Biographical dictionary

A Doctor who practised for most of his professional life at Southport where he was one of the founders of the Southport Natural Science Society and editor of their Proceedings. His natural history interests included the Foraminifera, on which he published many papers of the local fauna, the mollusca and the Coleoptera. He died at the early age of 47 from pleuro-pneumonia.

His first article in the EMM.: 'Stray notes on a few Southport Coleoptera' was published in 1900 (11, 287.) and his last in the same periodical in January 1905. The Southport 'notes' derived from his 'Coleoptera of Southport and District' published in the Proceedings of the Southport Natural History Society, 1899 which in turn was apparently expanded in the Handbook of the British Association's visit to Southport in 1903 when Chaster contributed with Burgess Sopp what W.E.Sharp described as 'a most interesting and instructive section on the Coleoptera of the Southport district. This has been separately reprinted, and as a scientific contribution to faunistic distribution, as well as a guide to the Coleoptera of that particular district leaves nothing to be desired' (Sharp,1908, 14-15).

He also collected in Nottinghamshire (see J. W. Carr, The Invertebrate fauna of Nottinghamshire, 1916) and in Ireland (see Johnson & Halbert (1902), 542. In this last he added two species from Roundstone to the Irish list (IN., 12, 1902, 167) and published a list of specimens collected at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim with B. Tomlin (IN., 11, 1902, 61-65).

Chaster’s collection, amounting to 11,000 insects, is in the NMW. There is a brief obituary in EMM., 46, 1910, 145-146. (MD 3/02)

Born at Westwell, near Ashford, Kent. Educated at a private school where she learned French and German. Enjoyed the study of natural history as a child and after failing to gain entrance to the London Veterinary College because she was a woman, she became a canine nurse. During the First World War she worked as a temporary Civil Servant with the Admiralty. After the War she came into contact with Grace Lefroy, through whose husband Maxwell she acquired the post of Curator of Insects at the Zoological Society of London, a post which she held from 1920-1926. During this period she attended Lefroy's lectures at the Royal College of Science, and wrote her first two books Everyday Doings of Insects, 1924, and The Great Little Insect, 1924.

In 1924 she travelled to the West Indies, Galapagos Islands and South Pacific with the St. George's Expedition as official entomologist, an account of which she published under the title Islands in the Sun, 1927. At Tahiti she left the expedition to continue collecting alone, and having stayed away longer than her leave would permit had to resign her post at the Zoological Society.

On returning to London she continued to study entomology at the NHM until she could gather sufficient funds to finance a second collecting trip to the New Hebrides which took place 1929-1931. As a result of these trips collecting abroad became her great passion and she visited Papua 1933-1934, Cyclops Mountains of Dutch New Guinea, 1936, Waigeu and Japan, Dutch New Guinea and the Torricelli Mountains Mandated Territory 1938-1939, New Caledonia 1949-1950, and Aneityum, New Hebrides, 1954-1955. Her adventures on these journeys which she undertook alone, are recounted in her autobiography Things Worth While, 1957.

Miss Cheesman's main entomological interests were the Hymenoptera and Hemiptera although the many thousands of insects she sent to the NHM during her travels included beetles (listed in Riley (1964). A large amount of MS material is also in the NHM (listed in Harvey et al. (1996), 44-46.

FRES 1919-1937 and from 1947, FZS 1922-1937. She received the OBE in 1955. There are obituaries in EMM,105, 1969, 217-219 (by K.G.V. Smith, from which much of the above is taken. Includes portrait and full bibliography); Times, 17 April 1969; and Proc RESL, 34, 1969-1970 (C), 61. (MD 3/02)

Eldest son of the Right Hon. Lord Justice Chitty. Educated at Eton, where he became the head of his house and a member of the cricket eleven, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was well known for his sporting prowess. Became a Barrister. Married the daughter of Sir John Croft of Doddington, Kent and had three children. He was for many years Secretary of the All English Lawn Tennis Club, and a keen violinist and astronomer.

Chitty's entomological interests began at least as early as 1869 when his brother remembered him collecting butterflies (EMM, 44, 1908, 43). At Oxford he is recorded to have set up ants nests for observation, isolating them in sponge baths containing water. Although he continued to be interested in these and other orders, it was the Coleoptera to which he devoted most attention, and about which he published most of his articles. His first publication on ‘Beetles from North Wales’ appeared in EMM, 27, 1891 and was followed by some thirty others. He also wrote for the ERJV, the staff of which he joined in 1907.

Amongst his more important publications were those dealing with the fauna around the district of Huntingfield and Faversham in Kent, in the former of which he had a country house; his addition of Graptodytes (Hydroporus) bilineatus , taken in sandhills at Deal, to the British list (ibid, 39, 1903, 143); and his ‘Notes on the genus Cryptophagus, with a table of the Species’ (ibid, 43, 1907, 164-171).

Chitty’s insect collections were given to the HDO by Mrs Chitty in 1908 (see Smith (1986),108, for explanation of some of the labels) The HDO also has a manuscript list he prepared of the collection made by Claude Morley and letters to Poulton 1906,1907,1921.

FES from 1891 (Council 1902-04 and 1906-07). Apart from the obituary by E. Saunders in EMM. noted above, there are others in ERJV, 20, 1908,45-47; Ent, 41, 1908,48; and Proc.ESL, 1908, xcviii (by C.O.Waterhouse). (MD 3/02)