Flower, Sir William Henry (1831–1899), zoologist and museum curator

  • Flower, William Henry, 1831-1899.
Date:
1864-1894
Reference:
MS.8484
  • Archives and manuscripts

About this work

Description

Letters by, to or about Sir William Henry Flower.

1-9: letters by Flower, 1866-1891 (plus no.9, which is an undated fragment). Correspondents include: Philip Lutley Sclater (1829-1913), zoologist (no.6.), Sir William Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S. (1837-1929), geologist and palaeontologist (no.7), and Henry Charlton Bastian (1837-1913), physician, neurologist and naturalist (no.8); no.1 mentions Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895).

10-12: letters to Flower, 1864-1894. Correspondents include: Thomas Sopwith F.R.S. (1803-1879), mining engineer (no.10), Walter Francis Montagu-Douglas-Scott, fifth duke of Buccleuch and seventh duke of Queensberry (1806–1884), President of the British Association (no.11), and Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge (1857-1934), Egyptologist (no.12).

13: letter thanking the recipient for a card of admission to Flower’s lectures, 1873.

Publication/Creation

1864-1894

Physical description

1 file (13 items)

Contributors

Acquisition note

Purchased from: Sotheby’s, London, November 1931 (acc.75332); Mrs. Barrett, London, March 1930 (acc.91327); Stevens, London, September 1930 (acc.73168), March 1931 (acc.68130), August 1931 (acc.68232); Glendining, London, August 1934 (acc.67833), January 1935 (acc.67950); Mrs. Watson, Burnley, March 1945 (acc.72200), presumably once part of the Thomas Madden Stone autograph collection. Provenance details of nos.5-6 not recorded (acc.67430). No.12 transferred from Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, c.1939 (acc.91800) having previously been purchased from Sotheby’s, London, 12th December 1922 (acc.24742). Two items carry accession numbers which suggest that they were purchased from Sotheby’s, London, in late 1910 (acc.24741 and 24742), although the former carries an endorsement wrongly giving the date 12th December 1922 and the latter does not match the description given in the accession register for a purchase from Sotheby's on 11 November 1910.

Biographical note

Sir William Henry Flower (1831–1899), zoologist and museum curator, was born in 1831 in Stratford upon Avon, into the family that owned Flowers brewery. He was educated at University College, London and Middlesex Hospital, where he studied medicine and surgery and graduated MB in 1851. He worked as a surgeon for some years (serving during the Crimean War) before being appointed curator of the surgical museum of Middlesex Hospital: in 1858 he also became Lecturer in comparative anatomy. In 1861 he was appointed conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, on the recommendation of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) and other friends, and in 1870 he took over the Hunterian chair of comparative anatomy and physiology from Huxley. In 1884 he was elected director of the new British Museum (Natural History), once again with Huxley playing a part. During the 19th century controversies over evolution he was a strong partisan of Darwin and Huxley against Sir Richard Owen (1804–1892). His museum work contributed strongly to the evolutionist climate of thought, including work on how “developed” races were bound to squeeze out the less-developed: he did particular work on the dwindling native Tasmanians in this respect. He died in 1899.

Related material

At Wellcome Collection:

For more letters by Flower see MS.5380, part of the correspondence of Henry Lee (1826-1888), naturalist.

Material by most of the correspondents listed here can be found elsewhere in the collection by searching the Library's database; see, for example, MS.7220 for more Henry Charlton Bastian material, MS.7965 for letters by Sir William Boyd Dawkins, or MS.5394 and MS.7655/122-124 for material relating to Thomas Sopwith.

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Identifiers

Accession number

  • Various - see Acquisition note