William Henry Flower
Encyclopedia
Sir William Henry Flower KCB
FRCS FRS (30 November 1831 – 1 July 1899) was an English comparative anatomist and surgeon
. Flower became a leading authority on mammals, and especially on the primate
brain
. He supported Thomas Henry Huxley in an important controversy with Richard Owen
about the human brain, and eventually succeeded Owen as Director of the Natural History Museum
.
. His father, Edward Fordham Flower, had lived in America and was an opponent of the slave trade; the family's antecedents were Puritan
. When Edward Flower returned to England, he founded a brewery in Stratford-on-Avon and married Celina Greaves. William was at first taught by his mother, and went to a boarding school in Edgbaston
at 11.
In 1844 at 13 William was sent to a school in Worksop
run by a German headmaster, Dr. Heldenmaier. There were ten hours daily schooling, and this included science (rare at that time). Flower was made Curator of the school museum, and for almost the rest of his life he was a museum curator of one kind or another.
William's interest in natural history appears to have been further fostered in early life by interactions with Rev. P.B. Brodie, an enthusiastic zoologist and geologist. William wrote later in life in his book, Essays on Museums, that he was pleased to create a museum as a boy with a miscellaneous collection of natural history objects, kept at first in a cardboard box, but subsequently housed in a cupboard.
According to his biographers (Cornish 1904; Lydekker 1906), he entered University College London in 1847 at 16. This may be a confusion for UC School, which was founded to support preparation for UCL. Flower matriculated in Arts in 1849 (Lydekker says gaining honours in zoology), then joined the Medical School at University College London
whilst becoming a pupil at the Middlesex Hospital
(Lydekker). He passed the 1st MB exam in 1851, receiving the gold medal in Dr. Sharpey's class of Physiology
& Anatomy
, and the silver medal in Zoology
& Comparative Anatomy
; the gold medal in the latter subject was taken by his fellow-student, Joseph Lister
. It seems that Flower never took the 2nd MB exam (passing which would have conferred the basic medical degree). [The slight note of uncertainty is caused by the fact that neither of his biographers seems to know the details.]
In March 1852 Flower read his first paper before the Zoological Society, of which he was a Fellow. He was appointed Junior House Surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, and after six months promoted to Senior House Surgeon. In March 1854 he passed the Royal College of Surgeons
exam to become a Member (MRCS
), a basic qualification for practising surgery in England. Also in 1854 he became Curator of the Middlesex Hospital Museum.
Crimean War
In 1854 Flower joined the Army Medical Service, and went out to the Crimea
. He was gazetted as Assistant-Surgeon to the 63rd Regiment of Foot
; and in July 1854 embarked with his regiment at Cork for Constantinople. In four months Flower's Regiment was reduced in strength by almost one half, from cold and exposure, infectious diseases and enemy action.
Flower resigned from the army in 1855 due to ill-health. In recognition of his services, he received from the hands of Queen Victoria the Crimea Medal
with clasps for Alma
, Inkerman
, Balaclava
, and Sebastopol; he received the Turkish medal later.
on practical surgery for naval and military officers was the direct result of his Crimean experience. It summarised the first aid
knowledge needed by all soldiers to help the wounded
before a surgeon was available (see also field hospital
; military medicine
).
He married Georgina Rosetta, the youngest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth
, an astronomer, and sometime Hydrographer to the Admiralty and Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society
. The wedding took place in 1858 at the church of Stone, in Buckinghamshire.
at the time. Flower's first contact with Huxley came about from his early friendship with George Busk, Surgeon to the Seamen's Hospital of HMS Dreadnought (a land base near Portsmouth
). Busk was an FRS, became PRCS, and a member of the X Club
. Flower succeeded John Thomas Quekett
as Conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
on the recommendation of Huxley and others. He started work in January 1862 and held the post for 22 years.
Flower became associated with Huxley's controversy with Richard Owen
concerning the human brain. Owen had erroneously said that the human brain had structures that were not present in other mammals, and separated man off into a Sub-Class of its own instead of a genus in the primates. Huxley contradicted this in a debate at the BA
meeting in 1860, and promised a demonstration in due course.
Back in London, Huxley consulted with every expert on the brain that he knew, and that included Flower. His conclusions were made public in 1860 in lectures and publications, but most of the demonstrations were done by Flower using monkey brains rather than the scarce ape brains. Over the years, Flower published papers on the brains of four species of monkey, and acted as Huxley's partner in demonstrations at subsequent BA meetings. At the 1862 meeting in Cambridge when Owen read a paper maintaining his claims, Flower stood up and said "I happen to have in my pocket a monkey's brain" — and produced the object in question! (report in the Times). Few doubted that the small object had Huxley's finger-prints on it...
Another interesting angle on Flower was his combination of religious belief with complete and unequivocal acceptance of evolution. His point of view was close to that of Asa Gray
, the American botanist, who wrote a pamphlet entitled Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology. As the years passed this co-existence of ideas became ever more common with those Christians who were not wedded to literal belief in all aspects of the Bible. In 1883 Flower gave an address to the Church Congress
in Reading on evolution: "The bearing of science on religion" (reprinted in his Essays on Museums).
In 1870 he became Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy in succession to Huxley and commenced a series of lectures that ran for fourteen years, all on aspects of the Mammalia. The essence was published in his books of 1870 and 1891. He was President of the Zoological Society of London from 1879 to 1899. In 1882 he was awarded the Royal Medal
of the Royal Society.
in South Kensington
. The four natural history departments were Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology. Each department had its own Keeper, who was largely autonomous from the Director. At that time the Director was subject to the supervision of the Principal Librarian of the British Museum; now all three institutions (British Library
, British Museum and Natural History Museum
) are administered and funded separately.
Lynn Barber, in her excellent Heyday of natural history, paints a too-severe portrait of Flower when she describes him as "an aristocrat and autocrat conspicuously lacking in the common touch... when his assistants complained that they were so poorly paid that their wives were having to take in washing, Flower said yes, he too was feeling the pinch – he had to tell his wife to restrict the use of her carriage." In the first place Flower was not an aristocrat: his family were Puritan in origin, and his father was a brewer: they were middle-class. Flower's knighthood was awarded for merit, not inherited as a baronetcy. Secondly, figures of authority in that age tended to be aloof by present-day standards, and were generally autocratic in manner. Of course his wife had a carriage! The low pay of the assistants was real enough, though.
In addition to his role as Director, Flower also took over from Albert Günther, the ornithologist, as Keeper of Zoology in 1895, remaining so until his retirement in 1898. Apart from his continuing interest in primates, Flower became an expert on the Cetacea (whales and their relatives). He carried out dissections, went out on whaling boats, arranged whale exhibits in the Museum in South Kensington, and studied the new discoveries of whale fossils. It was Flower who made public the "absolute and complete destruction of two species of right whale by the reckless greed of the whalers" (Cornish p175)
His publications were all bar a few on mammals; he was not a field biologist, nor a student of the other vertebrate groups, at any rate in his adult life. He wrote forty articles for the 9th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, every one on a group of mammals.
Flower was an effective Director of the natural history departments of the British Museum, balancing the competing and conflicting needs of the staff, the public, the other professional naturalists, the Trustees and the Principal Librarian. Some later Directors found this difficult until, finally, in 1963, the BM(NH) was hived off as an independent institution. Flower was created a C.B. in 1887, three years after his first appointment to the British Museum, and five years later (1892) followed the higher distinction of the K.C.B. He also received the Jubilee Medal and the Royal Prussian order, "Pour le Mérite
".
He died in London at his 26 Stanhope Gardens residence.
, publishing, for example, complete and accurate measurements of no less than 1,300 human skull
s, and as a comparative anatomist he ranked high, devoting himself especially to the study of the mammalia. His foremost studies were on marsupial
s, whale
s and primate
s, and he was the first person to show that lemur
s are primates.
He also worked on the deformities produced in the human foot by badly-designed boots and other coverings 'among both civilised and barbarous nations'. His Fashion in deformity was a favourite theme in which he criticised the use of corsets with illustrations of distorted female skeletons.
Flower was also a leading authority on the arrangement of museums. He insisted on the importance of distinguishing between collections intended for the use of specialists and those designed for the instruction of the general public, pointing out that it was as futile to present to the former a number of merely typical forms as to provide the latter with a long series of specimens differing only in the most minute details. His ideas, which were largely and successfully applied to the museums of which he had charge, gained wide approval, and their influence entitles him to be looked upon as a reformer who did much to improve the methods of museum arrangement and management.
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
FRCS FRS (30 November 1831 – 1 July 1899) was an English comparative anatomist and surgeon
Surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...
. Flower became a leading authority on mammals, and especially on the primate
Primate
A primate is a mammal of the order Primates , which contains prosimians and simians. Primates arose from ancestors that lived in the trees of tropical forests; many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging three-dimensional environment...
brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
. He supported Thomas Henry Huxley in an important controversy with Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
about the human brain, and eventually succeeded Owen as Director of the Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...
.
Early life
Flower was born at his father's house in Glade Valley "The Hill", Stratford-upon-AvonStratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
. His father, Edward Fordham Flower, had lived in America and was an opponent of the slave trade; the family's antecedents were Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
. When Edward Flower returned to England, he founded a brewery in Stratford-on-Avon and married Celina Greaves. William was at first taught by his mother, and went to a boarding school in Edgbaston
Edgbaston
Edgbaston is an area in the city of Birmingham in England. It is also a formal district, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Edgbaston ward and the wards of Bartley Green, Harborne and Quinton....
at 11.
In 1844 at 13 William was sent to a school in Worksop
Worksop
Worksop is the largest town in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England on the River Ryton at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. It is about east-south-east of the City of Sheffield and its population is estimated to be 39,800...
run by a German headmaster, Dr. Heldenmaier. There were ten hours daily schooling, and this included science (rare at that time). Flower was made Curator of the school museum, and for almost the rest of his life he was a museum curator of one kind or another.
William's interest in natural history appears to have been further fostered in early life by interactions with Rev. P.B. Brodie, an enthusiastic zoologist and geologist. William wrote later in life in his book, Essays on Museums, that he was pleased to create a museum as a boy with a miscellaneous collection of natural history objects, kept at first in a cardboard box, but subsequently housed in a cupboard.
According to his biographers (Cornish 1904; Lydekker 1906), he entered University College London in 1847 at 16. This may be a confusion for UC School, which was founded to support preparation for UCL. Flower matriculated in Arts in 1849 (Lydekker says gaining honours in zoology), then joined the Medical School at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
whilst becoming a pupil at the Middlesex Hospital
Middlesex Hospital
The Middlesex Hospital was a teaching hospital located in the Fitzrovia area of London, United Kingdom. First opened in 1745 on Windmill Street, it was moved in 1757 to Mortimer Street where it remained until it was finally closed in 2005. Its staff and services were transferred to various sites...
(Lydekker). He passed the 1st MB exam in 1851, receiving the gold medal in Dr. Sharpey's class of Physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
& Anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
, and the silver medal in Zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
& Comparative Anatomy
Comparative anatomy
Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny .-Description:...
; the gold medal in the latter subject was taken by his fellow-student, Joseph Lister
Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister
Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister OM, FRS, PC , known as Sir Joseph Lister, Bt., between 1883 and 1897, was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary...
. It seems that Flower never took the 2nd MB exam (passing which would have conferred the basic medical degree). [The slight note of uncertainty is caused by the fact that neither of his biographers seems to know the details.]
In March 1852 Flower read his first paper before the Zoological Society, of which he was a Fellow. He was appointed Junior House Surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, and after six months promoted to Senior House Surgeon. In March 1854 he passed the Royal College of Surgeons
Royal College of Surgeons of England
The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an independent professional body and registered charity committed to promoting and advancing the highest standards of surgical care for patients, regulating surgery, including dentistry, in England and Wales...
exam to become a Member (MRCS
Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons
MRCS is a professional qualification for surgeons in the UK and IrelandIt means Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. In the United Kingdom, doctors who gain this qualification traditionally no longer use the title 'Dr' but start to use the title 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss' or 'Ms'.There are 4 surgical...
), a basic qualification for practising surgery in England. Also in 1854 he became Curator of the Middlesex Hospital Museum.
Crimean WarCrimean WarThe Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
. He was gazetted as Assistant-Surgeon to the 63rd Regiment of Foot
63rd Regiment of Foot
The 63rd Regiment of Foot known as "The Bloodsuckers", was a British Army regiment in the 18th and 19th centuries.As part of the Childers Reforms, the 63rd and the 96th Regiments of Foot amalgamated in 1881 to form The Manchester Regiment the heritage continuing through to The King's Regiment in...
; and in July 1854 embarked with his regiment at Cork for Constantinople. In four months Flower's Regiment was reduced in strength by almost one half, from cold and exposure, infectious diseases and enemy action.
Flower resigned from the army in 1855 due to ill-health. In recognition of his services, he received from the hands of Queen Victoria the Crimea Medal
Crimea Medal
The Crimea Medal was a campaign medal approved in 1854, for issue to officers and men of British units which fought in the Crimean War of 1854-56 against Russia....
with clasps for Alma
Battle of Alma
The Battle of the Alma , which is usually considered the first battle of the Crimean War , took place just south of the River Alma in the Crimea. An Anglo-French force under General St...
, Inkerman
Battle of Inkerman
The Battle of Inkerman was fought during the Crimean War on November 5, 1854 between the allied armies of Britain and France against the Imperial Russian Army. The battle broke the will of the Russian Army to defeat the allies in the field, and was followed by the Siege of Sevastopol...
, Balaclava
Battle of Balaclava
The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War, was part of the Anglo-French-Turkish campaign to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea...
, and Sebastopol; he received the Turkish medal later.
London: life as a surgeon
In the spring of 1857 Flower took the diploma for the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS); and joined the staff of the Middlesex Hospital as Demonstrator in Anatomy. In 1859 he was made Assistant-Surgeon at the Middlesex, Curator of the Anatomical Museum and also Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy. His 1859 lecture to the Royal United Services InstituteRoyal United Services Institute
The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies , officially still known by its old name, the Royal United Services Institution, is a British defence and security think tank. It was founded in 1831 by The Duke of Wellington.RUSI describes itself asIt won Prospect Magazine's...
on practical surgery for naval and military officers was the direct result of his Crimean experience. It summarised the first aid
First aid
First aid is the provision of initial care for an illness or injury. It is usually performed by non-expert, but trained personnel to a sick or injured person until definitive medical treatment can be accessed. Certain self-limiting illnesses or minor injuries may not require further medical care...
knowledge needed by all soldiers to help the wounded
Battlefield medicine
Battlefield medicine, also called field surgery and later combat casualty care, is the treatment of wounded soldiers in or near an area of combat. Civilian medicine has been greatly advanced by procedures that were first developed to treat the wounds inflicted during combat...
before a surgeon was available (see also field hospital
Field hospital
A field hospital is a large mobile medical unit that temporarily takes care of casualties on-site before they can be safely transported to more permanent hospital facilities...
; military medicine
Military medicine
The term military medicine has a number of potential connotations. It may mean:*A medical specialty, specifically a branch of occupational medicine attending to the medical risks and needs of soldiers, sailors and other service members...
).
He married Georgina Rosetta, the youngest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth
William Henry Smyth
William Henry Smyth was an English sailor, hydrographer, astronomer and numismatist.-Private Life:...
, an astronomer, and sometime Hydrographer to the Admiralty and Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
. The wedding took place in 1858 at the church of Stone, in Buckinghamshire.
London: transfer to zoology
In 1860 London intellectual life was alive with talk of evolution. Flower had long been interested in natural history, and now he decided to move his career in that direction, probably under the influence of Thomas Henry Huxley, who was also a comparative anatomist, and Fullerian Professor at the Royal InstitutionRoyal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
at the time. Flower's first contact with Huxley came about from his early friendship with George Busk, Surgeon to the Seamen's Hospital of HMS Dreadnought (a land base near Portsmouth
Portsmouth
Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...
). Busk was an FRS, became PRCS, and a member of the X Club
X Club
The X Club was a dining club of nine men who supported the theories of natural selection and academic liberalism in late 19th-century England. Thomas Henry Huxley was the initiator: he called the first meeting for November 3, 1864...
. Flower succeeded John Thomas Quekett
John Thomas Quekett
John Thomas Quekett was an English microscopist and histologist.Quekett studied medicine at the London Hospital in 1831. He became a licentiate of the Apothecaries' Company and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons....
as Conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Royal College of Surgeons of England
The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an independent professional body and registered charity committed to promoting and advancing the highest standards of surgical care for patients, regulating surgery, including dentistry, in England and Wales...
on the recommendation of Huxley and others. He started work in January 1862 and held the post for 22 years.
Flower became associated with Huxley's controversy with Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
concerning the human brain. Owen had erroneously said that the human brain had structures that were not present in other mammals, and separated man off into a Sub-Class of its own instead of a genus in the primates. Huxley contradicted this in a debate at the BA
British Association for the Advancement of Science
frame|right|"The BA" logoThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between...
meeting in 1860, and promised a demonstration in due course.
Back in London, Huxley consulted with every expert on the brain that he knew, and that included Flower. His conclusions were made public in 1860 in lectures and publications, but most of the demonstrations were done by Flower using monkey brains rather than the scarce ape brains. Over the years, Flower published papers on the brains of four species of monkey, and acted as Huxley's partner in demonstrations at subsequent BA meetings. At the 1862 meeting in Cambridge when Owen read a paper maintaining his claims, Flower stood up and said "I happen to have in my pocket a monkey's brain" — and produced the object in question! (report in the Times). Few doubted that the small object had Huxley's finger-prints on it...
Another interesting angle on Flower was his combination of religious belief with complete and unequivocal acceptance of evolution. His point of view was close to that of Asa Gray
Asa Gray
-References:*Asa Gray. Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936.*Asa Gray. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.*Asa Gray. Plant Sciences. 4 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2001....
, the American botanist, who wrote a pamphlet entitled Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology. As the years passed this co-existence of ideas became ever more common with those Christians who were not wedded to literal belief in all aspects of the Bible. In 1883 Flower gave an address to the Church Congress
Church Congress
Church Congress is an annual meeting of members of the Church of England, lay and clerical, to discuss matters religious, moral or social, in which the church is interested...
in Reading on evolution: "The bearing of science on religion" (reprinted in his Essays on Museums).
In 1870 he became Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy in succession to Huxley and commenced a series of lectures that ran for fourteen years, all on aspects of the Mammalia. The essence was published in his books of 1870 and 1891. He was President of the Zoological Society of London from 1879 to 1899. In 1882 he was awarded the Royal Medal
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal, is a silver-gilt medal awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences" made within the Commonwealth of...
of the Royal Society.
The Natural History Museum
In 1884, on the retirement of Sir Richard Owen, Flower was appointed to the directorship of the Natural History departments of the British MuseumBritish Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
. The four natural history departments were Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology. Each department had its own Keeper, who was largely autonomous from the Director. At that time the Director was subject to the supervision of the Principal Librarian of the British Museum; now all three institutions (British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, British Museum and Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...
) are administered and funded separately.
Lynn Barber, in her excellent Heyday of natural history, paints a too-severe portrait of Flower when she describes him as "an aristocrat and autocrat conspicuously lacking in the common touch... when his assistants complained that they were so poorly paid that their wives were having to take in washing, Flower said yes, he too was feeling the pinch – he had to tell his wife to restrict the use of her carriage." In the first place Flower was not an aristocrat: his family were Puritan in origin, and his father was a brewer: they were middle-class. Flower's knighthood was awarded for merit, not inherited as a baronetcy. Secondly, figures of authority in that age tended to be aloof by present-day standards, and were generally autocratic in manner. Of course his wife had a carriage! The low pay of the assistants was real enough, though.
In addition to his role as Director, Flower also took over from Albert Günther, the ornithologist, as Keeper of Zoology in 1895, remaining so until his retirement in 1898. Apart from his continuing interest in primates, Flower became an expert on the Cetacea (whales and their relatives). He carried out dissections, went out on whaling boats, arranged whale exhibits in the Museum in South Kensington, and studied the new discoveries of whale fossils. It was Flower who made public the "absolute and complete destruction of two species of right whale by the reckless greed of the whalers" (Cornish p175)
His publications were all bar a few on mammals; he was not a field biologist, nor a student of the other vertebrate groups, at any rate in his adult life. He wrote forty articles for the 9th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, every one on a group of mammals.
Flower was an effective Director of the natural history departments of the British Museum, balancing the competing and conflicting needs of the staff, the public, the other professional naturalists, the Trustees and the Principal Librarian. Some later Directors found this difficult until, finally, in 1963, the BM(NH) was hived off as an independent institution. Flower was created a C.B. in 1887, three years after his first appointment to the British Museum, and five years later (1892) followed the higher distinction of the K.C.B. He also received the Jubilee Medal and the Royal Prussian order, "Pour le Mérite
Pour le Mérite
The Pour le Mérite, known informally as the Blue Max , was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military order for German soldiers until the end of World War I....
".
He died in London at his 26 Stanhope Gardens residence.
Other contributions
Flower made valuable contributions to structural anthropologyAnthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, publishing, for example, complete and accurate measurements of no less than 1,300 human skull
Human skull
The human skull is a bony structure, skeleton, that is in the human head and which supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones...
s, and as a comparative anatomist he ranked high, devoting himself especially to the study of the mammalia. His foremost studies were on marsupial
Marsupial
Marsupials are an infraclass of mammals, characterized by giving birth to relatively undeveloped young. Close to 70% of the 334 extant species occur in Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands, with the remaining 100 found in the Americas, primarily in South America, but with thirteen in Central...
s, whale
Whale
Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...
s and primate
Primate
A primate is a mammal of the order Primates , which contains prosimians and simians. Primates arose from ancestors that lived in the trees of tropical forests; many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging three-dimensional environment...
s, and he was the first person to show that lemur
Lemur
Lemurs are a clade of strepsirrhine primates endemic to the island of Madagascar. They are named after the lemures of Roman mythology due to the ghostly vocalizations, reflective eyes, and the nocturnal habits of some species...
s are primates.
He also worked on the deformities produced in the human foot by badly-designed boots and other coverings 'among both civilised and barbarous nations'. His Fashion in deformity was a favourite theme in which he criticised the use of corsets with illustrations of distorted female skeletons.
Flower was also a leading authority on the arrangement of museums. He insisted on the importance of distinguishing between collections intended for the use of specialists and those designed for the instruction of the general public, pointing out that it was as futile to present to the former a number of merely typical forms as to provide the latter with a long series of specimens differing only in the most minute details. His ideas, which were largely and successfully applied to the museums of which he had charge, gained wide approval, and their influence entitles him to be looked upon as a reformer who did much to improve the methods of museum arrangement and management.
Works
- Diagrams of the nerves of the human body. London 1861.
- Observations of the posterior lobes of the cerebrum of the Quadrumana, with a description of the brain of a Galago. Proc Roy Soc 1860-62 xi, 376-81, 508; Phil Trans 1862 185-201.
- On the brain of the Javan Loris (Stenops javenicus). Read 1862, publ. Zool Soc Trans 1866 103-111.
- On the brain of the Siamang (Hylobatis syndactylis). Nat Hist Rev 1863 279-257.
- An introduction to the osteology of the Mammalia. London 1870; 2nd ed 1876; 3rd ed with Hans Gadow 1883.
- On the brain of the red Howling Monkey (Mycetes seniculus). Zool Soc Proc 1864 335-338.
- Fashion in deformity. 1885.
- The Horse: a study in natural history. 1890.
- Introduction to the study of Mammals, living and extinct with Richard Lydekker. London 1891.
- Essays on Museums and other subjects. London 1898. [includes appreciations of Huxley and Owen]
External links
- http://www.archive.org/details/anintroductionto00flowiala An introduction to the osteology of the mammalia (1885)]