A Reverend. His obituary in EMM., 7, 1871, p.216, refers to his ‘personal eccentricity’ but does not give more details. Underneath ‘he had very many estimable characters’. Apart from his interest in Coleoptera he was a noted Hebrew scholar, and the author of Old Testament Events which contained ‘much that is able and ingenious, though some of the conclusions therein deduced might not find general acceptance’.
Dawson's early interest in entomology was with the Lepidoptera on which he published some six notes in the Zool between 1843 and 1846. Almost at the same time, however, he developed an interest in the Curculionidae, publishing: ‘Does Rhynchites betulae deposit its eggs in rolled-up leaves?’, ibid., 3, 1845, p.1145, and in the Carabidae, presenting six examples of Bembidium (Lymnaeum) nigropiceum Marsham, which he had taken at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, to the NHM in 1845 (1845.133).
Although he subsequently wrote further notes on weevils and other families, it was the ground beetles which came to occupy most of his time. Dawson published some half dozen articles on the ‘Geodephaga’ in Zool and in Ent. Ann., but his best known works on this family were Geodephaga Britannica. A Monograph of the Carnivorous Ground Beetles indigenous to the British Isles, 1854, and the Rearrangement of the nomenclature and synonymy of those species of British Coleoptera which are comprised under the sections Geodephaga,Hydradephaga and part of Philhydria, 1856, which was compiled with Hamlet Clark. The Geodephaga Britannica was an important work. Dawson was in touch with a number of foreign specialists and made wide use of British collections. Not only did he suppress the rising tendency to erect the Brachinidae, Scaritidae, Harpalidae and Bembididae to family status, but he also swept away many synonyms erected by earlier authors, reducing the 449 species listed in J.Stephens, Manual, 1839, to 294.
He described a several species as new to science of which two have survived Dyschirius impunctipennis, which he captured by a stream on the Smallmouth sands near Weymouth, and Bembidium clarkii which he first discovered in the marshes at Herringstone, near Dorchester, and which he named after his friend the Rev. Hamlet Clark.
Apart from the gift to the NHM mentioned above, he also gave 25 specimens from the Isle of Wight and Wales (1849.30); Apion sedi from Deal (1850.68); and 4 Amara from the Isle of Wight (1853.31). Mark Telfer has pointed out to me that his personal collection, or at least the type specimen of Acupalpus derelictus, was passed to his son (Fowler & Donisthorpe, p.5) and that in his volume there is a handwritten anotation at this point by Charles MacKechnie Jarvis 'Charles Dawson of Brighton. Solic. of Pitdown skull notoriety. Coll neglected & cabinet sold by daughter. C.MacK 1947'. (MD 5/02, 2/20)