As I confirmed in a earlier article on this collection, it was not Willoughby Lowe and Fannie Waldron who introduced the primary specimens of Miss Waldron’s Crimson Colobus to the Pure Historical past Museum in London. The 2 specimens Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell (1877-1918) introduced or despatched to London in 1912 had been recognised as belonging to the identical taxon after or whereas these from the Lowe-Waldron expeditions of 1933-34 and 1934-35 had been being examined.
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| Herbert Spurrell |
Spurrell was an fascinating character. I get the impression that he was one other of these people who certified in medication however was not that dedicated to medical apply, utilizing the career as an alternative as a passport to being a naturalist in fascinating locations in addition to to cogitate and write on evolution and human behaviour..
Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell was born on 20 June 1877 in Eastbourne, Sussex. His father was an architect in apply within the city. He was educated at Merton Faculty, Oxford, with medical research on the London Hospital. He certified in 1907 with the Oxford MB BCh levels having already develop into an Oxford MA. The age of 30 appears very late to qualify, creating the impression that he was not that keen and really a lot becoming the picture of the ‘perpetual scholar’ doing different issues of better curiosity. Certainly he wrote two novels (as Herbert Spurrell) after writing one work of non-fiction (see under).
Out of the Previous was revealed Greening & Co in 1903. One reviewer from Eastbourne, the creator’s dwelling city was gushing:
The quantity consists of three tales of a personality so baffling, and coping with an environment of romance se archaic, that it’s tough—virtually not possible—to assign to them a particular classification beneath any of the atypical heads of fiction. But they’re all vivid, filled with stirring motion, and palpitating with the passions of humanity—which, whether or not now, or within the neolithic interval, have all the time been, and, we might take it, will alway be, the identical…It’s not possible to analyse these tales; they should be learn and accepted for what they’re—paleological romances of a buried age. They’re distinctive, masterly and dramatic; and to fiction readers searching for novelty and pleasure we are able to suggest them with the fullest confidence.
At Dawn: A narrative of the Beltane, from the identical writer in 1904. Critiques had been blended:
The creator has taken for the scene of his story the wilds of Dartmoor and for interval the primary century of the Christian period, when England was within the arms of the Romans. The hero is a Britain [sic] prince, who, carried a prisoner to Rome, and has there imbibed a few of the civilization of the empire. He contrives to flee, and is introduced by a service provider again to his homeland. The plot is slight and unostentatious, and turns in the principle on the amorous affairs of a Roman normal and a local princess…The creator writes in a pleasing and simple method, is aware of nicely easy methods to retain the curiosity of the reader, and exhibits appreciable descriptive energy.
There have been no additional novels.
In 1901, by which period he had the Oxford BA diploma, he was clearly within the animal world. The Nationwide Archives has a copyright software kind from him for {a photograph} of an Aesculapian Snake—a becoming species for somebody pursuing medication as a profession.
The 1909 Medical Register (which might have been compiled in 1908) exhibits his tackle as 285 Corfield Avenue, Bethnal Inexperienced in London. Transport data present he arrived in New Orleans on 24 October 1908 on a ship from Barbados, on which he had earned as passage because the ship’s physician. He was going to Tulane College the place he spent a 12 months as Assistant Professor of Physiology. He was becoming a member of the previous Oxford don Gustav Mann (1864-1921) who had moved there in the identical 12 months as Professor of Physiology. Mann was born in Darjeeling and graduated in medication from Edinburgh. He moved to Oxford and was remembered thus:
McNalty…says that Mann was a German who lectured in a Teutonic accent, was darkish, of center peak with a bushy moustache and thick-lensed spectacles. He was thought to be a wayward genius with an astonishing capability for work. Mann diminished his weight-reduction plan to keep up his weight at seven stones, allowed himself solely 4 hours of sleep per day and his mattress within the laboratory was an Oxford legend. However as a sensible histologist he was thought to be the perfect of his time.
Mann additionally labored as an analyst for oil firms however in 1916 resigned from Tulane and went to work as an analyst and physician in Tampico. Nature revealed a brief obituary after his loss of life in 1921 described his departure from Oxford as a ‘grievous loss to the progress of histology on this nation’ however ended with the potential motive:
…Too unstable to be largely productive within the atypical manner, his “Physiological Histology” is usually probably the most thumbed guide in laboratories the place part chopping is taken critically, and plenty of grateful pupils will lament an actual grasp whose dedication to get himself disliked led him into so many troublous adventures.
It’s not stunning that Spurrell adopted Mann to New Orleans. In 1901 Spurrell had written iwhile nonetheless a medical scholar, his first guide, The Commonwealth of Cells, which he devoted to ‘My esteemed pal and tutor, Gustav Mann MD and so on’.
I can’t assist however marvel why he didn’t keep in medical analysis. Regardless of the motive we then discover him travelling to and from the Gold Coast (Ghana) from 1909 comparatively ceaselessly. He was together with his dad and mom, by then residing in Exeter, for the 1911 Census on 2 April. It was additionally in 1911 that his fourth guide, Patriotism: A Organic Examine (George Bell & Sons, London), was revealed.
It was from the Gold Coast that he started taking or probably sending stay animals to London Zoo and lifeless ones to the Pure Historical past Museum. He was already a Fellow of the Zoological Society. Spurrell’s medical obituarists (and people copying them for Wikipedia) clearly didn’t perceive that such a fellowship was not bestowed by a Society for some worthy deed. The usage of the time period ‘Fellow’ for atypical membership has given countless bother through the years however which in all probability resulted in subscriptions from London’s rich wishing to indulge themselves within the supposed cachet of a postnominal mixed with—till the center of the twentieth century—unique entry to the Zoo on Sundays.
From 1910 till his loss of life, Spurrell recorded his tackle because the Royal Societies Membership, a gents’s membership in St James’s, with ‘travelling’ in parentheses. That membership continues to be confused on-line with the Royal Society Membership, a completely totally different kettle of fish of which this author occurs to be one of many fish. I’ve not been capable of finding what kind of medical work Spurrell was doing within the Gold Coast. From the place of assortment of animals for the Zoo it will appear that he should have been in Dunkwa for a lot of the time. In view of his later employment in Colombia, it’s potential he labored as a health care provider for one of many mining firms. Regardless of the nature, Spurrell was awarded the Diploma of the London College of Hygiene and Tropical Drugs in 1912.
Lists of the animals introduced again by Spurrell for the Zoo are contained in ZSL’s Annual Experiences for 1909, 1910, 1911 and 1912 (see under). For these ‘donations to the gathering’ he was awarded the Society’s Silver Medal in 1914, together with three others.
Donations to the Zoo continued when he moved to Colombia in 1912 or 1913 (described within the Annual Experiences of 1913 and 1914). There we are able to discover what he was doing. He was primarily based in Andagoya within the Chocó area. He was clearly working because the medical officer for a mining firm since that space is a serious supply of platinum and gold. In a ship’s passenger record he offers as his contact a fried, F. W. Leighton. Frederic William Leighton (1893-1943) might be present in genealogical searches. He was a mining engineer, educated in metallurgy and assaying who was born in Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire. He died in Medellín, Colombia however was residing in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Leighton had married Bertha Eraerts in 1916.
Whereas within the Gold Value and Colombia, Spurrell introduced or despatched tons of of specimens to the Pure Historical past Museum, concentrating in Colombia on reptiles, amphibians and fish. George Albert Boulenger who labored via the collections and described the brand new species had a discipline day.
In October 1913 Boulenger wrote a paper in Proceedings of the Zoological Society describing the primary assortment introduced again from Colombia:
Dr. Spurrell, to whom the Zoological Society is indebted for therefore many fascinating additions to its assortment of Reptiles, has now transferred his exercise as a collector from West Africa to South America. The collection of fantastically preserved Batrachians and Reptiles introduced collectively by him through the first few months of his keep within the Choco, Colombia, and introduced by him to the British Museum, is one among nice curiosity and exhibits how a lot stays to be achieved within the exploration of that a part of South America.
His job in South America appears to have ended across the finish of 1915. He might be present in transport data leaving Cartagena, Colombia on board the SS Carrillo sure for New York, the place he arrived on 4 February 1916. On this manifest are particulars of his peak (6’ 1”) complexion (honest), hair (brown) and eyes (gray). He’s additionally recorded as being en path to London.
That is the place the story will get extra fascinating. In his profile for the Royal Military Medical Corps seems the next:
On his return from Colombia in 1915, Herbert was despatched overseas by the Authorities on a secret mission…
Other than the truth that his return was in early 1916 and never 1915, I’ve discovered no indication of what this secret mission was. Nonetheless, transport data present that he returned to New York in a short time after returning to UK on 4 February. He left Liverpool on 18 March 1916 on the Cunard’s Glasgow subsidiary firm’s Anchor Line’s SS Tuscania (torpedoed in 1918 by a German submarine with the lack of American troops sure for Europe). This should have been the key mission however what was he doing? Was it one thing to do with gold or platinum? Who despatched him? What did he obtain?
As a result of he introduced two reptiles again from the USA we all know that he should have reached London Zoo by 3 Might. Due to this fact, no matter he did for the federal government within the USA it occurred in April 1916. He might have purchased the 2 reptiles for the Zoo but when he discovered them, they each happen in and round Texas. Was his mission there?
On 23 August 1916 he left for Sekondi and the acquainted territory of the Gold Coast. His RAMC profile says he was Non permanent Medical Officer at Obussi [Obuasi], one other main gold mining city. On 1 June 1917 he was commissioned as a Lieutenant within the Royal Military Medical Corps. Spurrell’s last guide, again to non-fiction, Trendy Man and his Forerunners was revealed by G. Bell & Sons of London in 1917, a few months after becoming a member of the RAMC; he had written the guide between 1912 and 1916. It was nicely obtained in a assessment in Nature of 6 September however much less so, regardless of settlement with the creator on some necessary factors, by the anthropologist, Alfred Cort Haddon, in Eugenics Assessment who thought of a few of the arguments on the event of social techniques ‘facile’.
Spurrell arrived in Egypt on 23 November 1917. The Royal Air Power was based on 1 April 1918 and Spurrell is proven as being connected to the RAF, serving on its medical board in Egypt, a perform he had presumably undertaken for the Royal Flying Corps. He was promoted to Captain in June 1918 however then died of pneumonia at No 19 Basic Hospital, Alexandria on 8 November, three days earlier than the Armistice. He was 41. He’s buried at Alexandria (Hadra) Warfare Memorial Cemetery.
Herbert Spurrell’s title lives on in plenty of eponymous species. The record is shorter than it was within the 1910s and 20s as some have been lumped into different species with precedence over the precise title. Examples are Scops spurrelli lumped into Otus icterorhynchus, the Sandy Scops Owl; Graphiurus spurrelli into Graphiurus lorraineus, Lorraine’s African Dormouse; Kinosternon spurrelli into Okay. leucostomum, the White-lipped Mud Turtle
A variety of eponym’s have survived these taxonomic revisions both within the scientific title or the frequent title. Examples are within the Eponym Dictionary of Mammals, of Reptiles and of Amphibians. Examples are: Spurrell’s Free-tailed Bat, Mops spurrelli; Spurrell’s Woolly Bat, Kerivoula phalaena; Chestnut Lengthy-tongued Bat, Lionycteris spurrelli; Colombian (Butterfly-head) Coral Snake, Micrurus spurrelli; Spurrell’s Worm Lizard, Amphisbaena spurrelli; Spurrell’s Leaf Frog, Agalychnis spurrelli; Condoto Stubfoot Toad, Atelopus spurrelli.
A fish named for him from West Africa, Fundulopanchax spurrelli (now, it appears, F. walkeri spurrelli), in addition to bugs, characterize a few of different specimens Spurrell donated to the Pure Historical past Museum.
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| Spurrell’s Free-tailed Bat © Jakob Fahr, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) |
ANIMALS DONATED TO LONDON ZOO
The next is a listing of the species donated to London Zoo by Herbert Spurrell. A present frequent title and scientific title are given as an alternative of the originals.
AFRICA
Gambian Pouched Rat Cricetomys gambianus
Crested Porcupine Hystrix cristata
Small Solar Squirrel Heliosciurus punctatus
White-spotted Fireplace-footed Rope Squirrel Funisciurus pyrropus leucostigma
Lorraine’s African Dormouse Graphiurus lorraineus
Campbell’s Mona Monkey Cercopithecus campbelli
Bosman’s Potto Perodicticus potto
Two-spotted Palm Civet Nandinia binotata
Bay Duiker Cephalophus dorsalis
African Wooden-owl Strix woodfordii nuchalis
Fraser’s Eagle-owl Bubo poensis
Congo Serpent Eagle Dryotriorchis spectabilis
Lizard Buzzard Kaupifalco monogrammicus
African Inexperienced-pigeon Treron calvus sharpei
Forest Hinge-back Tortoise Kinixys erosa
Banded Leaf-toed Gecko Hemidactylus fasciatus,
White-lipped Skink Trachylepis albilabris
Senegal Chameleon Chamaeleo senegalensis
Noticed Blind Snake Afrotyphlops punctatus
Emerald Tree Snake Hapsidophrys smaragdina
Yellow-throated Daring-eyed Tree Snake Thrasops flavigularis
Smith’s African Water Snake Grayia smithii
Forest Vine Snake Thelotornis kirtlandii
Western Bush Viper Atheris chlorechis
Western Inexperienced Mamba Dendraspis viridis
Gaboon Viper Bitis gabonica
Rhinoceros Viper Bitis nasicornis
Forest Cobra Naja melanoleuca
Six-barred Panchax Epiplatys sexfasciatus
COLOMBIA
Giant-nosed wooden turtle Rhinoclemmys nasuta
Noticed Worm Lizard Amphisbaena fuliginosa
USA
Florida Cooter Pseudemys floridana
Texas Horned Lizard Phrynosoma cornutum
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| Gliding Tree Frog Agalychnis spurrelli Gatomoteado, CC BY-SA 4.0, through Wikimedia Commons |