Qualified in engineering at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, where he also studied Shakespeare. He began his professional career as an engineer in County Hall and later worked on the railways, but gave this up to become a freelance journalist and entomologist, and to run a philatelic business. His writings covered many subjects, including a serial for the Sunday Express and a weekly piece as Uncle Mac of the Children's Corner, for which he started the Choktok Club. He lectured at Swanley on insect pests and is recorded to have collected ladybirds and ground beetles for sale through the post for pest control. He also collected Lepidoptera, his collection passing to the Juniper Hall Field Centre in about 1956. His son J.A.Crabbe worked in the Botany Department at the NHM. FRES from 1921. There is an obituary notice in Proc.RESL., 41, 1976-77, p.49. (MD 4/02)
Dates
1882 - July 1976