Bowerbank, James Scott (1797-1877)

13 autographed letters by James Scott Bowerbank, numbered 1- 13. A note to James Scott Bowerbank by James Smith, microscope maker, no. 14 is also included.

1840-1876

1 file (14 items)

Purchased from: Stevens, London, October 1930 (acc.72949); Sotheby's, London, November 1931 (acc.75332), November 1933 (acc.67469); Glendining, London, September 1932 (acc.67720), August 1935 (possibly an error for 1934) (acc.67880); Mrs. Watson, Burnley, March 1945 (acc.72200), presumably once part of the Thomas Madden Stone autograph collection; part of a batch of material transferred from Wellcome Historical Medical Museum offices: provenance not known (acc.69200); no record (acc.24726)

Online Archives and Manuscripts catalogue

James Scott Bowerbank (1797-1877), geologist and zoologist, born in Bishopgate, London he started work in his father's distillery, Bowerbank & Co., at the age of fifteen. In his spare time, Bowerbank was keen to pursue scientific research. He joined the Spitafields Mathematical Society in 1818, becoming one of its most active members, giving lectures on botany in the winters of 1822-1824. He was also one of the founders of the Microscopical Society of London in 1839, and was President in 1846-1847.

As a young man he collected fossils from the London Clay, particularly the fossil seeds and fruit found on the Isle of Sheppey. He joined the Geological Society in 1832, and he was a founder member of the London Clay Club in 1836. In 1840 he published the monograph Fossil Fruits of the London Clay, which remained the standard work for many years. In 1846 he moved to 3 Highbury Grove, which was spacious enough to house his geological collections, that eventually amounted to 100,000 specimens. The house became celebrated as a scientific centre in London, and is depicte in a lithographed cartoon, "Highbury Grove in 1846".

In 1847, he proposed the establishment of a society for the publication of undescribed British fossils. This was the origin of the Palaeontongraphical Society, which Bowerbank would serve as honorary secretary and later as President. He also founded in 1844, the Ray Society, and was the treasurer from 1845 until 1860. In 1842 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded an honorary degree of LLD by the University of St. Andrews in 1857.

For the later part of his life, Bowerbank's main interest was living and fossilised sponges. He published papers on sponges in the Annals of Natural History, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the Proceedings of the Zoological Society , and the Microscopial Society Transactions. In 1864 he left London to live permanently in St Leonards, Sussex, and sold the most important part of his fossil collection to the British Museum, retaining only his collection of sponges.