Dawkins, William Boyd (1838-1929)

1-4: Letters by Dawkins, including 2 letters to his first wife Francis

5-18: Letters to Dawkins:

5) From H.W. Torrey (USA), dated 17 February 1876

6) From Edward Stevens (Salisbury and South Wilts Museum) dated 11 September 1876

7) From William Clifford (Bishop of Clifton from 1857-1893) dated 25 September 1878

8) From Emily Faithfull - 3 parts: letter dated 9 February 1888 (1/3), article written by Emily on 6 February and reprinted in the Manchester Courier on 7 February 1888 (2/3) and an envelope addressed to Dawkins, postmark 9 February 1888 (3/3)

9) From Adrien Arcelin (French Athropologist) dated 19 April 1893

10) From Forsyth Major (according to later endorsement) dated 2 March 1893

11) From Hugh G. Riviere dated 16 January 1896

12 -13 from John Cordeaux

12) Letter dated 21 May 1898

13) In 2 parts - letter (1/2) and envelope (2/2) date and postmark 27 October 1898

14) From Le Neve Foster (Royal College of Science, London) dated 18 March 1900

15) From William Burton - 2 parts: letter (1/2) and envelope (2/2), date and postmark 18 July 1909

16) From H.J. Fleur (Hon. Secretary & Editor, The Geographical Association) in 2 parts - letter (1/2) and envelope (2/2), date and postmark 12 July 1926

17) From A. Pitt Rivers dated 11 July 1881

18) From J F Chilaris (author not verified), date unknown

19) Envelope addressed to Dawkins - fragment, stamp missing, date and author unknown

20-21: Items sent to Dawkins' family

20) Envelope addressed to Dawkins' daughter Ella, postmark Manchester, 4 June 1903

21) Letter to Mrs Francis Dawkins dated 17 August 1918, author unknown

William Boyd Dawkins was a geologist and palaeontologist, 1837-1929. In 1860 he graduated from Oxford with a first-class degree in natural sciences and in 1861 he became the first recipient of the Burdett-Coutts scholarship, then recently founded at Oxford to promote the study of geology. Between 1861 and 1869 he was a member of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and for eight years mapped parts of the Wealden and other formations in Kent and the Thames valley and in 1867 he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1869 he was appointed as curator of natural history at the old Manchester Museum where he began cataloguing and sorting the collections and organised free public lectures. He also lectured in geology at Owens College, where he was appointed professor in 1874 and his work became an important bridge between academe and industry in Manchester.

Dawkins wrote many papers and published two books, Cave Hunting (1874) and Early Man in Britain and his place in the Tertiary Period (1880) and also collaborated with W. Ayshford Sandford on British Pleistocene Mammalia, which was issued in several parts by the Palaeontographical Society between 1866 and 1872. In the 1880s he was a consultant on the Humber Tunnel project and in 1882 he became advisor to an attempt to bore a channel tunnel and although this scheme proved abortive, it did lead to his involvement with the Kent coalfield. Dawkins' guidance contributed to the discovery of this coalfield in 1890, bringing him to great prominence. He also advised on water supply at Hull, Dover, Eastbourne, Brighton, Worthing, Croydon and London and was frequently engaged as an expert witness in the Law Courts on questions of water supply and as a consultant to various private and parliamentary bodies. Dawkins' work encompassed environmental damage and in 1892 he supported efforts to obtain compensation for those who suffered the effects of subsidence due to brine pumping in the Northwich salt district. He was awarded many honours for his work including the Lyell medal (1889), the Prestwich medal (1918) awarded by the Geological Society of London and a knighthood, conferred on him in 1919. He died on 15 January 1929 and bequeathed his books and papers to the town of Buxton, which later established a Boyd Dawkins room at its museum.

At Wellcome Collection:

Further correspondence of Dawkins is held in the papers of various individuals, as MS.7325/13-14, MS.7545/15, MS.7579/2, MS.7655/86, MS.7780/41, MS.7781/31 and MS.8484/7. A letter to Mrs Boyd Dawkins is held as MS.8331/6.