspondent after his “degree” is “The College of Church Musicians, Intercollegiate University.” This so-called college originated among some church musicians in Kansas, where they first secured articles of incorporation and a charter in 1880. Later they removed to Chicago and changed their title. Now they give all kind of “degrees,” not one of which is recognised as of any value in the United States, and happily is not now admitted to the official list of the ministry of any religious denomination. They would be laughed out of court if put forward by an elementary or secondary teacher as a claim for receiving the additional salary…

Rugby Advertiser 25 May 1923

…The transparent ignorance manifested in Mr Middleton’s frequent attacks…gives anyone the right to look into the Rec. Vicar’s credentials, and to appraise the value of what he is pleased to call his “degrees and University status.” We have only Mr. Middleton’s authority before us for the statement that “increasing numbers of graduates from the English universities are taking the examinations for and are obtaining further degrees from the Intercollegiate University, U.S.A.” This assertion is worth what it is worth. Needless to say, Mr. Middleton is not one of these graduates from the English Universities. He has no English degree whatever. As far as our Universities are concerned, the Doctorate in Literature is one of the highest academical distinctions, and it is no discourtesy in this scholastic centre to note that there is no one here with such a qualification. As to the Yankee doctorate and its value, well, Mr. Middleton was apparently able to take the necessary papers and pay down his dollars. “‘Nuff said.:…

Joan Procter and Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell at London Zoo in the 1920s-30s: A Dissenting Account from Solly Zuckerman

Solly Zuckerman with
monkey. Oxford, 1935
from
Apes to Warlords

I have written several times about Joan Procter, Curator of Reptiles at London Zoo until her death at the age of 34 in 1931, and her relationship with her boss, Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell.

All the accounts of Joan Procter’s life and achievements were written by Chalmers Mitchell, that great self-publicist, and it is difficult to assess how others viewed her. All present-day accounts are derived from Mitchell’s various publications but I knew that sometime in the past I had come across a dissenting view. Finally, I remembered that Solly Zuckerman in the first part of his autobiography published in 1978, was the dissenter. Zuckerman, before his meteoric rise to power in British science and a life peerage, had been employed by the Zoological Society of London in 1928-1932 as Prosector—research anatomist in modern parlance—to work on the remains of the animals that died in the Zoo. As well as doing this he built on earlier research he had done in South Africa and wrote his famous book, The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes. He later became one of Chalmers Mitchell’s successors as Secretary of the Zoological Society.

This is what Zuckerman had to say on Chalmers Mitchell and Joan Procter:

Joan Procter

The main executive officer of the governing body, which is an elected and unpaid Council, is the Secretary. Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, who occupied that office during the five years when I was a member of the Society’s staff, was not only the Society’s un­questioned ruler, but also a well-known character in the life of London. In his time the secretaryship was a highly paid full-time post, which enjoyed a number of privileges, including a luxurious flat on the upper floor of the Society’s main office. Mitchell ruled his domain with a rod of iron, and while his chief administrator was Dr. Vevers*, he himself seemed to be ruled by Joan Proctor, the Curator of Reptiles, a young woman of powerful personality. Once I was commanded to go to see her in her house near the Zoo. This was an unnerving experience, since she kept as a pet a wild Serval cat, on which I had to keep a wary eye as she spoke. She ordered me to relieve some giant tortoises of the constipation from which she supposed them to be suffering. I did not have the slightest idea what to do but, in my anxiety to get away, said that I would attend to the matter. Later that day I joked about my impending task with Malcolm Pearson, a medical student friend. Malcolm had a nice sense of humour, and after we had discussed the matter, I sent a message to Joan Proctor’s staff to have the affected animals strung up in tennis nets by 9 o’clock the next morning, and to have pails of soapy water and syringes prepared for a visit which I and another doctor would be making. There was no need for any enemas by the time we arrived. Excitement alone had done the trick, and the centre of the new Reptile House was a terrible mess. Apart from asking me to give anti-venom serum to a keeper who had got himself bitten by a snake, Joan Proctor never bothered me again. Malcolm and I dined out more than once on the story.

Peter Chalmers Mitchell

Chalmers Mitchell was not the only member of the Society’s Council who had fallen under Joan Proctor’s spell, and when she died in 1931 at the early age of 34, a medal, one side of which bore her likeness, was struck in her honour. The intention was that it should be presented each year to a distinguished expert on reptiles, but I can find no record that it was ever awarded. Perhaps she was not sufficiently outstanding scientifically to be commemorated in this way. The one copy of the medal that I know still exists is among the Society’s memorabilia. 

I think we can take it that Zuckerman was not overly impressed by Miss Procter. Read my earlier article Joan Procter and Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell. Scandalous Rumours at London Zoo and Whipsnade in the 1920s and try to decide if Zuckerman’s account helps us decipher what was going on.

*Geoffrey Marr Vevers (1890-1970). Not to be confused with his son, Henry Gwynne Vevers (1916-1988).

Mitchell PC. 1929. Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London. London: Zoological Society of London

Zuckerman S. 1978. From Apes to Warlords. London: Hamish Hamilton

The Outdoor Reptiliary in Britain. 1. London and Other Zoos

This article (part one of a two-part series) is on my other site, Reptiles, Amphibians and Birds: A Historical Perspective of their Care in Captivity. It can be found HERE.

This is an illustration, of the then new reptiliary at London Zoo from The Illustrated London News of 15 September 1928:

Joan Procter, Arthur Loveridge and the Pancake Tortoise. 2. Joan Procter in London: Structure of the shell and the question of defensive ‘inflation’

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Not content with gross anatomical description, Joan Procter threw whatever modern technique she could find to discover as much as she could about the Pancake Tortoises, now known as Malacochersus tornieri, sent to London by Arthur Loveridge, the dead ones at the Museum and the live ones at the Zoo. She used X-rays and fluorescent screen x-ray equipment provided by the surgeon Sir John Bland-Sutton (1855-1936) of the Middlesex Hospital. He was a keen supporter and vice-president of the Zoological Society of London.  She collaborated with Richard Higgins Burne (1868-1953, elected FRS 1927) who was Physiological Curator at the Royal College of Surgeons on the structure of the jaw. Burne was also a key member of the Zoological Society in the 1920s and 30s.

Boulenger had commented on the first specimens sent by Loveridge to confirm the pliable nature of the carapace and plastron. Instead of solid bone underlying the epidermal shields as in other tortoises, Joan Procter found areas with no bone at all, especially, as suggested by Loveridge in the centre of the plastron. Deep sutures between the shields also indicated a marked degree of mobility.

Figures from Joan Procter's paper showing the bony
carapace with the large areas (hatched) lacking bone

The bony plastron showing the lack of bone in the
large central area

In all, Miss Procter was able to work on 23 dead specimens, preserved in spirit, as well as handling the two live ones at the Zoo. Another unusual feature, apart from the areas of the carapace and plastron without bone, the tortoise is the appearance of teeth on both jaws. These teeth which are not true teeth are part of the jawbones with an overlying continuous horny sheath.

By studying young specimens and comparing the development of the carapace and plastron in other tortoises she concluded that the adult Pancake Tortoise resembles to a great extent the young of other species in which the bone then continues to grow and fill the gaps. In other words, the fenestration seen in the adult is caused by arrested development of the bony shell rather than by breakdown of a complete bony structure.

Procter noted the great variability in the shells of the Pancake Tortoise—the subject of a recent paper describing the variation between individuals in more detail.

A question that Joan Procter addressed, whether the bone of the carapace is derived from the skeleton or from the skin I will not deal with further here but will return to in the future since the question has been the subject of research for getting on for two centuries and there is recent work suggesting that old views are wrong. However, before turning to a functional problem it is worth considering how Procter argued on the mechanism evolution of the shell of the Pancake Tortoise. It is difficult for those of us who first got to know the history of theories of evolution in the 1950s to appreciate just how common Lamarckian explanations were in the 1920s or of how powerful and combative some of the individuals like Ernest MacBride FRS, who rejected both natural selection and modern genetics until his dying day, were in the zoological circles of London. Joan Procter sat on the fence:

     It can be argued on the one hand that the flattened carapace is brought about by the habit of living beneath stones and squeezing into rock-crevices. This habit, induced by environment, would be bound to have a modifying effect; for, during youth, the development of a domed and solid carapace would be interfered with by the constant application of pressure, and in a sufficient number of generations the ability to form a normal carapace might be lost altogether. The fact that the Burrowing Tortoise, T. polyphemus, has a thin or fenestrated and somewhat flattened carapace supports this view. Could this be proved experimentally, it would furnish a convincing argument in favour of the heritance of acquired characters. 

     On the other hand, it can be equally well maintained that an inherited tendency to the arrest in development is orthogenetic, brought about either gradually or as a mutation, and that the furtive habit of hiding beneath stones was the natural result, since the tortoise no longer possessed adequate protection from enemies. 

     Possibly both principles come into play, the reduced armour and loss of ribs being orthogenetic, and the depression and relative condition of the vertebrae being subsequently induced by the rockdwelling habit.

Apart from the developmental origin of the bony shell, the subject that has stirred interest in the Pancake Tortoise has been the question of ‘inflation’.

The suggestion that Pancake Tortoises inflate to jam themselves more effectively into crevices between rocks came from Loveridge (see previous post of 22 November 2018):

The tortoise takes full advantage of this flexibility, as I soon found on trying to remove one from beneath a boulder. It inflated its lungs sufficiently to obtain additional purchase against the roof and floor of its retreat and, bracing its strongly clawed feet—some of the claws were over half an inch long—used them as struts so as to render its extraction extremely difficult.

Joan Procter described the animal’s characteristics thus:

In general appearance it looks as if it had been crushed in youth and had only survived by a miracle. When taken in the hand alive it has a boneless feeling which is uncanny; both carapace and plastron react to pressure on the abdominal region with a springy motion, and the animal is able to inflate itself to a slight degree.

The key question, does the Pancake Tortoise inflate itself and thereby jam itself into a space between rocks, was tackled by Leonard Ireland and Carl Gans (1923-2009), then of the University of Michigan; their paper was published in 1972. They noted that only Robert Mertens, in a paper published in wartime Germany, had questioned the occurrence of inflation: wedging yes; inflation no, he had concluded.

Carl Gans

The background to their work was that Gans had recently worked with George Hughes (1925-2011) in Bristol to sort out the method of respiration in the Spur-thighed Tortoise, Testudo graeca, itself then a matter of controversy. This tortoise and other chelonians were found to draw air into the lungs using muscles that acted in a manner akin to a diaphragm in mammals but acting within the confines of a fixed frame, the shell. There was no mechanism to force air into the lungs (as in frogs, for example). To Ireland and Gans it seemed unlikely that inflation of the body occurs during a threat. They monitored the pressure in the lungs of the Pancake Tortoise while trying to pull it backwards out of an artificial dark crevice 10 mm higher than the depth of the shell. The tortoises attempted to dig their claws of their forelimbs into the floor and rotated their forelimbs outwards. Those actions raised the front of the body and wedged it in place. The hind limbs were stretched out to the rear such that the claws tended to engage in any irregularities in the floor. The authors remarked that the wedging action was most effective; they gained the impression that the forelimbs would have to be broken before the tortoise could be pulled free of a rocky crevice in the wild. At no time during this pulling and wedging in response did pressure within the lungs rise consistently. There was no inflation. Wedging was purely mechanical and achieved by the positioning of the limbs.

Although inflation of the body cavity appeared to have been excluded as part of the mechanism by which the Pancake Tortoise wedges itself into rocky crevices or under boulders of the kopjes on which it lives, that knowledge never found itself into much of the popular literature or have reached what was then the more scientifically-isolated world of the museums. Books and papers still appeared without any reference to the work of Ireland and Gans. Some make it appear that the degree of inflation is enormous, with the impression created that the tortoise is the next best thing to a puffer fish.

However, was the wedging action of the limbs shown by Ireland and Gans the only way the Pancake Tortoise can fasten itself into crevices? Their test apparatus was arranged such that the ceiing was 10 mm greater than the height of the tortoise’s shell. Calculating the depth (i.e. the distance between the outsides of the plastron and carapace) from the photograph they show and the approximately median length of the carapace of the animals they studied, any ‘bulge’ from inflation would have to reach a 23% increase in the depth between plastron and carapace in order to reach the ceiling of the artificial crevice, a surely impossible ask.

The wedging action also leaves the limbs exposed. While offering protection in a relatively wide crevice, would it not be better to seek a narrower crevice in which the legs and head could be withdrawn. In those circumstances, movement outwards of, say, the soft area of the plastron by only a millimetre or so would really jam the tortoise in place. This is the mechanism proposed by Moll and Klemens in a paper published in 1996 but which I have not yet seen. They suggest that drawing the legs into the shell can ‘inflate’ the soft area of the plastron thus supporting the original observations of Loveridge in the field and of Boulenger and Procter in the museum and zoo. How would that work and can predictions be made that could be tested experimentally?

Respiration in tortoises is very different to the process in other land vertebrates. The lungs are attached to the carapace and are inflated and deflated by a diaphragm-like structure separating the lungs from the other internal organs. As the limbs are withdrawn into the confines of the shell there is additional inward pressure on the body cavity and, indeed, movements of the limbs are known to take part in the movement of gases into and out of the lungs. For sufficient pressure to be built up inside the body cavity to push upon the gap in the plastron the lungs would also need to be full or probably very nearly full of air. The flow of air outwards from the lungs in response to strong and sustained withdrawal of the legs and head would have to be stopped. The other alternative to stopping the outflow from the lungs would be for the lungs to be emptied completely by the build-up of pressure in the body cavity. Because tortoise lungs are so large and so capacious it seems unlikely that the decrease in volume of the body cavity would be sufficient for the lungs to be emptied and for the the covering of the plastron to be pushed outwards.

Proceeding on the assumption that the lungs are held full or close to full, the most likely scenario is that the glottis is closed and that the pressure of gases inside the lung increases, as assumed by Ireland and Gans. The other possibility, that the ‘diaphragm’ between the lungs and the rest of the body cavity is held tight such that fluid pressure changes are not transmitted to the lungs seems unlikely since that membranous diaphragm would appear to be much more compliant than the horny layer overlying the ‘hole’ in the plastron.

If this mechanism, the movement outwards of the leathery centre of the plastron brought about by  withdrawal of the legs and neck, does operate the corollary is that the tortoise ceases to breathe. And here we come to the known ability of tortoises to hold their breath for long periods. As anybody who has tried to anaesthetise a chelonian using a gaseous anaesthetic will affirm, the tortoise usually remains unanaesthetised by simply holding its breath for tens of minutes while keeping its legs and head drawn into its shell. I have seen such a tortoise after about 30 minutes suddenly thrust its head out and forcibly exhale, and I do mean forcibly. The sudden exhalation was as if pressure was first applied to the lung and then the glottis opened. The best analogy I can think of is the movement down the runway of an aeroplane first held in check by the brakes until the engines reaches full power.

Other factors would come into play. Terrestrial tortoises have large bladders. If full, less inward pressure would be needed on the body cavity from the active pulling inwards of the legs and head; if empty, more. The legs and head would have to virtually seal the gap between carapace and plastron, otherwise the soft skin would be expected to bulge outwards rather than leathery plastron.

This latter point brings me to suggest that an experimental test of the bulging plastron hypothesis is needed; in other words an extension of the approach of Ireland and Gans to see what happens in narrower crevices. I am not entirely convinced by the present arguments in favour. The reason I suggest more work is needed hinges on the properties of the horny material that covers the large hole in the bony plastron. The late bob Davies had a pair of Pancake Tortoises in the early 1990s. When I handled them, I found the horny covering of that hole to be thick and relatively inflexible. However, there was ‘give’. A slight push on the centre would move it inwards by a few millimetres—the ‘springy motion’ described by Procter when she handled the first living examples at the Zoo. The question of whether sufficient pressure can be exerted on the body cavity to make that horny material bulge outwards even by a few millimetres needs to be answered.

Joan Procter’s legacy, judged at the time to have been a tour de force, stills leaves intriguing questions about the Pancake Tortoise.


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Ireland L, Gans C. 1972. The adaptive significance of the flexible shell of the tortoise, Malacochersus tornieri. Animal Behaviour 20, 778-781.

Mautner A-K, Latimer AE, Fritz U, Scheyer TM, 2017. An updated description of the osteology of the Pancake Tortoise Malacochersus tornieri (Testudines: Testudinidae) with special focus on intraspecific variation. Journal of Morphology 278, 321-333.

Procter JB. 1922. A study of the remarkable tortoise, Testudo loveridgii Blgr., and the morphology of the chelonian carapace. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1922, 483-526.

Joan Procter, Arthur Loveridge and the Pancake Tortoise. 1. Arthur Loveridge in Tanganyika

To complete what I have to say about Joan Procter, I want to turn to what was then—and still is—regarded as her most important scientific investigation.

Deemed too chronically ill to be a university student, Joan Procter came to the attention of George Albert Boulenger at the Natural History Museum because of her enquiries about reptiles. He invited her to join him as an unpaid assistant when she left school in 1916. At the Museum she soon established a reputation for her work and when Boulenger retired in 1920 she took charge of the reptiles and received ‘a small stipend’; she was then 23.

She worked and published on a wide range of species as well as producing drawings, paintings and models for display cases. Her best known scientific work was that on the Pancake Tortoise published in 1922. She was able to do this work because Arthur Loveridge was sending specimens to the Museum from Tanganyika. His account of how he got the tortoises and why they were so sensational was published in his book, Many Happy Days I’ve Squandered first published in 1944 in USA and 1949 in UK.

     From Tabora I went to Dodoma, in central Tanganyika, the chief town of arid and desiccated Ugogo. It is a region that has always had a fascination for me. You never know what you will encounter on the leopard-haunted kopjes which relieve the flat monotony of the thorn-bush plain on which the township lies. 

     It was while scrambling over a kopje one evening that I came upon a strange-looking tortoise. The reptile was lying dead at the foot of a precipitous rock, some forty feet in height, near the summit of the hill which rose at least five hundred feet above the plain. From the flattened and fragmentary remains I concluded that the tortoise had been crushed by a falling rock and was of a species unknown to me. As Salimu and I examined it together we discussed its appearance, and I urged him to be on the lookout for more since he was free all day whereas I had only two hours each evening in which to go hunting. When a few days later he returned triumphant with a living example, I was much elated, for I recognized it as similar to the dead one and rightly assumed that it was a Tornier’s tortoise (Testudo tornieri), then considered the rarest of East African species and about the only one which I had not found. During succeeding evenings we located two further batches of the reptiles in crevices or beneath rocks but despite redoubled efforts found no more during the three weeks in which I was stationed at Dodoma. 

     The reason for the flattened appearance of these tortoises was now apparent; they could squeeze beneath rocks or into fissures which afforded them greater protection from hyenas and other carnivores than a strong shell could. Not only is their shell reduced to the thinness of stout paper but it is full of holes or fenestrations. Of these the largest is a great diamond-shaped opening that occupies most of the central portion of the lower shell or plastron. In such areas the creature is protected only by its handsomely patterned black and yellow, “tortoise-shell” shields. So soft and thin are the fenestrated bony plates forming the shell that it is a simple matter to squeeze the tortoise between finger and thumb. 

     The tortoise takes full advantage of this flexibility, as I soon found on trying to remove one from beneath a boulder. It inflated its lungs sufficiently to obtain additional purchase against the roof and floor of its retreat and, bracing its strongly clawed feet—some of the claws were over half an inch long—used them as struts so as to render its extraction extremely difficult. This can be accomplished eventually by gently and persistently working the reptile to and fro when you happen to be able to get a grip. I spent an hour, Salimu helping me, in dislodging three of the tortoises from a fissure into which they had clambered. Their flattened shells have a further asset; they enable them to right themselves quickly when they fall upon their backs, as must happen fairly frequently to tortoises living on rocky kopjes. Several times I have come across an unfortunate leopard tortoise (Testudo pardalis babcocki) which had slipped as it climbed some rock and fallen back so that the deep and convex shell lodged between two boulders. The poor tortoise, being unable to turn over, had perished miserably. 

     The agility of these light and long-clawed pancake tortoises was revealed when I put them in an enclosure surrounded by wire netting; about six inches of the wire was buried in the ground, leaving a fence two and a half feet high. While this was adequate to restrain Bell’s box tortoises (Kinixys belliana belliana), my pancake friends scoffed at it; they clambered up the netting to the top, where they balanced precariously for a fateful moment before toppling over to one side or the other. Nothing daunted if it was the wrong side, they would try again with such persistence that several succeeded in escaping. It was the same when they were put in a deep box; again and again, despite frequent falls, they climbed up in the corners in an almost incredible fashion. To my surprise I found that these tortoises from Dodoma could swim, though opportunities to practise the art must be rare in so arid a region as Ugogo. Had they been water tortoises like the familiar leathery flapjacks (Amyda spp) of the southern lakes and rivers or the fossilized Archelon of the Upper Cretaceous of North America, one would have explained their shell reduction as an adaptation to an aquatic life where a measure of lightness might facilitate swimming. 

     Duly labelling each of my half dozen tortoises Testudo tornieri, I shipped them off to the British Museum, where they arrived some months before I did. When at last I walked into Dr. G. A. Boulenger’s office, almost his first question was an inquiry as to what treatment or preservative I had employed to soften my tortoises and render them flat for packing! When I explained that they were naturally soft and that I had brought a pair back alive as a present for the London Zoological Gardens, he was amazed, declaring that they were the most interesting reptiles that had reached him during a lifetime devoted to herpetology. “What is this name Testudo tornieri?” he asked as he turned one of the reptiles over and over and glanced at its label. I gave him the reference and then and there he compared my series with the figures and description of Tornier’s tortoise. Finding them different in several minor respects, he asked if he might describe them as a new species (Testudo loveridgii) before the Academy of Science in Paris, of which he was president that year. 

     The announcement received considerable attention and the late Lord Rothschild urged me to get him a pair upon my return to East Africa. There seemed little likelihood at that time of my ever being within many hundred miles of Dodoma, but a year later the opportunity occurred for me to send Salimu. I told him not to spend more than a month and, whether successful or not, promised him his wages in addition to a bonus equivalent to one shilling for each tortoise he could find. Of course I was to pay his fare to and fro. He bargained for his wife’s fare also, and I conceded that. From our previous experiences both of us thought that these tortoises were extremely rare, so I was not surprised to learn that when he presented my letter of introduction to the provincial commissioner at Dodoma, the latter guffawed on reading it and said to Salimu: “So you’ve come to look for tortoises. Well, you’ll not find any here, for I haven’t heard of or seen one in all the years I’ve been here.” 

     Ten days or so later Salimu was back at Kilosa with a broad smile and sixty tortoises. Naturally he was pleased at making nearly two months’ extra pay in so short a time. “However did you manage to find so many?” I inquired. It had taken him the best part of three days to find the first, he said; then he showed it to the local tribesmen, offering them a few cents for any they brought him. Obviously the assumed rarity of the species was due largely to its secretive ways, for who would think of looking for tortoises beneath rocks? Yet it is there that they spend most of their time, emerging to feed only in the early morning. 

     It was in January that Salimu made this journey and found eleven under a single flattish boulder, where it is not unreasonable to assume that they were æstivating, for January and February are the hottest months in central Tanganyika. Yet it was in late January and February that mating took place among my captives, and the single egg was laid in July or August; one of these eggs was buried beneath a rockery in the enclosure. The fact that only a single egg is laid, an observation corroborated at the Philadelphia Zoo by Messrs. Conant and Downs, is eloquent testimony to the success of the adaptations which have rendered life so secure for the pancake tortoise that it has no need to lay a large number as do so many members of the order Chelonia. The eggshell is very thin and brittle and unusually elongate, for though it is only an inch or so in width it is from if to i| inches in length. 

     The hardiness of the pancake tortoise is attested to by the fact that, though it was midwinter when I took the first pair to Europe and they had to live in unheated trains and houses for over a week, one of them survived in the London Zoo for eight and a half years. During much of the journey they subsisted on bread and jam, for I had nothing else to offer them. Salimu’s numerous captives throve on lettuce or tender cabbage leaves, and one that I surprised on a kopje at Tabora was busily engaged in nibbling grass. 

     The sequel to the capture of the big series, intensively studied first by the late Dr. Joan Procter and in part by Dr. Otto Wettstein, was the latter’s discovery that Tornier’s original specimen was abnormal but might be matched by individuals in my series. Thus all represent one highly variable species now known as Malacochersus tornieri, for its many peculiarities justified the creation of a new genus for its reception.

Arthur Loveridge (1891-1980) at the outbreak of the First World War had just been appointed at the age of 23 as Curator of a new museum in Nairobi, Kenya. He was born in Penarth, near Cardiff, in Wales. His father was an ‘Ironmonger and Ship Furnisher’ who had been born in England; he mother was born in Ireland. Keen on natural history he had always wanted to be a museum curator. He had done a year as a student at University College Cardiff before getting a job at the University Museum in Manchester. He moved to the National Museum of Wales when he seized on the opportunity of the job in East Africa.

Carl Gans (1923-2009), who new Loveridge and who appears again as an important player in Part 2 of this story, wrote a splendid obituary on Loveridge. In it, he wrote:

The spectacular difference between Loveridge and other enthusiastic boy-naturalists was his total commitment to the pursuit of natural history as a career. In 1914, at the age of 24, he applied for the curatorship of the Nairobi Museum, advising in the application that he had over 300 cases of natural history and anthropological specimens and over 250 jars of “spirit-preserved” reptiles. He noted proudly that he was prepared to handle techniques of mounting and preserving all of his captures, described his complex system of registration and collecting numbers, and referred to an 80-page catalog, with short descriptions of all specimens, all typed by himself. Even his handwriting was small and meticulously formed with little change between top and bottom of pages or successive sheets. Field notes and labels (as well as his many letters) alike were beautifully readable.

The reason he was in that part of German East Africa first called Tanganyika after it was ceded to British control and now part of Tanzania is that he joined the East African Mounted Rifles and fought the German troops there. He collected specimens throughout this period, sometimes even while under fire. Specimens were stored in jars and bottles ‘liberated’ (in the British Army’s sense of the word) from the enemy. The war ended and after a time back in Nairobi he became Assistant Game Warden of Tanganyika in 1921. However, his location soon shifted.

As well as the British Museum and London Zoo, Loveridge sent specimens to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, as well as amassing his own private collection. In 1924, Thomas Barbour, of that museum and with a very large private income, bought Loveridge’s collection for Harvard with one stipulation—Loveridge should come too. That he did and for 33 years he was at first assistant to Barbour and then Curator. He is said to have written his popular books because the pay was meagre for a curator who was not also a Harvard professor.

Stories of Loveridge’s curatorial habits abound, of a drawer labelled ‘string too short to use’, of books and specimens having to be returned to their particular place each night and chairs left properly arranged. Alfred Sherwood Romer (1894-1973) at the Museum from 1934 and Director from 1946 labelled Loveridge the “Demon Curator”.

Loveridge made five expeditions to East Africa, each lasting for a year, between 1926 and 1949. When he retired in 1957 he and his wife moved to a spot about as remote as anywhere in the world, St Helena in the South Atlantic. He made other expeditions, had trips to London and carried on working, and corresponding—slowly via the St Helena mail ships. He died there in 1980, aged 88.

I found this press photograph of Arthur Loveridge with his wife,
Mary, taken on his retirement from Harvard

Part 2 to follow considers what Joan Procter did with Loveridge’s specimens and the question of ‘inflation’.

Anon. Loveridge, Arthur (1891-1980). 2014. In, Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Volume 1, revised and expanded. Edited by Kraig Adler, pp 111-112. (Contributions to Herpetology 30, Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles).

Gans C. 1981. In Memoriam: Arthur Loveridge. Herpetologica 37, 117-121.

Loveridge A. 1949. Many Happy Days I’ve Squandered. London: Scientific Book Club.

Williams EE. 1982. Arthur Loveridge—A life in retrospect. Breviora No 471, 1-12.

Joan Procter. Her Reptile House at London Zoo and Reptilian Thermoregulation

It is only when one reads the detail of Joan Procter’s Reptile House at London Zoo that one realises she was decades ahead of her time in terms of knowledge of the thermal requirements of reptiles. The Reptile House opened in June 1927. Apart from its ‘aquarium-principle’ lighting, crowd circulation and safe-handling area for venomous snakes, the spectra of both natural and artificial lighting were specified while additional heat was supplied to different places of the cages thus creating a temperature gradient which allowed the animals to bask and raise their body temperature above that of their surroundings.

In Joan Procter’s own words when describing how the Komodo Dragons were housed and how they had lived in the new Reptile House for 18 months:

They live in a large enclosure of natural shingle and soil, planted with living palm-trees, and provided with a cave, rocks, and a swimming-pool. A great deal of care has been exercised to provide proper climatic conditions. The roof is of Vita-glass, transparent to ultra-violet light, and Vita-lamps for artificial sunlight are installed together with two large flood-light lamps. Dull-heat radiators of the beam type are also fixed, and all this apparatus, which is invisible to the public. is protected by massive steel bars. Further, the rocks themselves are electrically heated with a type of black-heat radiator let into the actual rock, and controlled, together with the air-heaters by a thermostat, which in turn is governed by a fool-proof warning system. The light and heat are chiefly focussed on a large rock in the centre of the enclosure, and, as the dragons immediately discovered this, they are usually to be seen sunning themselves upon it.

Those who know anything about reptiles will recognise this as a throughly modern way of keeping lizards. As I pointed out in a previous article the Vita glass was to let ultraviolet rays in sunlight reach the animals. Her ‘Vita-lamps’ were actually ultraviolet-emitting lamps with Vita glass filters to block just the very short wavelengths which experiments had determined were deleterious.

Previously, reptiles kept in temperate climates were kept in accommodation heated to the temperature of a tropical shade environment. Most had no opportunity to bask and raise their temperature above the ambient. The science of thermoregulation in reptiles really only took off in the 1940s and the concepts like ‘preferred body temperature’ and  ‘behavioural thermoregulation’ developed. Thus while reptiles are indeed cold-blooded they were found able to maintain body temperatures above that of their surroundings during the hours of daylight by shuttling between the heat of the sun and the relative cool of the shade. Komodo Dragons have been shown, comparatively recently, to follow that pattern.

The preferred body temperature was later shown to be that which is optimal for biochemical processes within the body. Reptiles not allowed to achieve their preferred body temperature, even though kept in warm ‘tropical’ daytime air temperatures, were function sub-optimally. It is not surprising that such animals are lethargic, their immune system left unable to cope with infection and infestation, do not breed—and do not survive for very long. Reptiles, particularly larger ones, take a long time to die.

Joan Procter was aware that she had designed accommodation for Komodo Dragons that was superior to that elsewhere. She quoted from William Douglas Burden’s book Dragon Lizards of Komodo (see my article on the Burden expedition to Komodo here):

     …We hear of specimens taken to New York* that “it was painful to see the broken spirited beasts that barely had strength to drag themselves from one end of their cage to the other.”     ‘’"SureIy it is not all a matter of diet and change of climate... Perhaps…Varanus komodoensis, in order to survive, demands the freedom of his rugged mountains.” ...,but our specimens are perfectly happy in captivity, are attached to their keepers and their friends, and are putting on a great deal of weight.

I think we can take that as London 2: New York 0, 1928 style.

This photograph of a small boy and a Komodo Dragon may have been
taken in the original accommodation in the Reptile House in London
Zoo in 1932. Joan Procter and the keepers always seemed keen
to demonstrate how tame the Dragons had become

The heating and lighting equipment was not ‘off the shelf’. The General Electric Company Ltd (not to be confused with the American company of the same name) had research and development labs at Wembley. The Times (15 June 1927) in describing the new house reported:

The very elaborate electrical installation devised by the Research Department of the General Electric Company to meet the special requirements forms an achievement in electrical installation which is unique, and cannot be described in detail here. It may be said, however, that the installation has approximately 20 miles of electric cable for the heating system and 12 miles for the indicators and tell-tales, and that some of the compartments have up to 200 electrical connexions. The wiring for lighting is almost equally elaborate.

Miss Procter wanted material for the walls that could be cleaned. She therefore had the theatrical scenic artist, John Bull, use car enamel that would be resistant to scrubbing. I cannot find a photograph of any of the scenes painted on the walls of the cages—perhaps a good job since I utterly loathe naturalistic painted backgrounds.

It is clear from contemporary diagrams that the Komodo Dragons were kept in the large enclosures at the southern end of the Reptile House, used, ever since I first went to the Zoo in the 1950s, to house crocodilians. Their glass roofs can be seen in Google Earth—just a short distance away from the new housing for Komodo Dragons.

This Google Earth View of the Reptile House shows the windows
above the cages where the Komodo Dragons were housed. Vita
glass was installed originally. Has it survived?
The new enclosure covered in plastic is the current housing
for Komodo Dragons

It is easy to criticise—ninety years after it opened—aspects of the Reptile House. The compartments for large snakes seem of the wrong proportions, for example. The domestic architect but President of RIBA, Guy (later Sir) Dawber (1861-1938), who took Joan Procter’s very detailed plans, made them buildable and added the external features seems to have missed a few tricks. The sides, especially the western elevation which forms one side of the alley between the equally depressing edge of the Mappin Terraces, are devoid of life. Guillery suggests the outward-facing cage on the eastern side (which often used to house interesting chelonians and is the only relief from the drabness) was inserted later. Dawber also designed—again from a detailed layout by Joan Procter and Chalmers Mitchell—the exterior of the nearby main entrance to the Zoo in the same Italianate style used by earlier architects. I sometimes wonder if Dawber took umbrage at the minor role he was accorded by the Chalmers Mitchell publicity machine; he did not attend the opening of the Reptile House.

But Joan Procter’s house was clearly a great leap forward for the Zoo. But there was still much to learn since reptiles and amphibians died in large numbers after importation. Even the best conditions will not reverse the effects of the stress of capture, storage in unsuitable accommodation and then long sea journeys at temperatures below the optimum together with under- and/or mal-nutrition. Real advances, other than air transport, in how to keep reptiles, other than the ‘easy’ species, would not come for another four or five decades.

I can't resist showing one of my photographs of these wild Komodo Dragons
taken in 2016

*These Komodo Dragons in New York seem to have been forgotten by historians. Their arrival in USA is usually given as 1934, Washington.

Guillery P. 1993. The Buildings of London Zoo. London: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.

Peaker M. 1969. Some aspects of the thermal requirements of reptiles in captivity. International Zoo Yearbook 9, 3-8. Zoological Society of London. London: Academic Press. 

Procter JB. 1928. On a living Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis Ouwens, exhibited at the Scientific Meeting, 23 October 1928. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1928, 1017–1019.