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PALMER, Mervyn Grove

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Employed by Walter Rothschild as a collector. Harvey et al (1996) record that many of the insects he collected went either directly to the NHM or via the Rothschild collection. Later Palmer established, and was curator of the Ilfracombe Museum, North Devon, which opened to the public in 1932. Six MS collecting diaries covering the period 1906-1909 when he was in Central and South America are in the NHM. (MD 9/04)

PAGET, Charles John

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Brother of the well-known surgeon Sir James Paget with whom he compiled a Sketch of the Natural History of Great Yarmouth and its Neighbourhood, 1834, which included a very complete list of insects. In an obituary of his brother in Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Soc., 6, pp.74-76, Sir James said that his zeal and industry might be estimated by the extent of the insect list in the Sketch which was entirely written by him. (MD 9/04)

ORTON, Peter Darbishire

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Expert mycologist with many publications on mushrooms and toadstools. Collected Coleoptera as a hobby and  contributed numerous records to Duff (1993) The following is taken from an obituary by Peter Marren in The Independent, 28 April 2005. 

ORMEROD, Eleanor Anne

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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.

ORAM, Mr

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Mentioned by Lott (2009) p.14 as a dealer in insects(?) living in Loughborough who sold 500 beetles to the Leicester Museum on 14 September 1878. He was apparently highly skilled at entomological preparations.(see Holyoak, H.) (MD 11/09)

OMER-COOPER, Joyce

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Worker on water beetles who was wife of Professor Joseph Omer-Cooper (1893-1972) the distinquished invertebrate zoologist. Spent much of their professional lives in South Africa after he left Durham University in 1936 to take up the post of Senior Lecturer at Rhodes University College. She was a lecturer at King’s College, Newcastle in 1935 and a Northern Naturalist’s Union referee for Isopoda, Dytiscidae and Gyrinidae. It is not clear whether the collection of Coleoptera at the Hancock Museum (donated in 1982), was formed by her or her husband, or by both of them.

Orsquo; NIEL, J.A.

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Jesuit priest who collected Coleoptera in Africa mainly at Dunbrody, near Port Elizabeth and in Rhodesia. The bulk of his insects are in the South African Museum and in the Albany Museum at Grahamstown. Further beetles collected by him in Rhodesia, 1913-14, are at Glasgow Museum in the collection from the Notre Dame Teacher Training College presented in 1985 (information from Geoff Hancock); and there are also beetles bearing his name in Willoughby Ellis’ foreign collection at Liverpool Museum, and in the NHM collected between 1919-20.

MAHONEY, Eugene

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Worked in the National Museum, Dublin, from 1922 as Technical Assistant (although he took charge of the zoological collections between 1924 to 1930) where he was much influenced by A.R.Nichols and J.N.Halbert. Perhaps best known for his later work on Mallophaga and Siphonaptera of which he compiled a Catalogue of the Irish species, but he also wrote some fifty articles on Irish Coleoptera between 1924 and 1951 (listed in Ryan, et al. (1984) pp.80-83.) Most appeared in the EMM, and many introduced new national and county records.

NURSE, Euston John

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There are specimens bearing this name in a small collection of mainly local Lepidoptera and Coleoptera at Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery. (Fenscore). Gilbert (1977) mentions an obituary in Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc., 5, 1945, which I have not seen. (MD 5/04)

NORTON, Frank (d. c.1949)

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There is a collection of 3,00 beetles and some Hymonoptera Parasitica from Glamorgan in the NMW. Norton is recorded to have lived in Cardiff and to have supported the entomological group which developed around the enthusiasm of Howard Hallett. (1878-1958). (MD 5/04)
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