SHARP, David

Born at Towcester, the son of a leather merchant, but spent his early years at Stoney Stratford in Buckinghamshire. Moved at the age of eleven to London where he joined St John’s Foundation School, Kilburn. After leaving school he had a brief flirtation with the business world before entering St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1862. He remained there until 1864 when he transferred to Edinburgh taking his degree in 1866. After qualifying, he moved back to London for a short period before returning in 1867 to join the Crichton Institution at Dumfries. From there he moved to take charge of a wealthy patient with whom he remained until that person died in 1883. Sharp then retired from further medical practice and moved firstly to Shirley Warren, Southampton, then Wilmington, near Dartford in Kent, and, in 1890, to Cambridge where he took up the position of Curator of Insects in the University Museum of Zoology. In 1909 he retired from this position and moved to Brockenhurst in the New Forest He had seven children of which one, Anne, an accomplished illustrator, also became an entomologist and married Frederick Muir. Sharp’s interest in beetles was acquired when he was a boy and developed out of an admiration for the aesthetic merits of butterflies and moths. It must also have been stimulated by the fact that Herbert Spencer lived for a time in his father’s house at St. John’s Wood in London and is known to have been an influence on him. By the time he entered Barts he is recorded to have formed a considerable collection. His friend and son-in-law Frederick Muir, in his obituary in ERJV, refers to an old note book kept by Sharp which recorded that in 1862 he possessed 662 named species and that by 1865 this had increased to 1,984. What is more, it is also clear that he was travelling extensively from London in pursuit of his hobby visiting Rannoch with his friend Bishop, the Fens in Norfolk with Brewer, and Deal on the East Coast. In 1869, whilst at the Crichton Institution he published a ‘Revision of the British species of Homalota’ (Trans.ESL, 1869) which Rye remarked was ‘a very difficult work... for which he has burdened himself with the difficulties, or with the complete collections of a very great number of British and Continental entomologists.’ After moving to Thornhill, where he had more time, Sharp took up the study of foreign beetles which led to many publications of which the Staphylinidae of Japan (1874) and of the Amazon Valley (1876), and his Monograph On Aquatic Carnivorous Coleoptera or Dytiscidae (Sc.Trans R.Dublin Soc.1880-82) are, perhaps, the most important. After securing the appointment of his friend Blackburn to an entomological post in Honolulu he received a large number of beetles from the Hawaiian Islands which formed the subject of a series of articles and their joint Memoirs of the Coleoptera of the Hawaiian Islands. It was this work which led directly to his being appointed to the Secreretaryship of the Hawaian Sugar Planters Association in which post he was not only actively involved in further research into the entomology of the Islands but in which he also acted as Editor of the Fauna Hawaiiensis. After moving to Cambridge Sharp not only continued to pursue these works but also undertook several large families for the Biologia Centrali-Americana including the water-beetles, Staphylinidae, Brenthidae, Bruchidae, a large part of the Clavicornia and some of the Curculionidae. He also wrote two volumes on insects in the Cambridge Natural History series which were widely regarded as his magnum opus. As if that were not enough he also acted for 37 years as editor of the Zoological Record, taking on the Insecta from 1885, and the whole publication from 1891, a task which he found very arduous referring to it as his ‘Treadmill’ and as ‘Damoclean’. His efforts to pursuade the ESL to continue Hagen (1862) and a Catalogue of British Insects, both failed. The ms he prepared of the catalogue was withdrawn owing to the failure to agree the nomenclature to be used. An important work published after his retirement was On the Comparative Anatomy of the male genital tube in Coleoptera (1912) which he compiled with Muir. In regard to the British fauna Sharp added many species to our list and published two Catalogues of British Coleoptera (the first Janson, 1871, and the second, with W.W.Fowler, Lovell Reeve, 1893). The total number of his publications even before 1900 amounted to 296 the first of which ‘Occurrence of Stenolophus brunnipes in Britain’ appeared in EMM., 1, 1864, p.48. Sharp is mentioned in the Gorham diary at Birmingham and in the Janson diary at Cambridge (eg May 1867). His collection was donated to the NHM some years before his death. (Harvey et. al. (1996) pp. 189-190) list a ms notebook titled Dr David Sharp Collection of British Coleoptera Catalogue of localities, 1861-1871 which includes some explanatory notes by High Scott (1922), and a typescript Index to the collection. It was apparently this collection which was at one time on loan to Cambridge and is referred to in the Insect Department Register, 8 December 1922, as being in 2 cabinets and 55 store boxes ‘the second cabinet’ and the boxes were mostly unarranged. The ‘first tall cabinet which originally contained the whole British collection’ at that time only contained Cicindelidae to Staphylinidae ‘as rearranged by Dr Sharp in the latter years of his life’. The loan also included his book of localities, described as covering the dates 1861-1875. ‘A blue line at the base of the cards indicating Scottish specimens and a red, English. After 1875 these lines and the list were discontinued and full data was attached to the specimens’. A note in the Crotch volume of Lists, etc. at Cambridge mentions that Sharp and Crotch had special pins made for themselves which were gilt and headless. There are also Sharp specimens in the Mason Collection at Bolton (marked with small blue squares); in the Ellis foreign beetle collection at Liverpool, and in Doncaster Museum. He gave his library to the Cawthorn Institution, Nelson, New Zealand because he thought it would be of more use there than in this country. Sharp letters are included in both volumes of the W.E.Sharp correspondence at Liverpool and there is a detailed MS Part of a Catalogue of Coleoptera at Cambridge which includes bibliographic references to various beetles from Harpalus to Hydaticus. The RESL has a scrapbook and autograph album presented by H. Scott which covers the period 1871-1915 and includes photograph, various papers and letters from F.Walker, G.C.Champion, J.H.Keys, C.O.Waterhouse, A.D.Imms, J.Hamilton and others. It also has correspondence with Herbert Druce (1891, 1893); general correspondence including a request to borrow Sharp’s collection of portraits of entomologists for copying), 1918-1925 and correspondence with C.J.Wainwright (Pedersen (2002)). FESL from 1862 (Secretary 1867, President 1887-88, Vice President 1889, 1891-92, 1896, 1902-03; Council 1893-95, 1902-04, Special Life Fellow 1921). FZS, FLS, FRS 1890, and Honorary member of many foreign societies. Gilbert (1977) lists 16 obituary and other notices. (MD 11/04)