Born in Penzance and educated at the Grammar School there. Entered St Bartholomew’s Hospital and after gaining his MRCS in 1835 was appointed a surgeon in the Navy serving in the Australian, West Indian and Mediterranean regions. In 1843 he married Miss Glasson of Falmouth and retired from the Navy settling at St. Austell where he had a property producing China clay. Following the death of his wife in 1851 he moved to London and devoted himself to entomology in particular. After becoming ill at the end of his life he moved firstly to Tunbridge Wells and then to Brighton where he died. He had three daughters, and a son who pre-deceased his father in 1872. Robert Mclachlan in his obituary (EMM., 29, 1893, pp.194-96) described Pascoe as having ‘little aptitude for collecting’ so that, although he travelled extensively abroad, not just in the navy but later in the company of his daughters, the collections he built up were primarily of material obtained from others. His forte was as a taxonomist and he published more than a hundred papers naming and describing new species of foreign Cerambycidae, Colydiidae, Tenebrionidae and Curculionidae. Several papers were published in conjunction with other authors including two with Alfred Wallace and one with J.O.Westwood. He is mentioned in the Janson diary at Cambridge, eg. 11 October 1871. Pascoe’s collection of over 42,000 specimens was sold to the NHM in 1893 and included more than 2,500 types. Smith (1986) p.140 states that the remainder, 13 cabinets, and part of his library, was given to the HDO by Miss Pascoe at the suggestion of A.Russel Wallace. A scrapbook (mainly cut-up plates of beetles, but including a few original paintings); original paintings, also a few pen and ink, and pencil sketches; 3 notebooks and some correspondence is also in the HDO. FRES from 1854 (President 1864-65). Also belonged to various foreign societies. FLS from 1852. Gilbert (1977) lists 12 obituaries in addition to that mentioned above. (MD 9/04)
Dates
1 September 1813 – 20 June 1893