Born in Oldham and educated at Hulme Grammar School which he left at the age of 16. Acquired his interest in insects at the age of ten and joined the Oldham Natural History Society in his youth. His first job was in the carpet department at Ryland’s Warehouse, Manchester. In his lunch hours he visited the Manchester Museum where he befriended Harry Britten who became an important influence on him. Joined the Manchester Entomological Society in 1932 and was a regular exhibitor at meetings. Britten obtained for him the job of Laboratory assistant in the University in 1934, the year in which he published his first article ‘Water beetles under Ice’ (N.west.Nat., 26, 1934, 55) and he found an unusual beetle at a chrysanthemum show in Manchester, subsequently named after him by Horace Donishtorpe: Micrambe aubrooki.
When Joseph Collins, a friend of Britten’s, retired from the Hope Department at Oxford in 1935, Aubrook was appointed to succeed him as a junior assistant, and he left Manchester in October. He remained there until 1939 when, after a brief period as Assistant Curator at Paisley Museum, he joined the Tolson Memorial Museum, Huddersfield, where he was to remain for the rest of his working life, being appointed Director in 1946.
After the war he started collecting beetles again and as a member of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union from 1959 he led field meetings, gave talks and acted as Coleoptera Recorder. In 1968 he published (with Johnson) ‘Oxypoda nigricornis Mots. new to Britain’ (Ent., 101, 1968, 71-72) and in 1970 ‘Cis dentatus Mell. an addition to the British list’ (ibid, 103, 1970, 250-51). In all Aubrook’s publications amounted to 39 in total. During the 1960s and 70s Aubrook was a regular member of survey teams working on insect recording in Scotland and, after his daughter moved to New Zealand in 1968, he visited her six times making many insect collections there too. These included the Ptiliid Notoptenidium aubrooki which Johnson named after him.
Colin Johnson, upon whom he was a formative influence, in a full obituary in Ent.mon.Mag., 127, 1991, 91-95, from which much of this account is taken (includes a complete bibliography and photograph) recorded that Aubrook was a determined Coleopterist, particularly in regard to difficult groups, and that they enjoyed more than fifty days in the field, including trips to Scotland and to East Anglia.
Johnson informed me that Aubrook’s British insect collections, mostly beetles (over 12,000 specimens) were divided between Huddersfield and Manchester, and his notebooks and New Zealand collection (6,300 specimens) are also in the Manchester Museum. Johnson (2004) records that the collection includes that of F. Hawkin and duplicates from J.H. Flint and E.J. Pearce. He also notes that most families are represented and that the main collecting localities were Yorkshire; Rhum, Inverpolly, Speyside and Deeside. Other collections are in the Tolson Museum, Ravensknowle, Huddersfield (6 000 specimens) and Adam Parker has pointed out to me that Simms (1968) records a collection of 10,000 beetles, mainly Yorkshire, partly incorporated into the 'Central Reference Collection', in the Yorkshire Museum. Simon Hayhow informs me that there is also material bearing his name in the collection at Oldham Museum.
FRES 1946 until death. (MD 7/01, 12/21)