JOHNSON, William Frederick

Born in Travancore, South India, the son of an official of the Church Missionary Society. He was educated privately and appears to have come to England in his early youth and received further schooling at Weymouth Grammar School and Arlington House, Portarlington, before going to Trinity College Dublin in 1872. There he became BA in 1876 and MA in 1880. Between degrees he studied for the church, taking Holy Orders in 1879. In early professional life he was a teacher, firstly at Armagh Royal School as Assistant Master until early 1881, and subsequently at the Grammar School, Aramagh Cathedral, of which he became Principal. He also held offices of Junior, and later Senior Vicar Choral in the Cathedral. In 1895 he gave up teaching on being appointed Rector of Poyntzpass where he remained until 1921. For a short period he was then Rector of Killincoole, Castle Bellingham, Co. Louth, before retiring from active service in the church and moving to Rostrevor, Co. Down. Johnson wrote in the British Naturalist, in 1893, that his interest in entomolgy began when he was about eleven and had collected butterflies and moths. Although he retained an interest in Lepidoptera throughout his life, by 1884, when he started a diary of observations and captures, he had also become interested in other groups, particualarly Coleoptera and Hemiptera. His work on beetles, particularly in the area around where he lived, led to his becoming one of the foremost Irish Coleopterists of his day. On the shores of Lough Neagh, a locality which he visited frequently, he rediscovered the long lost Dyschirius obscurus, and added Bembidium argenteolum to the British list. He published many notes and articles about his Irish discoveries of which the most important are 'The Coleoptera of the Armagh District' in Irish Naturalist, 1, 1892, pp.14-18, 36-38, 57-59, 77-78, 97-99, 120-123, 142-144; his 'List of the beetles of Ireland', compiled with J.N.Halbert, in Proc. R. Irish Academy, Ser. 3, 4B, 1902, pp.535-827; and his survey of Clare Ireland and adjoining district in ibid., 31(28), B, 1912, p.24. (Ryan et al (1984) list some sixty five other publications on Coleoptera) He also worked on Myriapoda, Aculeate Hymenoptera and parasitic Hymenoptera, publishing important papers on those groups too. There are three letters in the RESL, one of which, dated 13 October 1930, includes an account of his life (2 pp) (Pedersen (2002) p.p.84,85). Johnson's collection covering the period 1880-1940 is in the Ulster Museum in a 30 drawer cabinet (My notes indicate that it may be incorporated with the W.M.Crawford collection but this is not clear). It includes some specimens from localities other than Ireland, and some Hemiptera. Other specimens collected by Johnson are to be found in the Hall Collection at Oldham (Information from Simon Hayhow) and in the York Museum (Information from Mike Denton). J.J.Walker, who wrote Johnson's obituary in EMM., 70, 1934, pp.164-165, records that they corresponded over a forty year period, and remarked: 'working practically alone, far from reference collections and scientific libraries, the excellence and soundness of the results of his labours in general are thus all the more noteworthy'. Member of the ESL from 1889 and was made a Special Life Fellow in 1923. He was also a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Gilbert (1977) lists two further obituaries and an article about Johnson, when still alive, in British Naturalists, 3, 1893, pp.74-77, including a portrait. Walker thanks the editor of the Irish Naturalist for advance sight of an extended obituary, not mentioned by Gilbert, which I have not seen. (MD 8/03, 11/09)