CHILDREN, John Children

The only son of George Children, a banker and wealthy landed property owner. Educated at Tonbridge Grammar School, Eton and Queen's College, Cambridge. He intended to join the church, but after marrying at the age of 21, Anna Holroyd who died shortly after, he abandoned this career, and travelled to Portugal and then to Canada and the United States of America. He returned to become a Captain in the West Kent Militia, but gave this up in 1805 as a result of ill health. Having studied mechanics, mineralogy and electricity at Cambridge, he then took up scientific pursuits becoming FRS in 1807. In 1808-09 he married for a second time but lost his wife a few months later. It was at about this time that he made a second visit to Spain. In 1816, two year's before his father's death, the family lost all their properties as a result of the failure of the Tonbridge Bank. Through the kindness of Lord Camden he received an appointment as Assistant Librarian at the British Museum, first in the Department of Antiquities and subsequently in 1823, as a result of the intervention of Sir Humphry Davy, in Natural History. When the Zoological Department was created in 1837 he was appointed the first Keeper, a post which he held until 1839-40, when, as a result of failing health and the death of his third wife, he was obliged to retire. Although not primarily an entomologist, Children did collect insects and was one of the founder members and first President of the Entomlogical Society. The meeting at which it was decided to found the Society took place in his house, and Children contributed the Introduction to the Socciety's first volume of Transactions (see Neave, S.A. and Griffin, F.J. (1933), for an account of Children and his involvement with the Society). Children's collection of insects certainly included beetles and appears to have been large. His obituary in the Proc.LSL, 1852, p.137, described the collection as 'one of the most extensive in England' and noted that he had purchased the collection of Count Bilberg. He certainly gave specimens to the Entomological Society and, in 1839, to the British Museum. When the collection was sold by Stevens between 30 March and the 4 April 1840 it amounted to 950 lots many of which were bought by the British Museum. (These are listed in the NHM Entomology Department’s Register. Entomology, 2 , 12 October 1839-2 April 1840 which records many thousands of specimens including 4,490 Coleoptera. Catalogues of this sale, and of his library at Sothebys between 6 and 8 March 1840, are preserved in the NHM. The insects have been amalgamated into the general collections. There are also specimens collected by Children in the Bracy Clarke collection at the NHM found by Dr Easton in an antique shop. Davis,P and Brewer,C. (1986) note that a collection of worldwide insecta is in the Hancock Museum donated in 1830 by ‘George Children’ which is presumably this Children. Letters to Thomas Hope, 1834,1837 are in the HDO (Smith, A.Z. (1986) p.71) Jonathan Cooter tells me that Sandra Children, who married the last survivor of J.G.Children’s line, has exhibited at Hereford Museum.Lydia Oliva, a photographic historian from Barcelona, informs me that Children’s only daughter, Anna Atkins, (on whom she has been working) published a book of photographs in 1843 (ie before Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature) and that she was introduced to photography by her father. Children went to live with his daughter in Halstead Place, London, after he retired. FLS from 1807. Secretary of the RSL 1820-27 and 1830-37. Gilbert,P. (1977) p.67, lists further references in E. Miller, That Noble Cabinet, 1973, pp.227-231, and in A.E.Gunther, A Century of Zoology at the British Museum 1815-1915, 1975, pp.56-62. (MD 3/02, 10/03)