Born in London the son of Frederick Haines, a solicitor and Shakespearian scholar, and educated at University College School and University College Hospital where he obtained his D.P.H. in 1899. Married Eva Mary Fenn, daughter of the well-known author George Manville Fenn and had four children. Assisted Dr Ling of Saxmundham, Suffolk for one year before setting up in practice for himself at Brentford, Middlesex and later at Winfrith, Dorset. He remained there until 1923, when he retired from medical practice in order to pursue his great passion in natural history full time, and moved to Appleslade, Linwood, in the New Forest. Here he built his own house in wood, which he felt would be more in keeping with his surroundings, and established a nature reserve - part forest, part heath and part fen. He died after a short illness at Appleslade. Haines was an all round naturalist and antiquarian, being called at one time the Gilbert White of the New Forest. He collected in all entomological orders and sometimes alluded to himself as a 'philanderer in entomology'. The compiler of his obituary in Journal of the Society for British Entomology, 3, 1946, pp.37-39, wrote: 'nothing however could be less true, for he had an astonishing knowledge of all orders and a wonderful memory for names, passing from Order to Order and rarely at fault when naming a species. Sometimes he would be offered specimens caught in his own grounds, which he himself had not come across, but would invariably refuse them, and so great was his generosity that he would quite willingly part with specimens of which he had only singles in his own collection.' Haines's work on Coleoptera led him to establish a colony of Aromia moschata on Salix which he himself had planted, and to the discovery of Agrilus viridis on the same trees. His publications included a comprehensive list of some of the more local Dorset Coleoptera he had captured in EMM, 53, 1917, pp.162-164. Haines was a member of the Dorset Field Club, being Secretary of the Natural History Section and later Vice President, and of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society. He contributed many papers to the journals of both including a series on 'The Insects of Hampshire' in the Proceedings of the latter (annual until 1939). There is also an obituary in EMM, 82, 1946, 96. (MD 3/03)
Dates
19 February 1864 - 1946