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Edward Vernon, a distant relation of Admiral Edward Vernon, saw much of his early service in the Mediterranean and was promoted to lieutenant in 1743. At the beginning of the Seven Years War he was again in the Mediterranean and then in command of the REVENGE, Channel Fleet, between 1760 and 1763. 1776, Commander-in-Chief, East Indies. Vernon was promoted to rear-admiral in 1779, returned to England in 1781 and saw no further service. He became a vice-admiral in 1787 and admiral in 1794.

Vernon, popularly referred to as 'Old Grog', became a lieutenant in 1702, a captain in 1706 and saw service in the Mediterranean, West Indies and the Baltic. At the outbreak of war with Spain in 1739 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief, West Indies, and was successful in capturing Portobello and at the bombardment of Cartagena, although unsuccessful in attempts to land at Cartagena and at Santiago de Cuba Vernon returned to England in 1742. In 1745, at the threat of a French invasion, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief at the Downs but fell foul of the Admiralty, was superseded and later struck off the list. He was Member of Parliament for Penryn, 1722-1734, Portsmouth, 1741, and Ipswich, 1741-1757. Among the biographies is G H Hartmann The angry Admiral, the later career of Edward Vernon, Admiral of the White (London, 1953). Many of the papers have been published by B McL. Ranft The Vernon papers (Navy Records Society, 1958).

Hamilton entered the Navy in 1843 and served in the Virago on the Mediterranean Station. From 1850 to 1851 he served in the ASSISTANCE and from 1852 to 1854 in the RESOLUTE in the Arctic expeditions searching for Sir John Franklin (q.v.). He was made a lieutenant in 1851. During the Crimean War he served in the Baltic in the DESPERATE, 1855 to 1856. After this he took part in the Second Chinese War in command of the HAUGHTY, and was promoted to commander in 1857 for his services. In 1858 he commissioned the HYDRA for service off the African coast but was sent instead to Halifax, serving on the North American and West Indies Station until 1868. During this time he was promoted to captain, 1862, and commanded the VESUVIOUS until 1864 and the SPHINX from 1865 to 1868. Hamilton then served in home waters. In 1875 he was appointed Superintendent of Pembroke Dockyard, became a rear-admiral in 1877 and in 1878 was made Director of Naval Ordnance. From 1880 to 1883 he was in command off the Irish coast. He became vice-admiral in 1884 and was Commander-in-Chief, China Station, from 1885 to 1888. He became an admiral in 1887. Hamilton was appointed Second, later First, Sea Lord, 1889 to 1891. From 1891 to 1894 he was President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. He retired in 1895 and wrote works on naval administration and historical subjects.

Vivian entered the Navy in 1882 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1892. He went to the China Station in 1902, becoming acting commander of the ROSARIO in 1904 and was also promoted to the rank of commander in that year. Between 1905 and 1906 he was commander of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and then served in the Mediterranean and at Chatham. From 1911 to 1912 he was on the west coast of America in the SHEARWATER, was promoted to captain in 1912 and in 1913 qualified in flying; he then commanded the HERMES, employed on special duties attached to the Royal Flying Corp (Naval Wing). During the First World War he served in the SIRIUS, 1914, the PATIA, 1914 to 1915, the LIVERPOOL, 1916 to 1917, and the ROXBURGH on convoy duties, 1918. Vivian was Commodore of Chatham Barracks from 1920 to 1921.

Waters, a master's assistant in 1842, served on the East Indies Station first in the VIXEN and then in 1843 in the JUPITER. He was made second master in 1845 and master in 1848. Between 1852 and 1856 he served in the Black Sea in the SIMOOM and in the SHANNON until 1861. During the Indian Mutiny, 1857, Waters was left in command of the SHANNON while her captain, Sir William Peel (1824-1858), led the Naval Brigade. He later served as master, and staff commander when the rank was redesignated, in several ships. His active career ended as staff captain with two appointments as Queen's Harbour Master, first at Malta and then at Sheerness. He retired in 1876.

William Waldegrave, 1753-1825, entered the Navy in 1766 aboard the JERSEY. He was made Lieutenant in 1772 and captain in 1776 when in the RIPPON he joined Sir Edward Vernon in the East Indies. After 15 months his health broke down and he returned to England. In September 1778 he was sent to the West Indies in the POMONA and the following year captured the large American privateer CUMBERLAND. He then transferred to the frigate LA PRUDENTE and with the assistance of the frigate LICORNE captured the large French frigate CAPRICIEUSE after a desperate action of four hours. In 1782 he commanded the frigate PHAETON before coming ashore at the peace of 1783. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary war he was appointed to the COURAGEUX (74) and was made Rear Admiral the following year. He then commanded a small squadron in the channel before being made Vice Admiral in 1795 when he joined Sir John Jervis in the Mediterranean. In 1797 he was Jervis' third in command at the battle of Cape St Vincent. For the next three years he was governor and commander in chief of the Newfoundland station and colony. He was made Admiral in 1802 but saw no further action. He died in 1825 having been made First Baron Radstock in the Irish peerage for his services in Newfoundland.

George Granville Waldegrave was the eldest son of Willaim Waldegrave and therefore became the second Baron Radstock on his father's death. He was entered on the books of his father's ship COURAGEUX (74) in 1794 but first went to sea in the AGINCOURT in 1798. He was made captain in 1807 and given the frigate THAMES in the Mediterranean. In 1811 he took command of another frigate, the VOLONTAIRE, until the defeat of Napoleon. His years of frigate command were spent in attacks on the enemy's coasting trade, cutting out armed ships and destroying coastal batteries. He was made a CB in 1815 when he came ashore. From 1831 to 1841 he served as naval aide de camp to the monarch, becoming Rear Admiral in 1841. Ten years later he became a full Admiral and died in 1857.

See sub-fonds level descriptions for individual biographies.

Woodriff became a lieutenant in 1782. In 1789 he commanded the troopship ENDYMION, which was wrecked in 1790 at Jamaica; he was honourably acquitted at the subsequent court-martial. On his return to England in 1794 he was appointed Principal Agent for Transports, and was involved in the evacuation of troops from the Low Countries. He became a commander in 1795. He was promoted to captain in 1802, the year he took command of the CALCUTTA. After survey work in the Bass Straits, the ship returned to Spithead, 1804, was converted into a warship for convoy duties and went to St. Helena. On the return journey the CALCUTTA was attacked by the French and captured. In 1808, a year after his release, Woodriff became Superintendent of Prisoners of War at Forton, near Gosport, until in 1814 he went to Jamaica as Resident Commissioner at Port Royal. Returning to England in 1822, he was offered, in 1837, either flag-rank or an appointment to Greenwich Hospital; he chose the latter.

JR Woodriff, second son of Daniel Woodriff, entered the Navy in 1802, became a lieutenant in 1811 and served on the Channel and Cape Stations between 1812 and 1814. From 1836 until 1848, when he was promoted to commander, he was attached to the Weymouth District of the Coast Guard.

A R Woodriff, son of Commander John Robert Woodriff and grandson of Captain Daniel Woodriff, served on the North America and West Indies Station from 1868 to 1871, when he became a lieutenant. After a period in China, 1873 to 1874, he returned to England and was drowned in 1876.

Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936), founder of the Wellcome Research Institution, collected numerous documents of a maritime origin as well as papers connected with the history of medicine.

Wemyss entered the Navy in 1879. He served in the Mediterranean from 1881 firstly in the SUPERB and then in the MONARCH, being present at the bombardment of Alexandria, 1882, and during the subsequent Egyptian campaign. In 1887 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1888 joined the Training Squadron in the VOLAGE. He went to the POLYPHEMUS, Mediterranean Station, in 1889, becoming a commander at the end of that year. In 1891 he was appointed to the RALEIGH, flagship at the Cape of Good Hope, and was involved in the suppression of slavery off the east coast of Africa. Wemyss became a captain in 1906, serving from 1909 to 1911 on the Australian Station in the CAMBRIAN. He was promoted to rear-admiral in 1917 and retired, becoming a vice-admiral in 1922.

By the end of the nineteenth century, White was well-known as an upholder of anti-German policies and an advocate of a strong navy, exerting his influence through articles in the Daily Express and a column in the Referee under his pseudonym 'Vanoc'. He thus became involved in the naval policies of the day and was an active member of the British Navy League, For Herbrand Arthur, eleventh Duke of Bedford (1858-1940), he also acted as supplier of information and political agent.

Jack Kilner Whittaker enlisted in the London Division of thr RNVR in 1912, subsequently being mobilised at the outbreak of the First World War. His first posting was to HMS KENT, and almost immediately he saw action at the Battle of the Falklands. During this action, the KENT sunk the German Light Cruiser NURNBERG. Three months later, the KENT and HMS GLASGOW, tracked down and sunk the DRESDEN, the only German vessel to escape from the Battle of the Falklands. In 1917, after three years in the KENT, Whittaker was promoted to Temporary Sub-Lieutenant, and attended HMS EXCELLENT for gunnery training. He then served in HMS MINDFUL and HMS WOLSEY, before resigning from the RNVR in 1919 with the rank of Lieutenant. Whittaker re-joined the RNVR in 1939, serving on HMS LYNX, HMS HAMPTON, HMS SPARTIATE and HMS SOUTHERN PRINCE. He was promoted to Temporary Acting Lieutenant-Commander in 1940, and was mentioned in Despatches in 1941, before being appointed to the Inter-Service RDF Board in 1942. Whittaker was then posted to the Admiralty Signal Department for a short time, before getting transferred to the escort carrier HMS VINDEX for Russian convoy duty. He was then posted to HMS DRAKE in 1945, before being made Executive Officer of HMS BLACKCAP at Royal Naval Air Station, Stretton. Whittaker was released from service on 21st December, 1945.

Wigram began his career with the East India Company as a surgeon. He contracted an illness, however, which affected his eyesight so that he could no longer practise as a surgeon nor could he go to sea again. He then set himself up as a drug merchant. In 1788 he bought the General Goddard and then the True Briton, which was built in Wells' Yard, Deptford in 1790. Wigram built up the business and acquired a large interest in the Blackwall Yard and in 1810 became Chairman of the new East India Dock Company. He retired in 1819 and sold the yard to two of his sons, Money and Henry Loftus Wigram, and to George Green.

Wilkinson was master of the MINOTAUR, 1807 to 1808, and took part in the attack on Copenhagen. After cruising in the Channel and the Atlantic between 1808 and 1810 in the CHRISTIAN VII, he was discharged from active service because of ill-health but was given shore appointment as Superintendent of the Wharf at the Victualling Yard, Deptford. From 1832 this post became known as Master Attendant and King's Harbour Master. Wilkinson retired in 1833 and was promoted to commander in 1846.

Henry Walker entered the Navy in 1803 and served as midshipman in HMS BELLEROPHON. He was promoted lieutenant in 1810. In 1833 he was given command as lieutenant commander of HMS ALBAN following the suppression of the disturbances which arose in the agricultural districts in 1830. The ALBAN was a steamship serving in the Mediterranean and there were considerable problems over the supply and quality of coal. He had many disagreements with Captain Hugh Pigot of HMS BARHAM who ordered him to flog certain seamen on grounds which Walker considered to be unjust and which he therefore refused to have done. Walker apprears to have been relieved of his command following these disagreements, but continued to accuse Pigot of cruelty and in 1834 he decided to stand for Parliament in order to impeach him, but withdrew in favour of Captain Byng, later Lord Torrington.

Hamilton Williams was Instructor in English literature attached to HMS BRITANNIA, between 1877 and 1905. He published Britain's naval power: a short history of the growth of the British Navy from the earliest times to Trafalgar, 2 vols, London 1898 and 1904.

By the middle of the nineteenth century it was generally realised that there was a problem in providing properly trained officers for merchant ships. In 1859 the Conway was established in the Mersey for this purpose. The idea of having a vessel on the Thames originated with William Munton Bullivant (1827-1908), a London merchant and Richard Green (1803-1863), a Blackwall shipbuilder. By 1861 an active committee had been formed and the Admiralty agreed to lend the Worcester, a 50-gun frigate, as a school. The Thames Marine Officer Training School was opened in the following year. The vessel was initially stationed at Blackwall Reach but moved to Erith the following year where she remained until 1869 when she was moved to Greenhithe. Within a few years, with the increase in the number of cadets, the ship had become too small and in 1876 she was replaced by a larger vessel (formerly the Frederick William). It was at this time that the name of the school was changed to the Thames Nautical Training College, HMS Worcester. The college was incorporated in 1892 and in 1922 it purchased land at Greenhithe. In 1938 the Cutty Sark was acquired by the college and berthed abreast of the Worcester. At the outbreak of war in 1939, the cadets were transferred to Foots Cray Place near Sidcup and the ship was returned to the Admiralty. At the end of the war the old vessel was handed back but within a few months the training ship Exmouth was made available and, renamed Worcester, was officially handed over in July 1945. In 1953 the Cutty Sark was taken over by the Cutty Sark Preservation Society and was docked permanently at Greenwich. The Thames Nautical Training College continued until July 1968 when it became part of the Merchant Navy College at Greenhithe. The third Worcester was sold in 1978 to be broken up.

See sub-fonds level descriptions for individual biographies.

Wrey entered the Navy in 1878. As a midshipman in the SUPERB, he was present at the bombardment of Alexandria, 1882, and was in the CARYSFORT in 1884 during the attack on Suakim. Still on the Mediterranean Station, he served in the TEMERAIRE, 1884 to 1885. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1888, spent eight years on the China Station and became a commander in 1900. In 1909 he was made Divisional Officer of the Coast Guard, Southern District, with the rank of captain. At the outbreak of war he was recalled to service as Principal Naval Transport Officer at Southampton and remained there until 1918.

Greive was born William Samuel Brown. He changed his name to Greive late in life as the result of an inheritance. He entered the Navy in 1845 and served in the STYX on the West African Station from 1845 until 1847. From 1851 to 1852 he was mate in the SPITEFUL in the Mediterranean. He went out to Bermuda in the ESPIEGLE in 1853 and served for some months in the CUMBERLAND at Halifax. He was promoted to lieutenant and appointed to the PENELOPE in 1854 and served in the Baltic during the Crimean War. In 1855 the PENELOPE went out to the Cape of Good Hope and Brown served on that station in several ships until promoted to commander in 1860. From 1861 to 1865 he served on the North American Station and, following his promotion to captain in 1866, returned there in the DANAE from 1871 to 1874. He was Naval Officer-in-Charge, Jamaica, from 1880 to 1882. He was promoted to rear-admiral in 1884, to vice-admiral in 1889 and retired in the same year.

Commander Waters began his collection of material on Chinese craft while serving on the China Station as a midshipman on HMS BERWICK 1930-1931 and as a lieutenant on HMS BEAGLE 1937-1938. He added notes and articles to it since.

See sub-fonds level descriptions for individual biographies.

Penn served under the Commonwealth in the Irish Fleet. He then went to the Mediterranean in the CENTURION and FAIRFAX, 1650 to 1651, before becoming First Captain of the TRIUMPH. During 1652 and 1653 he was Vice-Admiral of the Fleet under General Robert Blake during the First Dutch War. The following year he was appointed General and Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, in the SWIFTSUR, for the expedition to capture HISPANIOLA, returning home in 1655. During the Second Dutch War, Penn was appointed to the ROYAL CHARLES, the Duke of York's flagship, in a capacity similar to that of 'Captain of the Fleet'. He served at the Navy Board as a Commissioner between 1660 and 1663, influencing the tactical instructions and drawing up the code long-known as the 'Duke of York's Sailing and Fighting Instructions'. See Granville Penn, Memorials of the professional life and times of Sir William Penn. From 1644 to 1670 (London, 1833, 2 vols).

Walker entered the Navy in 1812, became a lieutenant in 1820, a commander in 1834 and a captain in 1838. With Admiralty permission he entered the Turkish navy in 1838, returning to England in 1845. He was appointed Surveyor of the Navy in 1848 and held this office for twelve years, during which time the change from sail to steam was largely effected. He had become a rear-admiral in 1858 and on leaving the Admiralty was appointed, in 1861, Commander-in-Chief at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1865 he was promoted to vice-admiral but had no further employment and became an admiral in 1870.

Potter's Ferry, also known as the Isle of Dogs Ferry, connected Garden Stairs, Greenwich, with the Isle of Dogs. In 1550 Edward VI granted to Sir Thomas Wentworth (1501-1551) the lord-ships and manors of Stepney and Hackney which included rights of running the ferry. Pepys recorded that he used the ferry twice in 1665. In 1762 the ferry was purchased by the Potter's Ferry Society set up by a number of Greenwich watermen. Potter's Ferry was limited to foot passengers only until in 1812 a horse ferry was established by Act of Parliament, creating a statutory ferry for horses and vehicles in favour of the Poplar and Greenwich Ferry Company. The nineteenth century saw the Ferry Society involved in a great deal of litigation. In 1826 an act was passed confirming its rights. The ferry was leased to the Thames Steamboat Company and from them to the London and Blackwall Railway Company which became part of the Great Eastern Railway Company. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the ferry was said to be transporting 1,300,000 passengers annually. Its long history ended with the completion of the Greenwich to Millwall foot tunnel in 1902.

When the regional gas and electricity companies were nationalised in 1949, the South Eastern Gas Board (SEGAS) emerged as a fusion of the South Metropolitan Gas Company and the Wandsworth and District Gas Company. Both these companies had transported coal from the North East Coast in their own ships to their own wharves in the Thames since the first decade of the twentieth century, and their combined fleets at the time of the merger totalled twelve ships of gross tonnages ranging between 1,500 and 2,700 tons. These vessels came to be known as 'flatirons' because, in order to negotiate the Thames bridges, they had to have either retractable or very low funnels and a 'low profile'. The change-over from coal to natural gas led to the phasing out of the SEGAS fleet in 1971.

The Fowey shipbroking firm of Toyne Carter and Co was founded in 1896 when J P Carter (1872-1957), of Coppack, Carter and Co, Connah's Quay, joined in partnership with C L Toyne (c 1870-1921), who had become established in business in the port some time earlier. Before long the firm became one of the principal shipbrokers and agents in Fowey, a position which resulted from the partners' involvement with the china clay shippers in and around nearby St Austell. The export of china clay in the early days was handled through the liner ports, local merchants selling in small amounts which would then be held until there was sufficient to make up a coaster cargo. It would then be shipped in casks to Liverpool for outward shipment. Toyne Carter and Co ran an office in Liverpool for several years for this reason, but subsequently arrangements were made to charter ships to carry china clay directly from Fowey. The first shipment in what became known as the 'Clay Line' left Fowey harbour for the United States in 1904. With the growth in the demand for china clay, more and larger ships were arriving to load for destinations all over the world; some, like those of the Holland Steamship Company and the Glynn Line, on a regular basis, and with these the company forged particularly strong links.

The company owned ships on several occasions, both steam and sail, most notably the three-masted schooner A B Sherman. A war prize, she was acquired by the firm in 1918 in poor condition, restored at great expense and returned to service in 1921, when the post-war boom had passed its peak. With freight rates down and cargoes difficult to find, the A B Sherman traded under the company's flag for only a short period. The consequence of this episode, which came close to bankrupting the company, was its change into a limited liability company in 1921. It remained one until 1968, reverting back into a partnership then. In 1977 Toyne Carter & Co was acquired by English Clays Lovering Pochin and Co Ltd, St Austell.

The Union Marine and General Insurance Company, established in Liverpool in 1863 with an authorized capital of two million pounds, was formed by a syndicate of underwriters of that port, taking over the marine insurance business of two existing firms of Liverpool underwriters. Agencies were set up in both Manchester and Glasgow, while the Ocean Marine Insurance Company acted as London agents. In 1911, the Union Marine was acquired as a subsidiary of the Phoenix Assurance Company. See Centennial story: The Union Marine and General Insurance Company Ltd 1863-1963 (privately published, Liverpool, 1963).

Yates entered the Royal School of Naval Architecture, South Kensington in 1871. His first appointment was as draughtsman and assistant foreman at HM Dockyard Portsmouth. In 1875 he was appointed supernumerary draughtsman at the Admiraly. Yates was then appointed foreman of Pembroke Dockyard 1878-1884. During this time, he was involved in the building of the turret battleship HMS EDINBURGH. In 1884 Yates became Principal Admiralty Overseer for the building of HMS BENBOW. On appointment to the rank of Constructor, Yates was appointed to Chatham Dockyard, where he remained until 1888, when he was transferred to Devonport Dockyard, being made Chief Constructor there in 1892. In 1892-93 he served as Admiralty Inspecting Officer, for the ships being fitted out for the "Special Service Squadron", under the Northbrook programme. In 1893 he was appointed Chief Constructor, Chatham Dockyard and then transferred to Portsmouth in 1895. During these years Yates launched 11 important vessels, including some built under the Fisher programme. In 1902 he was appointed Civil Assistant at Chatham and in 1906 he went to Glasgow as Senior Constructive Officer for the Clyde and Barrow districts. He retired in 1912, but was recalled to the Admiralty, 1916-1918, for special duties in connection with shipbuilding for World War One.

Charles Yorke entered Parliament in 1790 and was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1810, holding office until his resignation through ill-health in 1812.

Lady Yule, the wife of Sir David Yule (d 1928), a wealthy Calcutta jute merchant, commissioned the yacht to be built in 1929 by John Brown of Clydebank. In 1930 Lady Yule and her daughter embarked on a world cruise in the NAHLIN and they stayed in New Zealand, Australia and Miami from 1931 to 1934.

Augustine Henry was born in Dundee on 2nd July 1857 to Bernard Henry and Mary MacNamee. His father was originally from Tyanee in county Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and had worked as a gold prospector in both California and Australia. The family moved to Cookstown, co Tyrone shortly after Augustine’s birth where his father owned a grocery shop and worked flax dealer. Henry spent some of his childhood with his grandparents in Tyanee.

Henry was educated at the Cookstown academy and in Queen’s college, Galway. He studied natural sciences and philosophy, graduating with a first-class degree and gold medal in 1877. While at Queen’s college, Galway, he met Evelyn Gleeson who became a lifelong friend and correspondent. He then moved to Queen’s College, Belfast to take a MA the following year. After this he worked for a year in a London hospital and in 1879 passed the Queen’s University examination in medicine. During this time, one of his professors suggested the possibility of a position with the Chinese Customs service. For this Henry needed a medical qualification and he gained this possible at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, taking special examinations to speed up the process. By 1881, he had his medical qualification and accepted a post as a medical officer, setting out for China in the summer of that year.

Henry arrived in China at Hong Kong and then was ordered to his first posting at Shanghai. He spent the winter at Shanghai learning about the ways of the customs services and in the spring of 1882 he was assigned to the port of Ichang in the Hubei province on the Yangtze river, more than 900 miles inland as assistant medical officer. It was at Ichang that Henry started collecting plants. The area immediately surrounding the town is plains while only a few miles were the San Xia, a hundred miles of gorges filled with vegetation. Henry began to collect at the weekends as a hobby and then more as part of his duties as customs officer. After four months of collecting and struggling to name the plants, he wrote to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew seeking their advice. After the initial letter brought instructions on plant collecting, he wrote again offering to send them his specimens if they would identify them for him. The offer was accepted and he sent his first collection of around 1000 specimens to Kew in November that year. Henry continued to send specimens to Kew throughout his time in China and corresponded regularly with the director of the time, Mr Thiselton-Dyer. In 1888, he arranged special leave from his post to go plant collecting on behalf of Kew.

During this leave, Henry made two long journeys, one to the mountains southwest of the Yangtze and the other to the mountains in the north in the Hubei district. The main objective of these expeditions was to study the vegetables used in Chinese medicine. In addition to this, Henry also found many plants that were not known to grow in China. The areas he travelled were largely unknown to botanists and in some areas he was the western man to travel there. Although these trips were on behalf of Kew, it is unlikely that Henry was paid for his specimens. In order to recoup some of the money spent on the trips, Henry prepared several other sets of specimens which he then sold to other herbaria. In addition to these trips, Henry also was the first to employ native people as collectors on his behalf when he was not able to leave Ichang. They collected the some of the specimens that Henry sent to Kew.

In 1889, after a failed bid by Thiselton-Dyer for Henry to go collecting again, Henry was transferred to the island of Huinan. During the four months that he spent in Huinan, Henry collected 750 specimens. Henry then contracted malaria, endemic to Huinan. He was removed Hong Kong and then, after eight years in China, he returned home.

The year he spent at home was divided between Ireland and London. In London, he spent a great deal of time at Kew, staying with the Thiselton-Dyers. He also attended meetings of the Linnean Society, having become a fellow in 1888. During this year he met and married Caroline Orridge, a friend of Evelyn Gleeson and an artist. In 1891, he returned to China with Caroline. It was a difficult journey as Caroline was suffering from tuberculosis and she was taken seriously ill on the journey. Henry was based at Shanghai and was not able to go plant collecting due to his work and Caroline’s health. The Henry’s then moved to Taiwan in hopes that it would better suit Caroline. Henry took up collecting again although he was disappointed with the results. He became very interested in the native people and their use of plants. His wife health continued to suffer and in 1894, she and Henry’s sister Mary set out for Denver, Colorado to improve her health. Henry was about to leave China to join them, having arranged to sell his herbarium to Harvard, when Caroline died in September 1894.

After her death, Henry returned to Europe for a year, becoming a member of the Middle Temple. In 1895 he returned to China and was once again based at Shanghai. In May 1896 he was posted to Mengzi in South Yunnan, once of the most remote posts in China. During his time at Mengzi, he studies the local people and he began plant collecting again. His first trip into the surrounding countryside was spoilt by the weather but there were many others. Here he found lilies, magnolias and many others. When he left Mengzi, he sent off 32 cases of botanical specimens. In 1898, Henry was transferred again, this time to Simao. He was now Acting Chief Commissioner of Customs. This meant that Henry had less time to go collecting and he relied more on one of his native collectors who had been with him for many years to do the actual collecting. Henry started to learn the language of the local people, the Lolos. In 1899, he became alarmed at the rate of deforestation in the province and wrote to Mr Thiselton-Dyer and Mr Sargent at Harvard about sending out a professional collector. In the end, neither sent a collector but one was sent by James Veitch and Sons, nursery owners. This collector was E. H. Wilson, better known as Chinese Wilson. Wilson went to see Henry when he arrived in China to learn about plant collecting in China. About the time he arrived, Henry was moved back to Mengzi again and they went their separate ways, Wilson taking Henry’s plant specimens to send back to Europe when he reached the coast.

The political situation in China, which had been unsettled for many years, now became increasing dangerous. Henry became worried by this and almost resigned in 1900. This was now the time of the Boxer rebellion and later that year he had to abandon his post at Mengzi and go to Hekou. There he remained for several months. At the end of December 1900, he left China, officially on leave but in reality having resigned. He returned to London via Sri Lanka where his sister Mary was then living. Much of the next year was spent at Kew working on the collections he had sent back from China. He was now a well known plant collector and it seems that it was at this time that he became particularly interested in forestry.

In 1902, when there was no longer any question of him returning to China, Henry began to study forestry at the premier forestry school in Europe, at Nancy in France. He struggled during his time at Nancy, disliking the teaching methods and finding the French language hard to master. He was also much older than his fellow pupils which may have caused him disquiet. After a time, Henry began to wish for a job back in Ireland but none was forthcoming. He left Nancy before the end of the course and he then co-authored The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland with H. J. Elwes. This huge work, eventually published in seven volumes, took several years to complete and Henry travelled all over the country to collect information. Once it was completed, he was without a set purpose and entered into the social whirl of London in the early twentieth century. In 1907 he became engaged to Alice Brunton who became his second wife on St Patrick’s day, 1908. Henry also became professor of forestry at the new Forestry school at Cambridge University. In 1913, Henry got the position that he had always wanted when he was appointed to the newly created chair of forestry at the College of Science in Dublin. He continued at the college until his death in 1930 after a short illness.

Sir Arthur William Hill was born on the 11 Oct 1875, the only son of Daniel Hill. Daniel Hill was a keen amateur horticulturalist and inspired his son from an early age to learn sound practical knowledge about gardening.

Hill attended Marlborough School from 1890 until 1894. It was at school that Hill began to take an active interest in field botany, inspired by his teacher [who was an amateur naturalist] Edward Meyrick. Hill later talked of the Marlborough Downs as the place where he first found orchids to examine. Hill showed his appreciation to the College by bequeathing them money.

From Marlborough School Hill continued his education at Kings College Cambridge in October 1894 on an award. His success in gaining the award was due to an appeal from Marlborough School based on his botanical knowledge, enthusiasm and promise. At Cambridge Hill studied Natural Sciences, for which he obtained a 1st in 1897. Hill continued to study at Cambridge but specialised in Botany and received a 1st in 1898. At this time the Chair of Botany was Henry Marshall Ward who had a great influence on Hill; Ward introduced him to Walter Gardiner [Cambridge lecturer until 1898]. Gardiner invited Hill to collaborate with him on research on plant histology for the Royal Society. This led to Hill being offered a post at Cambridge University as a Demonstrator in Botany in 1899. Hill was successful in his post and was awarded a fellowship in 1901, a lectureship in 1904 and the position of Dean of Kings College in 1907. As a lecturer he contributed much through his travels as he would return to Cambridge and describe the flora and fauna he had observed in its natural ecosystem. He helped to modernise the Botany School through his use of field trips, which took students out of the classroom to the plants in their natural environment. This achievement was acknowledged by Kings College in 1932 when he was granted an honorary fellowship.

In 1907 Hill left Cambridge to become the Assistant Director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to the then Director Sir David Prain. Prain wrote that he chose Hill because of his travelling experiences [especially Hill's trip to the Andes which Hill financed himself], his businesslike mind and ability to work at any level. One of Hill's prime duties as Assistant Director was to attend meetings and trips to Imperial countries at the government's behest. Hill was very interested in the spread of knowledge and relished these trips, where he could gather specimens and in return offer advice to the host nations. Thus, under him the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew developed its worldwide network of associates. He was also concerned that the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew should develop its research side and improve in everyway possible.

In 1922 Prain retired leaving Hill to take over the Directorship of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Hill took full advantage of the opportunities offered to the Gardens by the British Empire and he successfully campaigned for the government to view Kew as a national asset that could be used to improve colonial relationships. Hill was concerned that the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew should continue and extend its economic links within the Empire. For example, he created a greenhouse in which bananas on route to Jamaica could be quarantined in. Hill's commitment to commercial activities of this nature led the government to ask the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1931 to officially disseminate information on economic plants and their sources around the Empire. This led to the first inventory of plants in the British Empire. Hill was also much concerned with the Gardens on a domestic scale and under his guidance the number of plants that were exhibited was increased. He was a keen amateur landscape gardener and had a tremendous knowledge of plants which he used to enrich the Gardens as a visitor attraction. He was especially keen to see plants growing in as natural and beautiful a setting as possible and so changes were made to planting methods. Hill toured the gardens every morning and would order any changes he felt necessary to enhance artistic effect. Major alterations included: a new vista to the lake, the extension of the rock garden and the improvement of the avenue from the lake to the pagoda. In addition to this, Hill constructed the Sherman Hoyt Cactus House in 1935. Perhaps most significantly though, was Hill's extension in 1930 of the Herbarium so that scientific study could be extended into new areas.

Much of Hill's horticultural and botanical knowledge was informed by his travels abroad. On his travels Hill would collect material for study. Thus, he obtained grants from the Empire Marketing Board from 1927 onwards that allowed him to travel more than any other Director before him.

Sir Arthur William Hill died in the Deer Park in Richmond the 3 Nov 1941. His death is recorded by a number of obituaries all of which lament the passing of Britain's most accomplished botanist.

Ballard was born in London 18th March 1896 and died Chiswick, Middlesex on 25th January 1976. He graduated with a BSc in London in 1927 before being appointed temporary assistant at the Herbarium at RBG Kew on 23/09/1929. He was later made a permanent member of staff there on 1 January 1946. During his career Ballard worked as a pteriodologist (fern specialist), travelling to work with Carl Christensen, in Copenhagen 'the greatest authority on ferns in Europe' in 1937, and to Ceylon with Irene Manton and Sledge in 1950 to look at the native flora there. Ballard finally retired from the Herbarium at Kew in 1961. Ballard was also involved with international botanical work including the Special Committee for Pteridophyta, which he worked with Pichi-Sermolli, Alston, Copeland, Holttum, Morton and Tardieu-Blot.

William Arnold Bromfield was born in the New Forest on the 4th July 1801, the only son of the priest, John Arnold Bromfield (c.1770-1801) and the grandson of the physician and Royal Society fellow, Robert Bromfield (d. 1786). Aged 20 he entered Glasgow University studying medicine. In this period anyone wishing to practise medicine had to be licensed by the Society of Apothecaries and for this knowledge of herbs and medicinal use was essential. In order to attain this knowledge Bromfield studied under the then Professor of Botany of Glasgow, Sir William Hooker.

Upon his father's death, Bromfield gained an inheritance that would fund his subsequent botanic research and travel, which lead to him not pursuing a career in medicine. After graduating in 1826 he travelled on the Continent in France, Germany and Italy before returning and setting up home with his sister. The pair finally settled in Ryde in 1836.

A preliminary version of Bromfield's Flora Hantoniensis was published in the New Physiologist between 1848 and 1850, though he never considered his flora for the Isle of Wight, the Flora Vectensis to be ready for publication. He continued to travel widely, visiting Ireland in 1842, the West Indies in 1844 and North America in 1846. His observations on climate and plant life in the USA were in fact used in Hooker's Journal of Botany (1848-1849). Finally in 1850 Bromfield journeyed East, to Egypt and Syria. Letters written to his sister from this period were posthumously published, following Bromfield's death from typhus in Damascus on October 9th 1851.

Isaac Henry Burkill was born on the 18th of May 1870 at Chapel Allerton, near Leeds. He did his school years at Repton where he started to collect plants and insects and to develop an interest for botany. He first decided to train as a doctor and following the advice of one of his Repton's masters sought admission to Caius College in Cambridge. Burkill was admitted to Cambridge in 1888, in 1891 he was awarded a scholarship and was appointed Assistant Curator of Cambridge's Herbarium. He developed his knowledge of European flora and, in 1894, was appointed a teacher. In 1894 also, Burkill joined the Linnean Society and made his first visit to RBG Kew to determine some specimens from the Western Pacific region he had found at Cambridge. On the 1st of January 1897, Burkill was appointed to RBG Kew as a Technical Assistant. Two years later he was transferred to the Director's office as a Principal Assistant. Burkill had already developped an interest for Pacific flora and tropical plants, that led to his nomination as Assistant to the Reporter of Economic Products in Calcutta. Burkill arrived in Calcutta at the beginning of 1901. There, he met Sir David Prain, Superintendant of the Calcutta Botanic Garden. He was growing many plants of the genus Dioscorea in order to study them. Burkill soon shared his interested and they started to work on them and classify them together. Burkill used his tours in India and nearby countries to collect more plants for his studies and the Botanic Garden. In 1907, Burkill's title was changed to Assistant Director to the Botanic Survey and in 1912 he was asked by the government of Strait Settlements to accept the direction of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. In Singapore, Burkill started his first card index listing all the economic products of the Malay peninsula. In May 1924, Burkill retired and left Singapore. He went back to RBG Kew to work as a researcher. He first published a guide to the Singapore Botanic Garden and, in 1935, a DICTIONNARY OF THE ECONOMIC PRODUCTS OF THE MALAY PENINSULA. After the dictionary was published, Burkill returned to former studies and published AN ACCOUNT OF THE GENUS DIOSCOREA IN THE EAST, in collaboration with Sir D Prain, in 1936 and 1938. A second card index was elaborated for that publication. He was also at that time Botanical Secretary to the Linnean Society from 1937 to 1944 and continued studies on Ranunculus and Tamus. In 1952 he was awarded the Linnean Gold Medal. He was in permanent contact with staff at RBG Kew where he would ask for some specimens to be grown or some reference to be given from the library. In 1947 he started to study African Dioscoreaceae which led to the publication of a new article in 1960 ORGANOGRAPH AND EVOLUTION OF DIOSCOREACEAE, THE FAMILY OF THE YAMS, J Linn Soc Lond Bot 56, p. 319-412. His last publication was entitled CHAPTERS ON THE HISTORY OF BOTANY IN INDIA, published between 1953 and 1963. In his old days his eyesight became weaker and weaker but he continued working almost to the end.
He had married his cousin Ethel Maud Morrison in 1910 and, in 1914, they had a son, Humphrey Morrison Burkill, who inherited his father's interest for botany.
He died on the 8th of March 1965, aged 94 years old.

Colin Graham Trapnell was born in 1907, he was educated at Sedbergh School and later read Classics at Trinity College, Oxford. However, his real interest lay in science as he had been a keen botanist since his school days. While at Oxford, he joined Max Nicholson in founding the Oxford University Exploration Club in 1927 and in organising its first expedition to Greenland in 1928. His Greenland work was published in 1928. Trapnell then applied for a post as Ecologist at the Colonial Office and in 1931 obtained his first posting as Government Ecologist to Rhodesia, now Zambia. His task was to reconnoitre and map soils, vegetation types as well as indigenous agriculture of the whole territory, a task that would take him 10 years. The task was generally carried out on foot, as there were in those days few tracks suitable for motor vehicles. Trapnell and his colleagues would depart for six months at a time, using native bearers carrying essentials such as medical supplies and food.

For many of the native tribes they encountered, this was to be their first sighting of white men. The surveys, the first of their kind to cover a whole African country, were published after the Second World War and have recently been republished (2004) as they are still the basic source of essential natural resource data for the country The Soils, Vegetation and Traditional Agriculture of Zambia is in two volumes with accompanying maps.

In 1948, Trapnell organised experiments across Zambia on behalf of the Colonial Office to assess land for possible groundnut production, and significantly the Overseas Food Corporation decided not to start a ground nut scheme in Northern Rhodesia. The schemes which failed in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) lacked the kind of survey undertaken by Trapnell in Rhodesia. His work in Rhodesia was considered by the Colonial Office to be the foundation for a wide range of projects, especially on African agriculture. In the 1950s, he was asked to train ecologists for work in Africa, ranging from large scale vegetation and soil surveys to investigations into Tsetse and desert locust infestation.

In 1960, with J E Griffiths, he completed a study on the rainfall altitude ratio in relation to the natural vegetation zones of south west Kenya. Meanwhile, the Kenya Department of Agriculture asked him to prepare an overall vegetation map covering 40,000 square miles of southwest Kenya. This major undertaking was not completed until several years after his retirement.

Upon his retirement, Trapnell joined a small group of people engaged in founding the Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation, now the Somerset Wildlife Trust. He organised land use surveys for conservation purposes of the Mendip Hills and the Somerset Peat Moors, and was responsible for the Trust’s acquisition of its first nature reserves at Catcott and West Ham. For 13 years he was Chairman of the Leigh Woods committee management for the National Trust and was also responsible for negotiating the lease of the woods to the Nature Conservancy Council to form the Avon Gorge National Nature Reserve. At the same time, from his home in Bristol, he was engaged in the completion of the interpretation of air photographs for the vegetation and climate maps of South West Kenya, the sheets of which were published successively by the Directorate of Overseas Surveys between 1966 and 1986.

In 1994, he started the Trapnell Fund for Environmental Field Research in Africa at Oxford University, to support research into African environment. The fund established a fellowship at the Environment Change Institute, and Trapnell was the first Fellow appointed in Sep 1991. In the last three years of his life, although aged over 90, he collaborated with Paul Smith at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to produce a three volume ecological survey of Zambia. He was appointed OBE in 1957. He died on 9 Feb 2004, aged 96.

Arthur Disbrowe Cotton was born on 15th January, 1879 in London. He was educated at King's College School, London, which is where he began to develop his interest in plants. Cotton attended a 3 year course in horticulture directly after school before embarking on a 3 year course on botany at the Royal College of Science, London. It was here that Cotton became attracted to and then specialised in fungi, algae and lichens. His first professional post came in 1902 when he was appointed as Demonstrator and Assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, where he specialised in lichens and marine algae. It was also at this time he became a member of the British Mycological Society; a membership that lasted the rest of his life. In 1904, Cotton accepted a post at Kew in the Cryptogamic section under Dr George Massee, where he remained for the rest of his career, save for 2 years during the First World War, which was spent under the Board of Agriculture, undertaking research in plant pathology to assist the Food Production Department in the protection of food crops, particularly potatoes, against fungus diseases. Before this appointment, from 1904 to 1915, Cotton concentrated on marine algae from a taxonomic and ecological perspective. This culminated in seven separate trips between 1910 and 1911 to Clare Island, a small island off the west coast of Ireland, from which Cotton published his findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1912.

It was on 1st March 1922 that Arthur Cotton succeeded Otto Von Stapf to become Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at Kew, where he remained until his retirement on 31st January 1946. Cotton was interested cultivated species, such as the tree Senecios, which were found by Cotton during his trip to Mount Kilimanjaro, East Africa in 1929-1930 and of which some samples of the tree were collected to be planted at Kew. Cotton's ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro, 1929-1930, with Dr A S Hitchcock, the US Agrostologist was one of a number of trips Cotton made as Keeper at Kew. Many of this trips included making acquaintances with botanical institutions on the Continent, including Berlin (1927, 1931), Copenhagen (1931), Paris (1935), Prague (1927) and Vienna (1927). Cotton attained the Keepership at Kew at a time when there was a revival of interest in plant taxonomy and plant-nomenclature, which meant many undeveloped countries called on Kew for assistance in naming botanical specimens. Another consequence of these renewed interests, meant enormous amounts of un-mounted and unclassified material, some hundreds of thousands specimens, had accumulated in the Herbarium during the previous 50 years before Cotton's appointment. Credit needs to be paid to Cotton, in that during his tenure as Keeper at Kew, he managed to add 900,000 sheets of specimens to the collections, through the careful guidance and gentle encouragement Cotton paid to his staff.

Cotton was also an active member of many societies and committees outside his work at Kew, which included; joint vice-chairman of the Lily Group Committee of the RHS 1935 to 1962; a member of the Lily Group's editorial committee 1953-1962; the British Mycological Society; a Fellow of the Linnaean Society 1960-1962; president of Linnaean Society 1943-46, Vice-President 1927-28 and 1946-47; Council member of Association of Applied Biologists 1917-21; Vice-President from1923-24; member of the British Ecological Society and President of the Kew Guild, 1940-41. During his life, Cotton was also awarded with the Lyttel Lily Cup in honour of his valuable contributions to the knowledge of the genus Lilium in 1944 by the Council of the PHS; the Victoria Medal of Honour by the RHS for Cotton's services to botany and horticulture and an OBE in 1934 for his contributions to botany. After the death of his wife Enid Mary Jesson, he lived with his daughter, where he died on 27th December 1962.

Born, 1892; Edward Kent Balls was involved in Quaker relief work for eleven years, from 1918 after the First World War, in France, then in the Balkans and Russia; this is where me met with his wife, Natalia Timonova, who was to play an active part in his plant collecting activities. His career in horticulture started in 1926, when he worked for the Six Hills Nursery, Stevenage, in Kent. although he had little training in horticulture or botany, he quickly became the chief rock garden builder. After a few years he decided to switch to plant hunting and made his first trip in 1932, to Persia with Dr P L Giuseppi, a founder member and later President of the Alpine Garden Society. Although Giuseppi could only spare one month, Balls stayed four months and a half. They travelled through Hamadan and Ispahan to Shiraz and west to Kerman and the mountains of Kuh Banan. Balls later explored Mount Elwend and its neighbourood. He also exploredKhalat an Mount Kuh Ajub and the mountains of Schir Kuh (ion Mountain) and Barf Kahnnich (Snow Mountain). They brought back a wide variety of plants, new or lost to cultivation, including six species of Dionysa curviflora which at that time were virtually unknown to cultivation.

This expedition launched Balls on a collecting career. He then teamed up with Dr W Balfour Gourlay, a wealthy and dedicated amateur botanist, who had accompanied Nursery owner Clarence Elliott of Six Hills Nursery on his South American plant hunting trips. Together they made two trips to Turkey (Feb-Sep 1933), where they explored Taurus Mountains and later the Pontine Mountains south of Trebizond. This expedition yielded many good plants, some new firmly established such as campanula betulifolia, geranium armenium and cyclamen cilicium var. intaminatum, the smallest of the cyclamen species. In 1934, Balls and Balfour Gourlay returned to Turkey exploring several mountain ranges; the third expedition again to Turkey in 1935 had to be abandoned, due to difficulties by the Turkish officials, forbidding them to explore certain areas; they thought them to be secret service agents.

In 1936 Balls went to Morocco with Dr Richard Seligman, an alpine gardener. they explored th oasis of Aguelmous and the volcanic mountains of Djebel Siroua and Djebel Amezdour; , they also explored the foot and area of Djebel Toubkal in the Atlas mountains, Balls climbing its summit they collected amongst various species, narcissus watieri. Seligman returned to England and Balls carried on alone, going also further east in the company of an ornithologist from Marrakesh. They went to Tirsal and the foot of Djebel Ghat, where Balls found an attractive alpine flora. Having followed Hooker's footsteps he was however, more successful in his collecting and received the RHS Award of Merit in 1937 for having discovered Colchicum triphyllum, collected near Tashdirt.

In 1937 Balls then made a four month visit to Greece with Balfour Gourlay concentrating mainly to the Pindus mountains of Epirus. In 1938, they went to Mexico, accompanied by Mrs Balls. Part of their mission was to collect wild species of potatoes for research and breeding purposes. They explored the areas of Nevada de Toluca and Ojos de Agua as well as Cofre de Perote; they found their first potates on Popocatepetl. On the Pico de Orizaba they stayed first in the village of of Lomagrande at 900ft, and despite the villagers' evil reputation, they were well received; the flora was so rich that they later returned to collect seeds. Their trip ended with the ascent of Mt Malinche, the upper slopes of which are now a national park, and found many interesting plants.

They were recalled to England in November when Balls was asked by the Agriculural Bureau to continue his potato research into South America. Mrs Balls returned to England with many drawings of plants she had made during the trip. Balls and Balfour Gourlay sailed for Buenaventura and on to Quito where they were met by potato expert Jack Hawkes and together they explored several mountainous areas. Balfour Gorlay returned to England but Balls stayed on, he had also obtained from the Agricultural Bureau to collect ornamental plants for himself.

The project was incomplete as World War II broke out, and unable to return to England, Balls went to the USA working for the British Purchasing Commission. He again undertook relief work from 1944 to 1947, working for the UNRAA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which dealt with refugees in territories liberated from axis powers. Balls travelled for this work in Yugoslavia and China; he later returned to the USA, working for Mrs Lester Rowntree in an extensive seed collecting project, before joining the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, California. Here he stayed until his retirement in 1960. The Balls later moved to Spain but returned to England in 1967 and made their home with their daughter in Hull.

Natalia Balls died in November 1983 and Edward in October 1984 aged 92.

Henry John Elwes was a noted traveller and naturalist. Born on 16 May 1846 to John Henry Elwes (d 1891) and Mary Elwes (d 1913), he was the eldest of eight children at Colesborne, Gloucestershire, which had been the Elwes family estate since its procurement by John Elwes, great grand father to Henry.

Elwes devoted himself to following his twin passions of travel and natural history. In 1871 he travelled in the Himalayas, including a trip to Tibet. His observations on this expedition led to his 1873 paper 'The geographical distribution of asiatic birds'. Throughout his life, he would continue to travel extensively in Asia, where many of his botanical collections were made. India and the Himalayas were the places he returned to most on his travels, although he visited and collected from a remarkably diverse range of areas. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1874.

Having married Margaret Susan in 1871, his naturalistic interest turned form ornithology to botany, or at least to the collection and propagation of plants from his travels. In 1880, he published his highly regarded Monograph of the genus lilium. Significantly, Elwes collaborated on this treatise with J G Baker, who handled the explicit scientific aspects of the work. Elwes himself had no in depth scientific training, and as a result he focused more on the practical aspects of specimen collection, which he could combine with his enthusiasm for travel. Several species, which he was first to collect and bring to flower, were named for him, one example being the snowdrop Galanthus elwesii.

In addition to this enthusiastic collection of botanical samples, Elwes was also a keen lepidopterist. He recorded fifteen new species of butterflies and moths, and collected a vast number of specimens for his own edification. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1897, he himself attributed his success to his aforementioned 1873 paper. The same year he was awarded the inaugural Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society.

In his later life, Elwes became renowned for his study of trees. He was regarded not only as a fine observer and collector of specimens but also as an especially proficient propagator of those he brought back to Britain. He took many photographs of trees, as well as making numerous observations. He was acclaimed enough in this field to be appointed President of the Royal Arboricultural Society in 1907. Between 1906 and 1913, Elwes produced The trees of Great Britain and Ireland this time in collaboration with Augustine Henry. This was possibly is most significant work at least in scope, running to seven volumes in length. One of his great frustrated ambitions was to found a world class arboretum at his Colesborne estate. Although he created splendid gardens there, his plans for planting trees were limited by the soil quality.

Henry John Elwes died on 26 Nov 1922 at Colesborne. He was survived by his wife and his son, Henry Cecil Elwes (born 1874). His daughter Susan Margaret Elwes (born either 1870 or 1871) had died the previous year in 1921.

Francis Kingdon-Ward was born in Whitington, Lancs. on 6 November 1885. He was the son of Harry Marshall Ward and Selina Mary née Kingdon. His father was a professor of Botany at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill in Surrey and was appointed to the Chair of Botany at Cambridge University ten years later. He was first educated at St Paul's School in London, and later as an undergraduate at Christ's College in Cambridge. The death of his father in 1906 and the poor state of the family's finances meant that he was unable to complete the full three years of study at Cambridge and graduated after two years. He accepted the first post offered to him, that of Junior Master at the Shanghai Public School where he taught the sons of wealthy businessmen, both British and Chinese. Having little taste for teaching, he escaped whenever he could to the mountains and forests of Java and Borneo. Less than two years into the post, he was given the travelling opportunity he had been waiting for. Having been granted leave of absence from the School, Kingdon-Ward joined an American zoological expedition which was to travel six hundred miles in central and western China, up the Yangste to Wuhan, and then to Tibet. Because of the financial backing provided by the Duke of Bedford, the expedition became known as the 'Bedford Expedition', with the aim to collect animal specimen. Although inexperienced, Kingdon-Ward made himself useful and collected a small collection of plants which he later presented to the Botany School at Cambridge.

A year later, he returned to his teaching post in Shanghai, having gained some experience in conducting an expedition. He also learnt how to deal with the indigenous inhabitants of the country he travelled in, being appalled with the way westerners behaved towards local inhabitants and vowed not to follow their example. During his own expeditions, Kingdon-Ward was known to respect local laws and customs even if he did not agree with them. The Bedford expedition had given him a taste for travelling and he soon sought a mean to take part in another expedition. His chance came with an offer from Arthur Kilpin Bulley, a wealthy Cheshire cotton merchant with a passion for plants and gardens and keen to introduce exotic hardy plants to Britain. Bulley was also the owner of a seed company, Bees. He commissioned Kingdon-Ward, as George Forrest, the botanist whom he had previously used, was unavailable.

Kingdon-Ward's assignment was to collect hardy alpine plants from the mountains of Yunnan and in the wild Tibetan marshes. Without any regrets, he resigned from his teaching job in Shanghai and set off for his first solo expedition on 31 January 1911. This expedition is narrated in his book 'The Land of the Blue Poppy - Travels of a Naturalist in Eastern Tibet' which he published in 1913. Although he felt lonely and depressed at times during his first expedition, these feelings disappeared as he progressed in beautiful surroundings. He returned in December with two hundred plants, twenty two of them being new species and he had also recorded other botanical and geological information.

He returned to England in 1912, where he was re-united with his family in Cambridge. He spent much of his time lecturing about his travels, writing a series of articles and working on his first book. He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the latter being impressed by his original observations of the regions he had travelled in. This made him the youngest man awarded with this honour. The RGS also offered to supply him with equipment in his next expedition. Despite unrest in China, Kingdon-Ward set off once again in 1913, after having undertaken an intensive short course at the RGS in surveying and map making.

The next three years were spent on various expeditions, including a trip in 1914 to Hpimaw in the frontier region of north east Burma with the intention to travel onwards into Assam. However, he had to abandon the latter part of the expedition due to ill health. He enlisted in the Indian Army for the duration of the First World War, reaching the rank of Captain.

After the War, he returned to England and attempted to set up his own nursery with a partner. But he was no businessman and in 1921, his business having failed, he returned to the Yunann province of China. In 1923 he returned to England, after having had to abort his expedition and married Florinda Norman-Thompson, the latter setting out to promote her husband's career. Meanwhile, he was planning another expedition, which was going to prove to be the most outstanding expedition of his career, botanically as well as geographically.

Early in 1924, he set off for the gorges of the Tsangpo, a Tibetan river flowing south into China and India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra. Kingdon-Ward was in search of legendary waterfalls as well as botanical specimen, and was accompanied by Lord Cawdor who partly funded the expedition, the other part being funded by Bees and other seed share investors. They travelled through virgin lands and collected many specimens as well as dispelling the myth of the giant waterfalls. This was to be the first of several visits to Northern Burma. An expedition in 1926 was funded by a group of wealthy gardeners, and in 1927 Kingdon-Ward climbed Japvo Peak in Assam. There were several other expeditions, in Laos in 1929 and in the Ajung valley of North Burma. Now funded by the Royal Horticultural Society, he returned in Tibet in 1933 where he travelled north to the source of the Po-Yigrong River in the mountains. After a round trip of 1,000 miles he returned with hundreds of species.

Kingdon-Ward undertook three more journeys in the 1930s, to Upper Burma, the Burma-Tibet border and Assam. Two of these expeditions were organised by two leading American naturalists, S Cutting and A Vernay, in 1935 and again in 1938. When war was declared in 1939 he joined up and was given his previous rank of Captain and attached to S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive). He was sent on missions to establish safe military corridors through Burma to avoid the Japanese, and later trained pilots in jungle survival at the School of Jungle Warfare at Poona in India (1943-1944). At the end of the War he was commissioned by the USA to search for fallen planes between India and China. It was during one of these trips that he found the Manipur lily.

In 1948, he returned to the remote state of Manipur, between Assam and north west Burma, with his second wife, Jean Macklin, having divorced Florinda fourteen years earlier. This was the first of six trips together during which they collected several species of the pink Manipur lily. In 1952, Jean wrote her first book 'My Hill So Strong', in which she narrates the journey to the Lohit Valley in Burma, where they had just escaped with their lives after being caught in a massive earthquake. In 1956, at the age of seventy one, Kingdon-Ward climbed Mount Victoria in Central Burma (10,016ft) and travelled to Sri Lanka in 1956-1957. He was planning another trip when he fell ill, lapsed into a coma and died in London on 8 April 1958 at the age of seventy three.

Kingdon-Ward's work was recognised during his lifetime by the Royal Horticultural Society, who also awarded him with the Victoria Medal of Honour in Horticulture in 1932 and the Veitch Memorial Medal in 1933. He was awarded an OBE for his services to horticulture in 1954. Altogether, he wrote twenty five books and numerous articles.

Forsyth was born at Old Meldrum, Aberdeen in 1737 and died on the 25 July 1804 in his home in Kensington, London. During his career he worked as a head gardener at Syon House, Brentford from 1763 until 1771 when he became head gardener of the Chelsea Physic Garden; where he continued to work until 1784. The rest of his life was spent working as superintendent of the royal gardens of the Palaces of St James' and Kensington. Whilst working in the royal gardens, Forsyth also developed and promoted his own 'plaister', which was a paste that he claimed would bind together old wood and help new wood to grow.

Forsyth also wrote two volumes OBSERVATIONS ON DISEASES, DEFECTS AND INJURIES IN ALL KINDS OF FRUIT AND FOREST TREES (1791) and TREATISE ON CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT-TREES (1802). Later editions of his treatise were created following his death, with the later being the seventh edition published in 1824. He was a Fellow of both the Linnean Society and the Society of Antiquaries and was also involved with the creation of the Royal Horticultural Society.

George Bentham was born on 22 September 1800 at Stoke, near Portsmouth. His father was the well-known naval architect Samuel Bentham. His mother was the daughter of Dr. George Fordyce, F.R.S., and an amateur botanist. In 1805 his father was sent to St. Petersburg by the English government, where the family resided until 1807. At this time George became fluent in Russian, French and German, showing his great aptitude for languages. The family returned to England for a time, and then moved to France in 1814, where they would reside for the next twelve years. Bentham never attended school in his youth, being educated at home by his mother and private tutors.

Bentham studied at the Protestant Theological College for two years beginning 1818, when the family lived in Montauban, S W France. It was during this time that his intense interest in botany developed, prompted by a study of de Candolles' edition of Lamarck's Flore francaise. Bentham was fascinated by the analytical tables for the determination of plants in the book, which fell in with the methodical and tabulating ideas he acquired while studying the works of his uncle, the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham, and greatly influenced his bias towards Classificatory Botany. Bentham began frequent excursions to the French countryside to collect plants which he would then preserve and classify, forming the start of what would become his extensive herbarium. In late 1820 Samuel Bentham purchased an estate near Montpellier and put George in charge of operations. Bentham continued to devote time to botany and extending his herbarium while managing the estate. He studied plants with John Stuart Mills, a guest of his father. In 1823 he visited England to investigate agricultural methods and implements, while also acquainting himself with British botanists. By 1825 he had collected enough material to write his Catalogue des Plantes Indigènes des Pyrénees et du Bas Languedoc. Bentham's first botanical work firmly established him as a serious botanist.

In 1826 the Bentham family returned to England. In London, to ensure financial stability Bentham pursued law and entered Lincoln's Inn while assisting his Uncle Jeremy each morning. In 1927 he published his Outline of a New System of Logic, with a Critical Examination of Dr. Whaltey's 'Elements of Logic'. Bentham was disappointed with its response, and it was not until an 1850 article in the Athenaeum that Bentham's innovation was recognized. He continued to devote large amounts of time to botany, assisting other botanists and writing articles for botanical magazines. Bentham worked with Dr. Nathaniel Wallich in the distribution of his enormous Indian collection and his elaboration of the order Labitae, demonstrating his insight and great skill for taxonomic work. He became a member of Council of the both the Linnean and Horticulture Societies. He became Honorary Secretary of the Horticulture Society in 1829, a turbulent period for the organisation. With the aid of Assistant Secretary and friend John Lindley, Bentham returned the organisation to a financially and scientifically thriving state. He also instituted the first Chiswick Horticultural Fete in April, 1832.

In 1833 Bentham married Sarah Brydges, the daughter of a diplomat. At this time Bentham ended his career in law to pursue botany full time. Bentham further secured his place in the scientific world with the publication of his Labiatarum Genera et Species, 1832-36. In 1836 he toured the gardens and herbaria of Europe, settling in Vienna in the fall to prepare his first important work on Leguminosae, Leguminorarum Generibus Commentiones.

From 1842 to 1854 Bentham resided at Pontrilas House, Herefordshire where he diligently continued his botanical work. He added to his ever growing herbarium and elaborated on various orders of plants for De Candolle's Prodromus. By 1854 Bentham found the maintenance of his herbarium and library too demanding, and presented them to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He returned to London for the final time, and was encouraged by Sir WJ Hooker, the Garden's Director, to continue his botanical studies at Kew. Bentham was accommodated with his own work space in the Kew Herbarium, where he worked almost every day for the next thirty years.

Bentham produced numerous important botanical works during these years. His Flora Hongkongensis was published in 1861. Bentham completed the Flora Australiensis (1863-1870) in seven volumes, describing around 7,000 species. This was the first time the flora of any large continental area had been finished, and was a remarkable achievement for Bentham. His most major work, however, was done in conjunction with Sir Joseph Hooker. The Genera Plantarum, a revision of the known genera of Phanerogams, was started in 1862 and completed in 1883. Bentham also published the illustrated Handbook to British Flora, a beginner's guide to flora of the British Isles. Bentham took on many other projects during his years at Kew. After Dr. Wallich's return to India he catalogued and distributed the last portion of Wallich's massive herbarium. He also catalogued, arranged and distributed plants collected by Robert and Richard Schomburgk in Guiana, Theodor Hartweg's collections from Columbia, Mexico and California, and Richard Spruce's specimens from Brazil and Peru. He also classified and named the 30,000 species constituting the herbarium of his friend C. Leman. This huge undertaking took ten years and earned Bentham an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge, where the Leman Herbarium was deposited.

Bentham was awarded a Royal Medal in 1859, and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1862. He served as President of the Linnean Society from 1861 to 1874. During his presidency he developed a scheme for classifying books in the library, and later used same system to help Kew Gardens arrange its new library. Bentham passed away on 10 September 1884, working almost right up to his death. He made Joseph Hooker one of the executors of his estate and left Hooker to administer his greatly extensive collection of correspondence, diaries, papers and manuscripts, which form the Bentham collection at the Kew Gardens Archive.

Helen Faulkner was born in Yorkshire in June 1888. She studied art and painting in Paris. She married Major Faulkner in 1921 in Hampshire and moved to Tasmania where her husband owned a small farm. In 1924 they moved to Tanganyika where Major Faulkner was employed by Bird and Co. He then transferred to Wigglesworth and Co in Angola. Helen Faulkner was so impressed by the rich flora of the Alto Catumbela that she started to systematically paint water colour sketches of wild flowers. She became acquainted with the Government Botanist John Gossweiler who encouraged her to make herbarium specimens of the highest quality. In 1942 Major Faulkner was posted to the Namagoa Plantations at Mocuba in the Zambezia Province of Mozambique. Soon Helen Faulkner was collecting actively and corresponding with the National Herbarium, Pretoria, and the Government Herbarium, Salisbury.

In 1947 she visited Kew and began a long partnership with Edgar Milne-Redhead then in charge of the African Section. The collaboration started with three cases of Mozambique plants, bulbs and seeds as well as loan of notes and paintings. She continued to send specimens to RBGK until 1977.
In 1950 Major Faulkner returned to the Tanga area and managed sisal estates for Bird and Co at Bushiri (1950-1951), Kange (1951-1952) and Magunga until he retired in 1954. They then bought a house in Mwambani, where Helen Faulkner remained for the rest of her life apart from five years spent in Zanzibar (1959-1964) where Major Faulkner managed the English Club. Major Faulkner died in 1969. She died at her home on 26 January 1979. She had two sons Denis and Ian.

Henry Nicholas Ridley was born in 1855. His first major interest was in genealogy and he was fascinated by his family's past. However, whilst at school at Haileybury in Hertfordshire his interests started to broaden and he became fascinated by nature, specifically birds and insects, he wrote his first published paper on the topic whilst at school. On leaving Haileybury Ridley read Natural Sciences at Exeter College, Oxford where he obtained a second class honours degree. Having completed Oxford, Ridley wished to become a tropical zoologist and he tried but failed to obtain a post (most notably at the British Museum). He then applied for a botany position at the British Museum and was successful, despite botany being a minor interest to him. At the Museum Ridley worked under Carruthers on Monocotyledons. Under his tutelage from 1883 onwards Ridley published widely on Monocotyledons, Orchidaceae and British plants and insects. His first (documented) foreign trip was to the Island of Fernando de Noronha, about which he published papers on; its geology; its botany; and its status as a convict island.

In 1888, having gained a wide knowledge of botany, Ridley was appointed as Director of Gardens and Forests for the Straits Settlements. His post was based in Singapore but also incorporated Malay. From this point onwards Ridley's life was a hive of activity for example, in 1906 he published thirty-eight papers. He published constantly on the Straits region; he was a good Director who completed all his tasks with zeal; travelled as much as possible sending back specimens to build an impressive herbarium in Singapore and contributing to the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew; and he brought back live samples to Singapore to be studied and cultivated. He became especially interested in economic botany, collecting data and writing about indigenous plants with a commercial value such as rattan. Yet, Ridley also still maintained his interested in zoological science; he had a large insect collection; he studied relations between plants and animals indeed he actively cared for animals living in the Botanical Gardens, Singapore. Despite these numerous achievements Ridley is best remembered for his involvement in the development of Malaysian rubber or Hevea brasiliensis.

Sir Joseph Hooker (Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1865-1885) had encouraged the exchange of plants between colonies and he suggested to Ridley in 1888 that he stop at Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to study rubber plants. Ridley was so enthused by what he found that on arrival in Singapore he established a plantation of rubber trees and started experiments. He concentrated on making sure that the latex yield outweighed the cost of planting and maintaining the trees. Others were slow to realise the potential benefits but despite this Ridley continued to develop his plantation and so by the time others started plantations he was an expert. The first economic plantation was in Malacca in 1896 using seeds provided by Ridley. Others soon followed and the resultant boom was largely due to Ridley's seeds and advice. When he retired in 1912 the planters of Malaysia awarded him $800 in acknowledgement but despite spawning the industry Ridley received nothing else.

Another great interest of Ridley's was psychic phenomena; he founded the Singapore Philosophical Society and edited its journal. He also founded the Society for Psychical Research. He was known to be a kind man, who offered assistance to his employees' families.

Ridley achieved much but it is for rubber and as the man who man made others rich that he is mainly remembered in his obituaries. Professional bodies recognised his contribution to botany; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1907 and granted a C.M.G. by the Government of the Straits Settlements in 1911. In addition, the Botanical Magazine was dedicated to Ridley in 1906 in acknowledgement of the many live plants he sent to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Ridley died at age 101 in 1956, at his home in Kew village, London having lost his sight from an earlier illness and having been confined to the house for four years.

Glaciologist and politician, born in Dublin on 20 August 1818, the eldest child of Nicholas Ball (1791-1865), judge and politician, and his wife, Jane (née Sherlock) of Butlerstown Castle in co. Waterford. Until the age of eleven he received little formal education, but from his earliest years he displayed a precocious interest in science. In his seventh year he was taken to Switzerland, where he was deeply affected by the view of the Alps from the Jura. The following year he began to measure the heights of hills barometrically and to construct geological sections, and before his twelfth year he had completed the manuscript of what he termed his 'Elements of chemistry'.

Ball's parents were Roman Catholics, and in 1831 he was sent to St Mary's College at Oscott near Birmingham, whence he was admitted into Christ's College, Cambridge, on 23 June 1835. That summer he participated in the Dublin meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (he attended many of the association's subsequent meetings), and in Cambridge, over the next four years, he joined the classes of John Stevens Henslow in botany, and Adam Sedgwick in geology.

On 13 April 1840 Ball was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and in Trinity term 1843 he was called to the Irish bar at the King's Inns. He never practised at the bar, and between 1840 and 1845 can have spent little time in Ireland. For much of that period he travelled in Europe, visiting the mountain regions (for which he felt a deep affinity), botanizing, and communing with kindred scientific spirits. During 1845 he was at Zermatt seeking to develop the glaciological studies pioneered by James David Forbes, but that was the year when a failure of the Irish potato crop marked the beginning of the great Irish famine, and Ball felt duty-bound to return to his distressed homeland.

While in the Dingle peninsula, co. Kerry, during 1846, Ball recognized that many of the landforms were analogous to features which he had seen being shaped by modern glacial processes within the Alps. Clearly, he reasoned, there must once have been glaciers in Ireland, and the paper on this subject which he presented to the Geological Society of Dublin on 14 November 1849 is the earliest published study of Pleistocene events within any region of Ireland.

In July 1848 Ball stood, without success, as a parliamentary candidate for Sligo borough, but on 26 July 1852 he was returned (by a majority of only two votes) as the member for Carlow County. In February 1855 the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, named him as assistant under-secretary of state in the colonial department. In this office he took the opportunity to further the cause of science in several ways. His energetic representations were largely responsible for ensuring the adequate financing of the expedition led by John Palliser for the exploration of western Canada, and he was instrumental in inducing the home government to support the efforts of Sir William Jackson Hooker towards the publication of colonial floras.

At the election on 11 April 1857 he was heavily defeated when he stood for Sligo County, and on 15 February in the following year he was again defeated when he contested Limerick City. Although subsequently offered several parliamentary seats, he resolved henceforth, as a man of independent financial means, to devote himself exclusively to travel and to natural history.

Following the foundation of the Alpine Club in December 1857 he served as its first president (1858-60), and he edited Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, the club's earliest publication (two editions in 1859). The three volumes of his Alpine Guide (first editions 1863, 1864, 1868) are classics among the literature of mountain travel. In 1856 he married Eliza Parolini, daughter of the naturalist and traveller Count Alberto Parolini (there were two sons of the marriage), and between 1861 and 1869 he lived much in Italy, where, on his wife's death about 1867, he inherited an estate near to Bassano and at the foot of the Venetian Alps. By 1863 he had crossed the main chain of the Alps forty-eight times by thirty-two different routes, being accompanied upon some of his journeys by his close friend William Edward Forster. In 1869 Ball married Julia O'Beirne, the youngest child of Francis and Winefred O'Beirne of Jamestown, co. Leitrim.

In the company of Joseph Dalton Hooker he visited Morocco and the Atlas Mountains between April and June 1871, and their joint work descriptive of the excursion was published in 1878. Between March and August 1882 he sailed to the Caribbean, crossed the isthmus of Panama, and completed a circumnavigation of South America via the Strait of Magellan, his account of this journey being published in 1887. During the 1880s trouble with his throat caused him to winter abroad in places such as Algeria, Tunisia, and the Canary Islands.

While in the Engadine during the autumn of 1889 Ball was stricken with illness. He was taken home to London where, shortly after an operation and somewhat unexpectedly, he died at midnight on 21 October 1889 at his home, 10 Southwell Gardens, South Kensington. Among his distinctions were the Italian order of SS Maurizio e Lazzaro (1865), fellowship of the Linnean Society (2 December 1856), fellowship of the Royal Society (4 June 1868), and honorary fellowship of Christ's College, Cambridge (3 October 1888).

Born in London on 13 February 1743, the only son of a wealthy land-owning family, Joseph Banks received his earliest education at home under private tuition. At age nine he attended Harrow School and was then enrolled at Eton School which he attended from the age of 13 until 18. In 1760 he entered Christ Church at Oxford University as a gentlemen commoner. His passion for botany and dedication to Linnean precepts had developed to such an extent that, unable to study botany at Oxford, Banks employed a private tutor, Isaac Lyons, from Cambridge. As was usual for members of his social class, Banks did not take out a degree. He came down from Oxford in 1763 an independently wealthy man following the death of his father in 1761.

As an independent naturalist, Banks participated in a voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1767. Although he did not publish an account of this expedition, he allowed others full use of his collection. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquities. In 1778 he was elected President of the Royal Society, a position he held with varying degrees of support, until his death in 1820. He remains the longest serving President in the history of the Royal Society, founded almost 350 years ago.

He successfully lobbied the Royal Society to be included on what was to be James Cook's first great voyage of discovery, on board the ENDEAVOUR (1768-1771). This voyage marked the beginning of Banks' lifelong friendship and collaboration with the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, one of Linnaeus' most esteemed pupils, and the beginning of Banks' lifelong advocacy of British settlement in New South Wales. The ENDEAVOUR had sailed into Botany Bay in April 1770 and proceeded up the east coast and through Torres Strait, charting the east coast of Australia in the process.

Frustrated in his attempt at a second voyage to the South Seas, again with Cook, Banks set off in July 1772 for Iceland, his only other venture outside Europe. From this time, Banks was actively involved in almost every aspect of Pacific exploration and early Australian colonial life. He was interested and involved in Cook's later voyages and actively supported the proposal of Botany Bay as a site for British settlement. He proposed William Bligh to command two voyages for the transportation of breadfruit and other plants, including the ill-fated voyage on the Bounty which ended in mutiny in April 1789. Practically anyone who wanted to travel to New South Wales, in almost any capacity, consulted Sir Joseph Banks and he remained the one constant figure throughout the first 30 years of white settlement in Australia, through changes of ministers, government and policy.

King George III had appointed Banks as adviser to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew some time after his return from the Pacific. His informal role as governmental adviser on a range of issues was recognised in 1797 with his appointment to the Privy Council. He served as a member of the committees on trade and on coin. In his capacity as President of the Royal Society he was also involved in the activities of the Board of Longitude and the Greenwich Royal Observatory, the Board of Agriculture (founded in 1793) and the African Association (founded in 1788). He was also a Trustee of the British Museum.

In addition to the Banks family estates in Lincolnshire, Banks acquired his main London residence at 32 Soho Square in 1776. It was established as his London home and scientific base. His natural history collections were housed there and made freely available to bona fide scientists and researchers. Until his death, this house was a centre for the wider scientific community. He did not discriminate between British and foreign scientists. He was, in fact, influential in maintaining scientific relations with France, for example, during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

In 1819 he was appointed Chairman to two committees established by the House of Commons, one to enquire into prevention of banknote forgery, the other to consider systems of weights and measures.

Banks was created a baronet in 1781 and invested Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1795. In March 1779, he had married Dorothea Hugessen (1758-1828), daughter and heiress of William Western Hugessen. They had no children. Sir Joseph Banks died on 19 June 1820.