Born in Wormit on Tay, Dundee and graduated from St. Andrews University with a first in Chemistry. His interest in natural history started in 1931-32 when he went to work at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. In 1936 he joined the Pilkington Research Laboratories in St Helens and in 1960 moved with them to Lathom before taking early retirement in 1967. His move to Quarry House, Aughton, where he lived until his death, took place in 1965. According to S. Bowestead who wrote his obituary in EMM, 130, 1994, pp.175-76, Griffith’s interest in insects began in about1944 and quickly settled on the Coleoptera. He specialised in the Staphylinidae and particularly the genus Atheta making: ‘great use of Victor Hansen’s excellent Danmarks Fauna volume (3, 1954)... by sheer persistence he mastered the Danish keys and I remember many enjoyable afternoons looking at spermatheca preparations through his old brass Watson microscope’. Later he worked through the duplicate Atheta in Harwood’s collection at the HDO. Johnson (2004) p.10 cites a collection of 8,000 specimens made by Griffith accessioned by the Manchester Museum in 1993 at which time it was affected by mould. The specimens came mainly from the north west of England, north Wales and Northern Ireland and included some from the Oxford district collected by J.J.Collins. The names are often mis-spelt as Griffiths. It is accompanied by notes, letters and card indices. Griffith was a member of the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society and a founder member of the Raven Entomological and Natural History Society of which he was Vice President 1960-88. FRESL 1955-1993. The obituary cited above includes a portrait and details of the 10 articles on beetles he published between 1946 and 1983. (MD 11/09)
Dates
1912- 24 May 1993