Born at Greenhill House, Fordington, the son of Dr Edward Joseph Day and his wife Mary Ann (nee Wetton). Educated at Dorchester Grammar School; Downing College, Cambridge; St. Bartholomew's Hospital and College, London; and Kings College, London. Practised as a physician and surgeon in Dorchester from 1914. Day was an all round naturalist with a flair for collecting. His particular enthusiasm in entomology was for Diptera but he also interested himself in other orders including beetles. He wrote to Colbran Wainwright in 1946: ‘During the season I was out collecting 110 times! – not bad as I am still doing some medical work (on occasion!).’ (Letter in the RESL quoted by Pedersen (2002) p.118. Society, 90, 1968. He was for many years honorary entomological consultant to the Dorset County Museum at Dorchester and to the Suffolk Naturalists Society. His collections were split up after his death insects passing to Southampton, the HDO, the Dorset County Museum and elsewhere. The collection in the Dorset County Museum includes boxes of Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera and a 120 drawer cabinet of miscellaneous Dorset insects. Roger Key tells me that Beetles collected by Day in Doreset are in the Department of Zioology at Hull University). 8 beetles collected while he was in Macedonia, apparently on a trip with Dr J. Waterson, were given to the NHM in June 1934 (1934.313) The HDO acquired his personal diary from 1900-1968 in 10 bound volumes and a collection of 229 photographs of British entomologists with biographical details. There is a note about Day in Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 90, 1968. (MD 5/02)
Dates
12 August 1885 - 20 January 1968