ORMEROD, Eleanor Anne

Well known economic entomologist who wrote an autobiography together with transcripts of correspondence which was edited by Robert Wallace (348pp. Published by John Murray 1904. Includes portraits and illustrations). She was born at Sedbury in Gloucestershire the younger daughter of George Ormerod and educated at home. Following the capture of a locust in 1852 she became sufficiently interested in entomology that ‘In March I began my studies by buying my first entomological book, and I chose beetles for the subject, and Stephens’s Manual... for my teacher. Those who know the book will understand my difficulties.... But I made up my mind that I was going to learn [and] struck out a plan of my own. From time to time I got one of the very largest beetles I could find, something that I was quite sure of and turned it into my teacher. I carefully dissected it and matched the parts to the details of the description given by Stephens... Identification was very difficult for a long time but I ‘looked out’ my beetles laboriously till I was sure of the name, and then, to make quite certain, I took the subject the other way forward – worked back systematically from the species till I found that there was no other kind that it could be. Killing my specimens was another difficulty. I was told that if beetles were dropped into hot water death was instantaneous. I was not aware that it should be boiling. So into the kitchen I went with a water beetle.. . to my perfect horror, instead of being killed instantaneously it skimmed round and round on the water for perhaps a minute as if in the greatest agony... thenceforth I supplied myself with chloroform...’ (pp.54-55) Ormerod’s first publications, in 1874, included ‘Life history of Meligethes’ (EMM., 11, pp.46-52) and this was followed by numerous further notes including many on beetles of economic importance. The publications for which she is best known, however, were the series of 24 annual reports titled Notes of Observations of Injurious Insects, which she published entirely at her own expense from 1877, and several books including A Manual of Injurious Insects. With Methods of Prevention and Remedy for their Attacks to Food Crops, Forest Trees, and Fruit, 1881, with a second edition in 1890, and A Text Book of Agricultural Entomology, 1892, the last derived from lecture texts. Many of these works were illustrated by her sister Georgiana S. Ormerod. Ormerod was strong minded and self confident which sometimes lead to strained relations with the organisations for which she worked including the Royal Agricultural Society, of which she was Honorary Entomologist 1882-1892, and the RESL. Furthermore, it is clear that many entomologists found her amateur status, accentuated by her style of writing, difficult to accept, the EMM., for example, wrote in its obituary (37, 1901, p.230) that she was ‘able to impart information in a manner in which it came to be appreciated by the class of readers for whom it was intended.’ Although there was ‘Possibly... an occasional tendency to exaggerate the evils on which she was writing’. Smith (1986) p.139 notes that there is material in the HDO including beetles collected by Ormerod in Madeira (named by Bewicke); Harvey, et al. (1996) p.112 note that there is correspondence (1879-1900) in the Janson family archive at the NHM; and Chalmers-Hunt (1976) pp.138,155, records that her library was sold by Stevens on 14 April 1902 and 20-21 June 1916.Ormerod was the first woman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Meterological Society and to be awarded an honorary doctorate by Edinburgh University. She also received many foreign distinctions. FRES from 1878. (MD 7/04)