No contemporary biographical account of this important early Coleopterist is known. He was well educated; a founder member of the Linnean Society and its Secretary from 1788-98 and Treasurer from 1898-1816. He was also Secretary to the West India Dock Company for many years and became an officer in the volunteer corps of the Home Guard in 1802. He married a Miss Symes of Ufford, Northants. and had two daughters. Of his period in the Home Guard, Mackechnie-Jarvis (1976) quotes an interesting letter from Alexander Macleay to William Kirby (in the LSL) of 14 November 1802: ‘I do not believe I have seen our friend Marsham four times since the beginning of the war. This is my fault in some degree, but not entirely, for he is wholly taken up with his volunteer corps. Mrs Marsham says she is more bored with soldiering than ever she was by insect hunting. In fact our friend thinks of nothing but the repelling of our daring foe, and sticking of Frenchmen instead of the sticking of insects’. His first entomological publication is usually said to have been ‘Observations on the Phalaena lubricipeda of Linneaus and some other moths allied to it’ in Trans.LSL, 1, 1791, pp.67-75 (which includes a colour plate), but a more ambitious piece, ‘System of Entomology’, separately published copies of which are dated 1796, apparently appeared in Hall’s Royal Encyclopaedia in 1788, since there is an offprint (with title page dated 1796) in the library of the RESL which was formerly in the possession of J.F.Stephens and H.T.Stainton. The publication for which he is best known, however, is Entomologia Britannica, sistens Insecta Britanniae indigena secundum Linneum deposita. Coleoptera 1802. The work, dedicated to the Linnean Society, was intended to cover other insects too, but almost certainly lost money because Marsham produced no further volumes. In it Marsham acknowledges the help of some 20 collaborators and lists 1,307 species (compared with some 441 listed by Linnaeus as European). Later articles included ‘Observations on the Curculio trifolii’ (Trans.,LSL 6, 1806, pp.142-46. With Markwick and Lehmann); ‘Some observations on an insect that destroys the wheat, supposed to be a wireworm’ (ibid., 9, 1808, pp.160-61); ‘Description of Notoclea, a new genus of Coleopterous insects from New Holland’ (ibid., pp. 283-95) and ‘Some account of an insect of the genus Buprestis, taken alive out of wood composing a desk, which had been made above twenty years; in a letter to Mr Macleay’ (ibid., 10, 1811, pp.399-403) Stephens (1828-18) includes numerous references to Marsham’s collection which he had purchased shortly before Marsham’s death. The identification of the Marsham specimens which Stepehens incorporated into his own collection, now in the NHM, is explored in detail by Peter Hammond in ‘On the type material of Staphylinidae described by T.Marsham and J.F.Stephens’ (Ent Gaz., 23, pp.129-135). He notes in particular ‘that one traditional view, possibly widely adhered to, that it is frequently or even usually impossible to recognise original specimens of particular Marsham or Stephens species as such, is false... Indeed, there is every reason to believe that specimens on which most of the taxa described by Marsham and Stephens were based can be located and recognised in the Stephens and Kirby collections, which are maintained by the Museum as separate entities.’ Stephens bought Marsham’s coleoptera as one lot (out of 466) in the auction sale of all his collections by King on 8-10 September 1819 (Chalmers-Hunt (1976) pp.6 and 78) There are catalogues in the NHM and belonging to Chalmers-Hunt. Harvey et al (1996) p.129 list three MSS in the Insect Room Lists referring to Marsham’s insects and a Ms ‘Notes by G.R.Waterhouse on Marsham’s and Stephens’ type specimens’. Marsham’s death is referred to in a letter from Kirby to Macleay of 24 December 1819 quoted by MacKechnie- Jarvis (1976), p.93: ‘Our poor friend Marsham’s departure from this troublesome world I learned from a friend who observed it in publick print and your son on my application was good enough to give me some particulars of his death. Sorrows came cumulatively upon him previous to his removal and I trust that they have worked out for him an entrance into a happier state than that he has lately experienced below.’ (MD 2/04)
Dates
d.1819