Biographical dictionary
The Biographical Dictionary of British Coleopterists was compiled by the late Michael Darby. The Dictionary can be accessed below, and see also the additional information provide by Michael:
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| Name | Dates | Biography | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MOORE, O.J.S. | K.G.Blair, Coleoptera of the Isles of Scilly, 1931 refers to Moore as a collector who had worked on Tresco. (MD 2/04) | ||
| MOREY, F. | This name appears on specimens in the Butler collection of foreign Coleoptera at Norwich (information from Tony Irwin) also on Coleoptera in the Hall collection at Oldham (information from Simon Hayhow). (MD 2/04) | ||
| MORGAN, Joan (Margaret) | 25 September 1921 – 28 December 1998 | Born in Halifax, the daughter of a Welsh father and English mother. Went to Liverpool University in 1939 where she took a degree in Zoology. After graduating she took a teaching certificate in 1944 and then taught at a grammar school in the Isle of Man before marrying her cousin, a merchant navy seaman. Subsequently did an MSc. on midges before moving with her three children to north Wales where in 1957 she began teaching in the Department of Agricultural and Forest Zoology at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Her appointment resulted from the death of Neil Chrystal who had been doing entomology demonstrations there. (Morgan in litt) She remained at Bangor until retirement in 1989. Morgan served on the Committee for the Conservation of British Insects, and was active in what is now known as the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Served on the editorial board of Nature in Wales and started, in 1990, the North Wales Invertebrate Group Newsletter. Wrote with Bill Lacey The Nature of North Wales. Morgan’s work on entomology stretched to most groups and she was invertebrate recorder for six Welsh Vice Counties. She also built up an impressive reference collection for the Bangor area which includes not only the specimens she collected, but also those collected by her students. The data which accompanied the collection includes more than 60,000 records and is now in the NMW. A computerised copy of her complete faunal list has been produced by the Countryside Council for Wales. Her publications on entomology encompassed all orders and involved adding many insects to the Welsh list, often as the result of identifications which she had made for others, as well as confirmations of several rare species. The work for which she is best known amongst Coleopterists is the Supplement to Skidmore and Johnson’s list of the Coleoptera of Merioneth (1989) in Ent. Gaz., 25, 1974, pp.53-75 . This added some 88 new records to the original 1,150.There are obituaries in Society for the History of Natural History Newsletter, 65, July 1999, pp.11-12, and by Paul Whalley in Antenna, 23(4), 1999, pp.210-211. (MD 2/04) | |
| MORLEY, Claude | 22 June 1874 - 13 November 1951 | Born in Blackheath and educated at Beccles, King’s School, Peterborough and Epsom College. After spending much time on the Isle of Wight where his father had a house at Cowes, he moved in about 1892 to Ipswich and studied under John E,Taylor, Curator of the Museum there. After marrying in 1904 he settled in Monks Soham where he remained until his death. He is recorded to have been highly individualistic and to have had a hatred of modern progress so that he would not permit a radio, telephone, electricity into his house nor would he accept ‘summer time’. His closest friend was E.A.Elliott (on their relationship see D.Nash ‘A Little-Known Important Recorder of Suffolk Insects Ernest Arthur Elliott (1850-1936)’ in White Admiral, Newsletter of the Suffolk Naturalists’ Soc., 65, 2006, pp.23-30 (and later corrections) Another close friend was Arthur Chitty (QV). Morley’s interest in entomology was already well established by the early 1890s and appears to have centred on the Coleoptera, although he quickly moved on to the Hemiptera and the Ichneumonidae, for the study of which he is best known. His magnum opus was the five volume Ichneumons of Great Britain (1903-1914). His most important work on the Coleoptera was The Coleoptera of Suffolk, 1899 (published in Plymouth by the Coleopterist J.H.Keys) and its Supplement, 1915 (also Keys); the first listed 1783 species and the second 237. He also wrote many articles in the EMM., ERJV., and other periodicals, and was on the editorial staff of the Entomologist from 1909. Morley’s collection of mainly Suffolk material covering the period 1898-1951 was acquired by the Suffolk Naturalists Society and is housed at Ispwish Museum where it is maintained separately and occupies c.260 drawers.Of this collection Nash (op. cit) notes that several thousand beetles had disintegrated by the 1970s and that the Museum then threw out the mounts and labels without recording the information they contained. There are Cerambycids bearing his name in the Kauffmann collection at Manchester. MSS material at Ipswich was acquired with his collection. His obituary in EMM, 87, 1951, p. 327, refers to a collection associated with his 1899 Suffolk list being given by him to Bury St Edmonds Museum in 1905. There are letters and postcards from Morley to C.J.Wainwright dated 1900-1944 in the RESL (Pedersen (2002) p.140. FESL from 1896. (MD 2/04) | |
| MORLEY, Thomas | b. ?1837 | Mentioned in Sharp (1908) p.13 as an artisan of Manchester who was an energetic Coleopterist. Johnson (2009) suggests that he may have been born in Salford.Published seven notes in EMM between 1868 and 1873 mainly recording finds in the Manchester area. Morley’s name appears in the Gorham diary in Birmingham Museum and in the Janson diary at Cambridge (eg, June 1869). His collection was purchased by the Manchester Museum in 1904 via A.Reston and has been incorporated into the general collection. Johnson (2004) records that it consists of several thousand specimens. Associated with it are some MSS including notebooks and catalogues listing localities and collectors. (MD 2/04, 11/09) | |
| MORRIS, Francis Orpen | 25 March 1810 – 10 November 1893 | A Reverend who is well known for his important popular works on birds and butterflies in particular. Wrote ‘Setting of Coleoptera’ in Weekly Entomologist, 1, 1862, p.4. and a Catalogue of British Insects (on this last see MacKechnie Jarvis (1975) p.107). (MD 2/04) | |
| MORRIS. | There is a collection in the Booth Museum at Brighton bearing this name (Information from Peter Hodge). (MD 2/04) | ||
| MORSE, Edgar W. | Atty (1983, iv-v) describes Morse as 'An exasperating mystery. In [C.F.] Lifton's [q.v.]1940 list...numerous uncommon species are attributed to "Newnham: Morse" with no details whatever apart from an occasional otiose "rare" (The number of rarities is astonishing: with some genera one gets the impression that all the rare species have been ticked off, and anything less common omitted). Many of these species, moreover, appear in Perkins' [q.v.] list for "Newnham" but with Lifton, not Morse, as the contributor. Apparently Lifton had obtained a list of [Forest of]Dean species in c.1900 from Morse; this might have repeated older records (from Hodgson?) and errors may well have intruded in the course of transmission to Perkins. I have found only one article by Morse on Glos. species -"Coleoptera in the Dean Forest" EMM., 40 1904, 138 - though others (eg. Oedemera virescens) were exhibited in London on various occasions about that time Morse's address then, in 1904, and in 1913 was Leeds not Newnham.' (MD 8/17) |
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| MOSLEY, S.L. | Gave 910 British beetles to Keighley Museum in 1905 (Acc. No. 102:1910) (Fenscore). Represented in the Hall collection at Oldham (information from Simon Hayhow) and in H.W.Ellis’ foreign beetle collection in Liverpool Museum. Mosley was a well known Coleopterist in his day but I have not been able to trace any obituary notices or other accounts of him. (MD 2/04) | ||
| MOUNTFIELD, W. | Lived in Warrington in the early 1900s. General entomologist. His collection in Llandudno Museum, which mostly covers the period 1896-1913 and includes c.1200 specimens in 24 cases and drawers, contains worldwide Coleoptera (N. Africa, India, Japan and China). A second collection in 11 boxes in Penrhyn Castle also includes beetles, some foreign (West Africa, Australia, etc.) (Fenscore). (MD 2/04) |