Third son of Reverend Ernest George Doughty, rector of Martlesham, and of Mary Francis Christie of the Manor House, Framingham Pigot, Norfolk. Cousin of Doughty of Arabia Deserta fame. Educated at Crespigny House school, Aldeburgh; Bradfield College, Berkshire; and between 1888 and 1891 at Pembroke College, Cambridge where he took degrees in Law. Became articled to a firm of Solicitors at Plymouth and subsequently moved to another firm in London, before, on the death of his father in 1915, giving up the law and moving to Gorleston where he remained for the rest of his life. Doughty had an extensive interest in natural history fostered particularly through the Suffolk Naturalists Society of which he became an active participant after its foundation in 1929. Although he had published little up to this time, his longest article being on ‘The loves of the weevils', (Ent., 1910, p.212, he then proceeded to contribute material on a great diversity of subjects to every part of the Transactions. According to the writer of his obituary in Trans.Suffolk Nat.Soc.Proc., 1939 (4), pp.xc-xcii, his interest in Coleoptera began in 1899, and was quickly followed by Lepidoptera in the following year. Both were pursued in parallel with botany, zoology, conchology and fossils. He was particularly knowledgeable about the local coast, and travelled extensively throughout the British Isles. His only foreign trips are recorded to have been to Italy in 1909 and to Switzerland in 1916. Doughty's collections were split up after his death. The Coleoptera passed to the Ipswich Museum where the collection is housed in 30 storeboxes, most specimens having attached data. (I am very grateful to Howard Mendel for supplying me with information about Doughty). (MD 9/02)
Dates
26 January 1870 - 24 January 1939