Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Curator

First Title value, for Searching Redford, George (1816 - 1895)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-10-31
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003000-E003099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375238375238
Occupation Curator General surgeon
Details George Redford is chiefly remembered in connection with sculpture. He was Registrar of the Crystal Palace Collection of Sculpture in 1853-1854; Curator of the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, 1857; Commissioner for the National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds, 1868. He lived at Cricklewood, London, and died there on October 26th, 1895. His eldest son, George Alexander Redford, was well known for many years as the official examiner of plays. Publication: *A Manual of Ancient Sculpture, Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, with illustrations and chronological lists of ancient sculptors and their works*, 8vo, London, 1886. There is a copy in the College Library, interesting as the work of a Fellow.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003055
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Greeves, Reginald Affleck (1878 - 1966)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-08-05
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005700-E005799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377943377943
Occupation Curator General practitioner Ophthalmic surgeon Pathologist
Details Born at Springtown, Co Down, on 23 August 1878, youngest of the eleven children of Thomas M. Greeves whose family, at first Quakers and later Plymouth Brethren, had been settled in Northern Ireland since the mid-seventeenth century. Affleck Greeves was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, where he won an exhibition, and at University College Hospital and Guy's, graduating MB London in 1903 and BS with honours in 1906, when he also took the Conjoint Diploma in the summer and the Fellowship in December. For the next two years he was in general practice in the Transvaal, South Africa, where he married, in 1908, Sarah, daughter of Leonard Acutt of Natal. Returning to London he was appointed surgical tutor and registrar at Guy's, but decided to specialise in ophthalmology. After serving as pathologist and curator of the museum at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital (Moorfields), he was appointed assistant ophthalmic surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital in 1914 and to Moorfields in 1915. He became a consultant surgeon to both these hospitals, retiring from Moorfields at the sixty-year age limit in 1938, but from the Middlesex only in 1946. He had also been on the staff at Paddington Green Children's Hospital and at St Saviour's Hospital, had lectured on ophthalmology at Oxford, and was a Conjoint Board examiner for the DOMS. Though somewhat nervous and reserved, Greeves was a brilliant diagnostician, achieved excellent results as a surgeon, and proved a first-class teacher, particularly in clinical work with graduate students. He became an authority on lesions of the fundus, whose opinion was sought and valued by colleagues and former students long after his retirement. He published influential papers on ocular pathology and many case histories, particularly in the *Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society*, of which he was a member for fifty-five years, becoming President for 1941-42. He was Montgomery Lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1935. Greeves carried on a large private practice at 23 Wimpole Street long after giving up his hospital work, finally retiring in 1960 when he was eighty-two. His country home was at Crapstone, near Yelverton, in Devonshire. His wife had died in 1954, and he died on 4 October 1966 aged eighty-eight, survived by his daughter and two sons, the elder of whom was also an ophthalmic surgeon. Though brought up in a narrowly puritanical home, Greeves was a man of wide cultivation, a traveller and linguist, a pianist and trained musician, with a keen appreciation of painting and drawing. His students and patients became his lifelong friends.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005760
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Beadles, Cecil Fowler (1867 - 1933)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-04-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003800-E003899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376007376007
Occupation Curator Pathologist Physician
Details Somewhat above middle height, clean-shaven with prematurely white hair and of ascetic appearance, Cecil Beadles was unmarried and lived for his garden and the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was so excessively shy that he was rarely seen even by his colleagues unless they went to look for him in the work-rooms or the museum of the College. He was born in 1867, the son of Hubert Beadles, of Southgate, and thus came of a family of general practitioners, some of whom practised in Forest Hill and others at New Southgate, when both were villages which had not yet become engulfed by the suburbs of London. He was educated at University College, where he won the gold medal for histology in 1885 and became known to S G Shattock, then curator of the museum. He qualified MRCS and LRCP in 1890 and must soon have recognized his unfitness to deal with private patients, for his shyness made him brusque in manner and address. He was house surgeon at the Cancer Hospital for a short time and from 1892 until 1906 was assistant medical officer at the London County Asylum, Colney Hatch. Here he did good scientific work and contributed articles to *The Lancet* as early as 1891, 2, 754 and 1892, 2, 1159, showed cases at the Pathological Society and wrote in the *Journal of Mental Science*, work which led to the award of a prize by the Medico-psychological Association in 1894 for his dissertation entitled "The degenerative lesions of the arterial system in the insane". He resigned his post at Colney Hatch in 1906 and became an unofficial worker at the Royal College of Surgeons, where his value was recognized by S G Shattock, the pathological curator. In 1908 he was a Hunterian professor of surgery and pathology, and in October 1909 he was appointed to assist Shattock in selecting, arranging, and cataloguing specimens in the museum to illustrate the main principles of general pathology. His energy, foresight, orderliness, and excellent technique, aided by the wide philosophic outlook of Professor Shattock, completed "for the first time", as Sir Arthur Keith wrote, "a work written not in words but in illustrative specimens, a complete and systematic treatise on general pathology". From 1916 onwards Beadles was engaged in arranging and describing the Army medical war collection of pathological and other specimens. The work occupied him, with the help of T W P Lawrence, FRCS, until 1921, when the preparations were entrusted by the War Office to the keeping of the College. The College recognized his services in 1927, when he was elected FRCS without examination. He was appointed pathological curator when Shattock died in 1925, and from then onwards was engaged in the never-ending task of making a new descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens in the museum together with the examination and description of those which are being constantly added. He died on 3 January 1933 at Gresham House, Egham, and was buried at Englefield Green. It may fairly be said of Beadles that he was in the true line of succession of those who built up the pathological side of the Hunterian Museum: Clift, Paget, Doran, Goodhart, Targett, and Shattock; more he would not have wished.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003824
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Carter, Robert Markham (1875 - 1961)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-02-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004900-E004999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377132377132
Occupation Curator General surgeon Pathologist
Details Born on 18 October 1875, son of Captain Arthur William Markham Carter of the 25th Native Infantry and Rosalie Edmunds Bradley, Robert Markham Carter was educated at Epsom where he played in the fifteen. He then studied medicine at St George's and St Bartholomew's Hospitals and in Paris. He took the MRCS and LRCP in 1901 and entered the Indian Medical Service on 29 January 1902 as medical officer to the 1st Bombay Lancers. From 1903 to 1904 he was attached to the Anglo-Turkish Boundary Commission in the Aden interior. During leave in Britain in 1904 he carried out research work in several laboratories. On his return to India, then a Captain, he was posted to the North-West Frontier, where in the Zakka Khel expedition of 1908 he was severely wounded. He was awarded the medal with clasp. After this Carter was transferred to the civil side of the Service and his first posting was at the Pasteur Institute, Kasauli where his previous research experience was useful, but he wished to devote his life to clinical work so in 1911 he went to St George's Hospital, Bombay as resident surgeon. He obtained the FRCS in 1912 and was appointed Professor of Materia Medica and Pharmacy at the Grant Medical College in that year. In 1913 Carter became Second Presidency Surgeon, and 2nd Physician at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy Hospital, Bombay, and the following year he was appointed Third Presidency Surgeon, Professor of Pathology and Morbid Anatomy, and Curator of the Museum of the Grant Medical College, Bombay. With the outbreak of the first world war Carter was recalled to military duty and placed in medical charge of the Varela. This hospital ship was sent to Basra to evacuate casualties from the defeat at Ctesiphon. The many sick and wounded were transported in barges along the tortuous river Tigris; Carter was profoundly shocked by their condition on arrival and said so. This criticism led to a succession of stormy interviews in which Carter was accused of being meddlesome and interfering, but he was not intimidated by threats of arrest and loss of his career. He insisted on a personal interview with the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir John Nixon. The result is recorded in the report of the Mesopotamian Commission, which contains these words: "Carter by his persistence brought to the notice of his superiors the terrible condition of the wounded when they arrived at Basra after Ctesiphon, and in other ways he revealed shortcomings which might have been ignored and left unremedied. His sense of duty seems to be most commendable, and he was fertile and resourceful in suggesting remedies." In April 1916 Carter was sent to the India Office in Whitehall to organise medical equipment for the Mesopotamian expedition; when the War Office took over the operations Carter was transferred there and was made responsible for the complete fitting out of the hospital ships. He organised a river hospital fleet, a water-post system and purification plant, an ice-making fleet and refrigerator barges. He was thrice mentioned in dispatches, and given the brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel on 26 April 1916. In 1918 Carter was appointed CB and placed on special duty under the Controller-General of Merchant Shipping. He did valuable work for the Admiralty as medical supervisor of labour and housing. After the war he returned to his civil career in Bombay, as first Physician at the JJ Hospital and Professor at the Grant Medical College. In 1925 he was appointed First Presidency Surgeon, and consulting physician to the European General Hospital, Bombay. He retired in 1927 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He married Kate Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander Michie Saunderson; they had one son and three daughters. He died on 13 March 1961 at his home, Paddock Cottage, Ascot, Berkshire at the age of 85. Mrs Carter died there on 30 April 1965 aged 86.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004949
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Colyer, Sir James Frank (1866 - 1954)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-02-05
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004900-E004999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377152377152
Occupation Curator Dental surgeon
Details Born on 25 September 1866 he trained as a dental surgeon at the Royal Dental Hospital, and completed his medical education at the Charing Cross Hospital. He served as house surgeon and demonstrator of operative dentistry at the Royal Dental Hospital, and was subsequently surgeon to the Hospital and Dean of its School 1904-09. At Charing Cross Hospital he was elected dental surgeon in 1893. During the first world war he was consulting dental surgeon to Croydon War Hospital, the Queen's Hospital for Facial Injuries at Sidcup, and to the Ministry of Pensions. He took a prominent part in the work of the British Dental Association, the Odontological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine of which he was president in 1919, and the British Society of Dental Surgeons of which he was the first president in 1932. From 1900 he was honorary curator of the museum of the Odontological Society which was vested in the Royal Society of Medicine and transferred in 1908 from the Royal Dental Hospital to the Royal College of Surgeons. Sir Frank built up this museum during more than fifty years' work and largely at his own cost to be the most comprehensive collection of comparative odontology in the world. On this collection he based his invaluable historical books. His textbook, first published as *Diseases and Injuries of the Teeth* in collaboration with Morton Smale, was revised with the help of Evelyn Sprawson and ran to eight editions under the title of *Dental Surgery and Pathology*. Colyer was universally respected and loved for his sterling and forthright character, the simplicity with which he carried his great knowledge, and his ever-youthful zest. In younger days he was an active player of ball games and continued to follow them with keen interest. In later years he could not easily accept the changing policy of the College Council who, in his view, put the social life and teaching work of the College too far before the interests of the Hunterian Museum of which he was a Trustee. However he loyally carried on his work as honorary curator, even when his exhibits were partially dismantled. Colyer was elected a Fellow of the College in 1916 and was created KBE for his war-work in 1920. The Royal Society of Medicine founded a triennial Colyer prize in 1926 to commemorate his first 25 years service to the Museum, and the Faculty of Dental Surgery, whose Fellowship he accepted in 1947, awarded him its first Colyer medal in gold in 1954. He was a vice-president of the section of comparative medicine at the centenary meeting of the British Medical Association in London in 1932, and was elected an honorary member of the British Dental Association. He married in 1895 Lucy Olivia Simpson who died on 5 September 1950. He died on 30 March 1954, aged 87, survived by his son, Norman Colyer, a house-master at Epsom College, and his daughter Mrs Bilham. His other daughter, Eileen Colyer, a prominent lawn tennis player, had died very young. Sir Frank Colyer's portrait, by Clarence White, was presented by his admirers to the British Dental Association on his eightieth birthday in 1946, and his own replica was given after his death to the Odontological Museum by his son. Publications: *Diseases and Injuries of the Teeth*, with Morton Smale 1893; 8th edition (*Dental Surgery and Pathology*, with Evelyn Sprawson) 1942. *Dental Disease in its relation to general medicine*. 1911 *John Hunter and odontology*. 1913. *Chronic general periodontitis*. 1916. *Variations and diseases of the teeth of animals*. 1936. *Old Instruments for extracting teeth*. 1952.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004969
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Eve, Sir Frederick Samuel (1853 - 1916)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2011-11-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001600-E001699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373846373846
Occupation Curator General surgeon Ophthalmic surgeon
Details Son of William Eve, The Manor, North Orthendon, Essex; entered St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1872, and was House Surgeon to Luther Holden (qv) in 1876-1877. After that he studied surgery at Leipzig, and becoming FRCS, was appointed Curator of the St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum in 1879. In conjunction with Anthony A Bowlby (qv) he compiled in 1882 a catalogue of the Museum, and meanwhile made several communications to the *St Bartholomew's Hospital Reports*. In 1881, with the support of Paget, Flower, and others, a pathological curatorship in the Museum of the College was instituted, and Eve was appointed; he held the post until 1890. In the *Transactions* of the Pathological Society are some sixty papers by Eve, with descriptions of pathological specimens. As Erasmus Wilson Lecturer (1882-1884) he gave his first description of cystic tumours of the jaw (distinguishing the unilocular from the multilocular) and the connection with disturbed enamel formation. A revised account "On Cystic and Encysted Solid Tumours of the Jaws" appeared in the *Transactions* of the Odontological Society, 1886. Eve dwelt in particular upon tumours and cysts, adding the microscopic appearances to the clinical ones. Among descriptions of museum specimens may be noted: those relating to diseases of animals, rare tumours of the great omentum, renal tumours combining sarcomatous and embryonic muscle tissue, endotheliomata of the brain, cystic tumours of the testis, gigantism of the extremities, psorospermic cysts in the mucous membrane of the ureter; enlargement of lymphatic glands was demonstrated to be tuberculous although caseation was absent, and lupus was identified as a tuberculous disease. An appointment upon the staff of the London Hospital caused Eve to leave St Bartholomew's; he was at first Surgical Registrar, in 1884 Assistant Surgeon, Surgeon in 1888, Consulting Surgeon in 1914. He also acted as Ophthalmic Surgeon before a special department was instituted, and lectured on pathology. He served as Assistant Surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital and was Surgeon to the Evelina Hospital for Children. He published many surgical observations, his surgery being infused with his pathological knowledge, microscopical as well as naked-eye - for example, in his cases of melanotic tumours following injury, and those of tumours at the base of the tongue. He was Secretary of the Section of Surgery at the Nottingham Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1892, Vice-President of the Section of Diseases of Children at Bristol in 1894, and President of the same Section at Cheltenham in 1901. He was a Member of the Court of Examiners of the College from 1902-1911, was elected to the Council in 1904, gave the Bradshaw Lectures on "Acute Hemorrhagic Pancreatitis" in 1914, and was Vice-President at the time of his death. He was knighted in 1911. At the outbreak of the War he became Major RAMC (TF), 2nd London General Hospital, and in December, 1914, he was appointed Surgeon to the Eastern Command with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. This post involved him in long journeys. In July, 1915, with the assistance of Dr A S Woods, he organized a special hospital at Croydon for Gunshot Injuries of Nerves. He was attacked by influenza, followed by pneumonia, and he died on December 15th, 1916. There was a memorial service at All Saints', Margaret Street. He was survived by Lady Eve, a daughter of H E Cox, of Jamaica, by a son then serving in France, and by a daughter.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001663
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Lawrence, Thomas William Pelham (1858 - 1936)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-07-31
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004300-E004399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376521376521
Occupation Curator Pathologist
Details Born 20 March 1858 at The Grange, Ware, Herts, the fifth of the seven sons of Robert Lawrence, owner of maltings at Ware and Hertford, and of Elizabeth Dawes, his wife. He was educated at the Cholmely School, Highgate under J Bradley Dyne, DD, and played rugby in the first XV. He began to study law in a solicitor's office, but in 1879 entered University College Hospital. He soon attracted the attention of Sir George Dancer Thane, professor of anatomy at University College, by his skilful dissections and his artistic powers, and became his assistant demonstrator. After a short experience as assistant to a doctor in Devonshire he returned to London and was appointed curator of the museum at University College in succession to Charles Stonham in October 1890, became lecturer on morbid anatomy in UCF Medical School in 1910, and was pathologist to the hospital from 1910 until 1924. As curator of the museum at University College he was responsible for the description of the surgical and obstetric specimens, and he arranged all the preparations in the museum of the new medical school after its separation from the College. In 1923 he retired from University College and went to the Royal College of Surgeons to assist Cecil Beadles, who followed Samuel Shattock as pathological curator. Beadles died in 1933 and Lawrence continued to serve until March 1935, when he retired on account of ill-health. His retirement was marked by a special vote of thanks from the President and Council of the College and by a farewell banquet at the Langham Hotel given by his numerous friends and colleagues. He lived during his active life at Latimer Cottage, Epsom Lane, Tadworth, Surrey, and died on 26 June 1936 at Shaston, Little Common, Sussex, survived by his wife, Christina Knewstub, whom he had married on 6 August 1902, and by his only child, a daughter. Lawrence was a man of many interests in life and his motto was "thorough", for all that he did was well done and always to the very best of his ability. Well read in Latin and Greek, he knew French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Russian, and kept himself well informed of the chief works on pathology in those languages. His artistic ability is seen in the drawings of the bones which he made for the tenth edition of Quain's *Anatomy*. He was devoted to his garden and was skilled in the almost lost art of mowing with a scythe. He was a true friend and a man of great modesty and self-effacement. Publications: Necrosis of the cortex of both kidneys, with Sir John Rose Bradford, *J Path Bact* 1893, 5, 195. The optic commissure. *J Anat* 1894, 28, *Proc Anat Soc* pp 18-20. Redescription of the specimen of spondylolisthesis in the museum of University College. *Trans Obstet Soc Lond* 1900, 42, 75-89. *University College, London: Descriptive catalogue of surgical pathology*, new edition, with Raymond Johnson. London, 1899-1906. True hermaphroditism in the human subject. *Trans Path Soc Lond* 1905-06, 57, 21-44, with summary in Latin. Tumours, in Choyce's *System of Surgery*, 3rd edition, 1932, 1, 328-587, with Raymond Johnson. A note on the pathology of the Kanam mandible; notes on the pathology of a neolithic skeleton and also certain pathological bones from Bromhead's site, Elmenteita, appendices A and D, in L S B Leakey's *Stone-age races of Kenya*, 1935. He delivered the Erasmus Wilson demonstrations at the RCS 1928, on surgical specimens in the museum; they were not published.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004338
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Owen, Sir Richard (1804 - 1892)

2024-04-28T21:02:26Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-09-12
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002800-E002899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375060375060
Occupation Anatomist Curator
Details Born on July 20th, 1804, the younger son of Richard Owen, a West India merchant, by his wife, Catherine, a daughter of Robert Parrin, organist of the Parish Church of Lancaster. He was educated at the Lancaster Grammar School, where he made a lasting friendship with William Whewell, who became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was apprenticed in 1820 to Mr Dickson, surgeon and apothecary, at Lancaster; his master died in 1822 and he was turned over to Joseph Seed, and in 1823 to James Stockdale Harrison, as Seed had become a Naval Surgeon. Harrison was Surgeon to the County Gaol, and Owen became interested in anatomy through the post-mortem examinations on the prisoners. He matriculated at Edinburgh in 1824, and attended the extramural lectures of Dr John Barclay which dealt with comparative as well as human anatomy. He did not graduate in the University, but travelled to London in the spring of 1825 with a letter of introduction to John Abernethy, who at once appointed him prosector for his surgical lectures at St Bartholomew's Hospital. As soon as he had obtained the diploma of the College of Surgeons, Owen set up in private practice at 11 Cook's Court, Carey Street, Chancery Lane; but the results do not seem to have fulfilled his expectations, for in 1829 he became Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at a nominal salary in the Medical School attached to St Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1830 he made some efforts to obtain the office of House Surgeon at the Birmingham General Hospital, but did not persist in his candidature as he was already becoming engrossed in comparative anatomy. By the influence of Abernethy, in March, 1827, he had been appointed an Assistant in the Hunterian Museum at the College of Surgeons at a salary of £30 a quarter. The Conservator was William Clift, and from him Owen learnt the unbounded respect which he always showed for the works and memory of John Hunter. Clift's son, the Assistant Conservator, was killed in a cab accident and Owen was appointed to fill his place in 1832. In 1836 Owen appears as Conservator jointly with Clift, and in 1842 he came into residence at the College when Clift was allowed to live outside. Clift died in 1849, and Owen then continued as Conservator until 1856, J T Quekett being associated with him in the post from 1852. In 1830 he made the acquaintance of Cuvier, at whose invitation he paid a visit to Paris, attended the lectures of Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and worked in the dissecting-rooms and public galleries of the Jardin des Plantes. In 1832 he published his *Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus*, which placed him at once in the front rank of comparative anatomists and led to his election as FRS in 1834. He started the *Zoological Magazine* in January, 1833, but sold it and resigned the editorship in the following July. For seven years he had been engaged to Caroline Amelia Clift, the only daughter of William Clift, and he married her on July 20th, 1835. In April, 1836, he was appointed Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the College of Surgeons, and annually until 1855 he delivered the twenty-four lectures illustrating the Hunterian Collection. These lectures were given under Clause 2 of the Terms and Conditions on which the Hunterian Collection was delivered to the Company of Surgeons, which provided "that one Course of Lectures, not less than twenty-four in number, on Comparative Anatomy and other subjects illustrated by the preparations, shall be given every year by some Member of the Company." The lectures were of a high character and formed the nucleus of the volumes on the *Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrates* which he published afterwards. By them and by his writings he became widely known, even to the public, as one of the leading scientific men of the day. In 1842 Sir Robert Peel obtained a Civil List Pension for him of £200 a year, but Owen shortly afterwards declined the offer of knighthood. In 1852 Queen Victoria gave him the cottage called Sheen Lodge in Richmond Park, and here he lived until his death, the grant being continued to his daughter-in-law. He had lived from 1842 in the uncomfortable rooms allotted to the Conservator which had direct access to the College premises. He revisited Paris in 1853 and 1855, and on the second occasion was decorated a Knight of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III. Advancing years and perhaps a somewhat overpowering sense of his own importance made him difficult. Having failed to persuade the Council of the College of Surgeons to convert their Collection into a National Museum, he resigned the office of Conservator in 1856 and undertook to act as Keeper of the Natural History Collection at the British Museum. Here he was under the control of the principal Librarian, and the second period of his life began. Hitherto he had been in charge of a localized, well arranged, and, largely owing to his own exertions, well catalogued museum; he now became the head of a vast national collection under the care of Chiefs who considered themselves responsible to the Trustees alone, whilst the treasures were poorly housed, badly described, and insufficiently displayed. His first business was to overhaul the specimens, with the result that he published a series of masterly papers dealing more especially with osteology and paleontology. The outcome of his work appeared in the three great volumes on *The Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrates*, which were published between 1866 and 1868. As early as 1859 he urged on the Government the necessity for forming a National Museum of Natural History independent of the British Museum, but it was not until 1873 that the building of such a museum was actually begun at South Kensington, nor until 1881 that it was opened to the public. The provision of such a building was greatly helped by Mr W E Gladstone, who no doubt was influenced by his friend Sir Henry Acland, the protagonist in the fight for the New Museums at Oxford. Owen resigned his post two years later - in 1883 - having overcome some of the difficulties and having supervised the transfer of the specimens from Bloomsbury to South Kensington. He was gazetted KCB on January 5th, 1884, and his Civil List Pension was increased to £300 a year. He died peacefully of old age at Sheen Lodge, Richmond, on December 18th, 1892, and was buried in the churchyard at Ham Common, Surrey. His wife died on May 7th, 1873, and his only son in 1886, leaving a widow and seven children who lived with Owen at Sheen Lodge during his latter years. One of these children, the Rev Richard Owen, published a life of his grandfather. Richard Owen was *facile princeps* the chief British comparative anatomist of his age and is comparable with his great contemporary Baron Cuvier. By his careful dissections and unwearied labours in early life he did much to elucidate the work of John Hunter. In middle life he built up a system of transcendental anatomy based on the philosophy of Lorenz Oken (1779-1851) which was founded upon an unproved hypothesis of a vertebrate archetype. In later life he was unable to accept Darwin's generalizations, proved himself somewhat of an obstructionist, and drew upon himself the wrath of Huxley and the younger biologists. He was an indefatigable worker and his literary output was enormous. In spite of this, he found time for several hobbies. He was a great reader of poetry and romance, and in extreme old age could recite whole pages of his favourite authors. He was enthusiastic in his love of music, and it is said that he was present thirty nights in succession when Weber's "Oberon" was first produced in London. He was himself a vocalist and no mean performer on the flute and the violoncello; he was also an expert player of chess. In person he was tall and in figure ungainly, with a massive head, lofty forehead, curiously round, prominent, and expressive eyes, high cheek-bones, large mouth, and projecting chin, long, lank dark hair, a very florld complexion, and throughout the greater part of his life he was clean-shaven. The acrimony with which Owen pursued quarrels and a certain inaptitude for ordinary business matters prevented him from filling the many high official positions to which his scientific pre-eminence might otherwise have entitled him. Nevertheless he obtained innumerable rewards. He received the Royal and the Copley Medals of the Royal Society; the Prix Cuvier of the French Academy; the Prussian order 'Pour le Mérite'; the cross of the French Legion of Honour the Order of St Maurice and St Lazarus of Italy; the Order of Leopold of Belgium; and the Order of the Rose of Brazil. He was one of the eight foreign associates of the Institut de France, and was enrolled as an honorary member of nearly all the scientific societies in Europe. The Royal College of Physicians of London conferred upon him the Baly Medal for physiology, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1883 made him one of the few recipients of its honorary Gold Medal. HRH the Prince Consort became interested in his work; in April, 1860, he was called upon to lecture to the Royal children at Buckingham Palace, and in March and April, 1864, he lectured to them at Windsor in the presence of Queen Victoria and Leopold, King of the Belgians. The number of portraits, photographs, and engravings of Sir Richard Owen is very large. Chief amongst them is the bronze bust on a large scale by Alfred Gilbert, MVO, RA, which is of extraordinary excellence. It is unsigned and is in the Osteological Room (iv) in the Museum, and was executed to the order of the council in 1895 in recognition of his outstanding merit as well as of his services to the College. There is also a plaster cast of an unsigned bust, which appears to have been made from the marble bust by E H Bailey, RA. The marble bust is dated 1845 and is in the Hall of the College. It was left by Mrs Owen, the daughter-in-law, in 1920. The College possesses a large collection of other portraits of Owen, among which may be mentioned: (i) A proof engraving by W Walker after the portrait by Henry William Pickersgill. This engraving is dated London, Jan 1st, 1852 ; it is signed 'Richard Owen'. (ii) A miniature portrait in water-colour by W Etty, RA, which hangs in the Conservators' room, shows Owen at the age of 48. (iii) A fine portrait which appeared in *Nature*, engraved by Jeens from a photograph (the date is 1880). (iv) A portrait by J H Maguire, 1850, printed by Hanhart and engraved by D J Pund after a portrait by Watkins. There are also engravings (1) showing Owen bearded and apparently lecturing in extreme old age; (2) a small engraving in which Owen is holding an enormous femur. He wears the old gown of the Hunterian Professors. The gown, when falling into holes, was sent by the Rev Richard Owen to the College, with the wish that it might be preserved in a glass case. The Linnean Society, of which Owen was elected a Fellow in 1836, possesses a lithograph by J H Maguire (Ipswich Series); a photo-engraving from a photograph by Elliott and Fry, and an engraving from the painting by H I Thaddeus. Among caricatures of Owen may be cited 'Old Bones', possibly by 'Ape' or 'Spy', which appeared in *Vanity Fair*, March 1st, 1873, and one by H I Thaddeus showing Owen in extreme old age (bearded), signing proof engravings of his portrait. (Both of these are in the College Collections.) There are two remarkable photographs of Owen in the Council Album, and another by Miss Acland, daughter of Sir Henry Acland, after a drawing by Richmond. A caricature of Owen presiding over a dinner-party of wild animals and palaeontological monsters at the 1847 meeting of the Palaeontographical Society was presented by Sir John Bland-Sutton. It is an admirable drawing and portrait; the artist is unknown. A portrait painted by Holman Hunt was exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881, and in the same year Hamo Thornycroft, RA, showed a bust at the Royal Academy. A posthumous full-length bronze statue by Charles Brock, RA, was executed for the hall of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002877
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset