After my article on the artist Commander Alfred Marcus Hughes appeared, Greg Davies commented:
Hughes additionally makes a cameo look in Beryl Patricia Corridor’s autobiography “A Hawk from a Handsaw” (1993). Corridor was the doyenne of the British Museum Chicken Room within the post-war III interval, and a relative of Hughes.
On wanting up Hughes and Corridor I discovered that they had been first cousins, as soon as eliminated. Pat Corridor was the grand-daughter of Hughes’s mom’s brother.
The remark additionally rang a bell in my neural circuitry. I used to be certain I might keep in mind assembly Pat Corridor however couldn’t recall the place and the way. Then, wanting her as much as write this text, I discovered {a photograph} which offered all of the solutions. The date was 4 Might 1972 when she obtained the Stamford Raffles Award on the AGM of the Zoological Society of London. I keep in mind talking to her briefly after the assembly when she appeared a bundle of nerves. For some unusual purpose on seeing the {photograph} I instantly remembered the coat she was sporting as being a number of sizes too huge such that she and the coat appeared moved independently—a really bizarre factor to recall from the reminiscence financial institution after 52 years.
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| Pat Corridor receiving the Stamford Raffles Award from the President of the Zoological Society of London, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. 4 Might 1972 (Annual Report for 1972, ZSL) |
Pat Corridor was Beryl Patricia Corridor (née Woodhouse). She was born to a rich household in Epson, Surrey, in 1917. She was thwarted by her dad and mom in going to Cambridge to check maths and as an alternative spent 4 years at residence kicking her heels but additionally growing an curiosity in birdwatching. Thus within the 1939 Register, the emergency census, she is proven as employed on ‘home duties’ but additionally as concerned in Air Raid Precautions work educating ambulance drivers. She was decided to do one thing for the struggle effort and joined the Mechanised Transport Corps, a uniformed ladies’s civilian organisation that offered drivers to authorities departments and different civilian providers.
After the outbreak of struggle Pat Corridor turned engaged to John Clavell Corridor, in civilian life a Winchester-educated insurance coverage clerk. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in March 1940 and posted to the Center East. Pat volunteered to serve abroad driving ambulances. She was first in South Africa however was then moved to Egypt. The 2 had been married on 21 Might 1941 at Suez. Nevertheless, this was no happily-ever-after story. By June 1943 John Corridor had fought in Crete. was a short lived Captain and had been talked about in despatches. Nevertheless later that 12 months he was captured in the course of the Battle of Leros within the Dodecanese Marketing campaign. Pat additional developed her curiosity in birds in North Africa and ended the struggle in Italy nonetheless driving ambulances. After the struggle the wedding broke down and it was then that Hughes will need to have provided his assist.
Alfred Hughes was a buddy of the Norman Boyd Kinnear of the Pure Historical past Museum. Kinnear, with no tutorial {qualifications}, had risen by the ranks of the museum world, starting on the Bombay Pure Historical past Society’s museum in Calcutta and persevering with on the Pure Historical past Museum in London. He had specialised in ornithology. By the point the struggle was ending he had been appointed Keeper of Zoology. In 1947 he was requested to take over as Director, previous the conventional retirement age, till an acceptable candidate had been discovered within the post-war world. He stayed on as Director till 1950, checking out the restore and restoration of the Museum wanted after the disruption and harm brought on by the Warfare; for this he obtained a ‘Okay’.
By that contact with Kinnear, Pat Corridor was provided a publish of Affiliate Scientific Employee within the Chicken Room of the Museum. Ideally fitted to these rich sufficient not needing to seek out paid employment, the scheme offered low cost and enthusiastic voluntary labour to the Museum. The place was paid at a charge—which didn’t change for ten years—of 4 shillings per hour, a wage which might have exceeded the typical industrial pay within the Nineteen Forties. Nevertheless, as an alternative of that equating to a wage of round £800 per 12 months, the utmost pay every year was capped at £100. Pat Corridor was clearly eager to work on the Museum; she turned down a job supply from the BBC to be able to work on the Museum.
James David Macdonald (1908-2002) was answerable for the Chicken Room. He recognised her aptitude for the work she was doing and given her expertise in Africa and her expertise as a motor mechanic invited her, at her personal expense, to be a member of a accumulating expedition to south-west Africa that started in late 1949. The staff, together with Macdonald’s spouse because the staff physician and prepare dinner, collected 1300 specimens of almost 200 species in the course of the six months within the area. After that for almost 20 years Pat Corridor divided her time between curatorial work, accumulating expeditions and analysis based mostly on the collections within the Museum. Her expeditions in the course of the Nineteen Fifties had been to Africa. In 1953 she organised and largely funded a Pure Historical past Museum-backed journey to what’s now Botswana. Earlier than and after an ornithological congress in Livingstone in what’s now Zambia, she collected in Botswana and Angola respectively; total she collected round 2000 specimens for the Museum. A brief journey to north-western Botswana was her remaining expertise of accumulating in Africa.
Her publications in the course of the Nineteen Fifties and 60s had been on African birds. Her largest was the end result of eight years of labor: An Atlas of Speciation in African Passerine Birds in 1970. Of 423 pages with 439 maps it was broadly praised by reviewers. Herbert Friedmann (1900-1987) the American ornithologist who labored on the Smithsonian Establishment wrote of its significance in The Auk of July 1971:
As Mrs. Corridor states firstly of her introduction, this nice sequence of maps constitutes the primary try to point out in graphic kind, for the prepared comprehension of the coed, the outcomes, “and the persevering with course of, of evolution in a big continental avifauna via plotting on one map the distribution of species believed to be instantly descended from a standard ancestor.” By putting carefully associated species on the identical map it turns into evident the place they overlap and the place the are allopatric, and these info give the sphere scholar indications of the place to look and what to check in an try to assess and to interpret the previous historical past of every of those present distributional patterns. It should be saved in thoughts, when utilizing this atlas, that each current particular distributional image is just not merely a discrete reality of native curiosity, however is at all times, and inevitably, the results of the previous historical past of the species and of the area. That is the actual, inherent curiosity in every of them, and every might change into a legitimate level of departure for additional examine of the evolutionary vicissitudes of the actual species.
The Atlas had began as a joint effort with Reginald Ernest Moreau (1897–1970) the good novice scientific ornithologist of his day. Nevertheless, he turned more and more sick and the work fell on Mrs Corridor. He died within the 12 months of its publication.
Work on African birds was interrupted within the early Nineteen Sixties. Macdonald heard of after which approached Harold Corridor (no relation to Pat) an Australian philanthropist who was keen on supporting analysis. Harold Corridor agreed to sponsor a sequence of 5 expeditions for the Pure Historical past Museum (nonetheless labouring below the title of British Museum (Pure Historical past)) round Australia. Macdonald was very eager to acquire extra specimens for the Museum. The variety of Australian specimens out there inside Britain had been depleted by the sale of Lord Rothschild’s assortment (Rothschild was being blackmailed by a ‘titled girl’ and he wanted the cash) and one other personal assortment to the USA.
Pat Corridor led the third Harold Corridor Expedition given her expertise of accumulating in arid components of Africa. That was to the inside of Western and South Australia. She then edited the guide describing the findings of all 5 expeditions which was printed in 1974.
After the post-war restoration the Pure Historical past Museum on its website in London was bursting on the seams with many hundreds of specimens saved in unsuitable lodging. Within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, plans emerged to maneuver the chook assortment from South Kensington to the positioning of the Rothschild Museum at Tring in Hertfordshire. Pat Corridor was against the transfer on scientific grounds. It’s straightforward to see why. She would even have needed to transfer from Surrey to someplace nearer Tring. She subsequently determined to surrender her work on the Museum in 1971. On the identical time she moved from Epsom to the New Forest in Hampshire the place it was famous she devoted her time ‘to associates, canine, horses and village life’. Nevertheless, retirement from the ornithological world wherein she was well-known got here extra progressively. She was in demand as an editor, speaker and organiser. What seems to have been her final job was presidency of the 4th Pan-African Ornithological Congress in 1976. That brought on her specific hassles due to its transfer on the final minute from Kenya to the Seychelles over political issues.
It was stated that the award which gave her specific pleasure was the Stamford Raffles Award of the Zoological Society of London for 1971—introduced by the Society’s President, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh on the Annual Basic Assembly I attended in 1972. That is how the Annual Report recorded it:
The Stamford Raffles Award (awarded to an novice zoologist for distinguished contributions to zoology) to Mrs B. P. Corridor, British Museum (Pure Historical past), in recognition of her work on the taxonomy and zoogeography of birds, significantly these of Africa. The award was a sculpture in bronze, Wild Boar, by Miss Elisabeth Frink.
It was although the ultimate paragraph of quotation for the Union Medal of the British Ornithologists’ Union that greatest sums up what she had achieved:
Her scientific work has already been broadly recognised, by her election as Corresponding Fellow of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and by the awards of the Gill Memorial Medal of the South African Ornithological Society and the Stamford Raffles Award of the Zoological Society of London. It’s most becoming that the Union Medal ought to now be awarded to Pat Corridor, who has so strikingly proven that the heights of ornithological achievement can nonetheless be scaled with out the good thing about formal tutorial {qualifications} and institutional backing.
Retirement noticed her including two books to the one she had written with Derek Goodwin in 1969, a guide printed privately of nonsense verse about their lives within the Museum, Chicken Room Ballads; Alfred Hughes offered the illustrations. The subsequent was the story of her life within the Mechanised Transport Corps, What a Technique to Win a Warfare (1978, Midas Books, Tunbridge Wells). Lastly, in 1993 got here A Hawk from a Handsaw (1993, privately printed). I’ve not been capable of finding a duplicate of the latter however her obituarist for The Ibis famous that it gave her facet of what proved to be an sad accumulating journey to Angola.
I’m wondering if Alfred Hughes realised that in talking to his buddy Kinnear he was launching his cousin Pat Corridor on a pathway to her changing into a significant participant in classical ornithology of the twentieth century. The Hughes-Corridor household axis runs vast and deep within the ornithology of Africa and Asia.
Beryl Patricia Corridor died on 4 August 2010 in a nursing residence at Fishbourne, Hampshire.
Prys-Jones R. 2011. Beryl Patricia Corridor (née Woodhouse), 1917-2010. Ibis 153, 913-914.