George Fleming Richardson — geologist, curator and poet

While history celebrates the individual scientists and artists who change our understanding of the world, it rarely remembers the assistants who make this pioneering work possible. Perhaps it’s time to spare a thought for George Fleming Richardson, who supported the work of local palaeontologist Gideon Mantell.

When Mantell exhibited his collection in Brighton in 1837, Richardson acted as curator. He followed the collection when it was acquired by the British Museum the following year, and became an assistant in its department of minerals. He also took notes from Mantell’s lectures which he published as The Wonders of Geology in 1838. Richardson published several other works on geology, but he also maintained a parallel literary career as a poet. One example of his work can be found in The Book of Sussex Verse, copies of which can be found in Brighton History Centre. Probably dating from his time with Mantell in Brighton, the poem is Richardson’s attempt to capture the eastern promise of the Royal Pavilion.

Book of Sussex Verse, 1914

Brighton. The Pavilion.

Imperial palace, that art seen to smile

In Eastern splendour, on our English land,

As if, from China’s shore, or Egypt’s strand,

Some pow’r unknown had borne thy magic pile!

O, I would roam around thy turrets, while

They bask in moonlight beauty, while Romance

Wakes the high visions of the holiest trance,

And bids her fairest forms the night beguile.

Then shall mine erring fancy rove anew

O’er themes all wild and wondrous, that belong

To Arab story, or to Persian song,

And deem awhile their false enchantments true;

Like gentlest dreams to sleeping suff’rers borne,

To charm throughout the night, and vanish with the morn.

G.F. Richardson

Sadly, neither Richardson’s poetic nor scientific careers proved sufficient to sustain him. Financial problems drove him to suicide in 1848. Richardson’s  scientific rather than his literary work seems to have been better regarded in his lifetime; he became a fellow of the Geological Society in 1839. But it’s worth noting that this poem was still remembered over sixty years after his death, when The Book of Sussex Verse was first published in 1914.

More on George Fleming Richardson

RICHARDSON, GEORGE FLEMING (1796?–1848), geologist, was born about 1796. He acted at one time as curator to the collection of Dr. Gideon Algernon Mantell [q. v.], when it was on exhibition at Brighton in 1837. He also took notes of a series of Mantell’s lectures, which were published as ‘The Wonders of Geology’ (1838).

In 1838, when Mantell’s collection was bought by the trustees of the British Museum, Richardson entered their service as assistant in the ‘department of minerals.’ This post he filled for ten years. During the same period he lectured on geology and kindred subjects, and was elected a fellow of the Geological Society on 22 May 1839. In 1848 pecuniary embarrassments led him into the bankruptcy court, and he committed suicide in SomersTown on 5 July 1848. His geological handbooks were useful compilations; he was less successful in his efforts in general literature. He was author of: 1. ‘Poetic Hours,’ &c., 12mo, London, 1825. 2. ‘Rosalie Berton,’ in ‘Tales of all Nations,’ 12mo, London, 1827. 3. ‘Sketches in Prose and Verse,’ 8vo, London, 1835; 2nd ser. 8vo, London, 1838. 4. ‘Geology for Beginners,’ &c., 12mo, London, 1842; 2nd ed. 1843; reissued 1851. 5. ‘Geology, Mineralogy,’ &c., revised by Wright, 8vo, London, 1858. ‘An Essay on the German Language and Literature,’ by Richardson, is advertised in ‘A Descriptive Catalogue of the Objects … in the Museum attached to the Sussex Scientific and Literary Institute, 1836,’ which last he possibly also wrote. He also translated ‘The Life of C. T. Körner,’ 8vo, London, 1827; 2nd edit. 1845; and at his death he had completed a translation of Bouterwek’s ‘History of German Literature.’

[Athenæum, 1848, p. 704; Gent. Mag. 1849, p. 550; Introd. to Wonders of Geology, 3rd edit.; information kindly supplied by the authorities of the BritishMuseum and by the assistant secretary of the Geological Society; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

John Cooper, Keeper of Natural Sciences

Sir Charles Dick — the Baronet curator of Brighton Museum

Brighton Museum celebrates its 150th birthday today, having been formally opened on 5 November 1861. To mark the occasion, we are running a free audio touch-tour of the museum, and have designed a treasure trail for our smartphone app. But it is worth taking a moment to remark upon the fate of one of Brighton Museum’s first curators: Sir Charles Dick.

When the Brighton and Sussex Museum opened in 1861 it was not in its present building. It originally occupied several  rooms on the upper floor of the Royal Pavilion. At the time, the museum consisted of the municipal art collection, and several other collections, including natural history specimens. Dick was not the first curator of the museum, but he has become the figure most closely identified with this early period.

In spite of his title, Dick lived much of his life on modest means. He was born in London in 1802, and moved to Brighton in 1820 with his father, Sir Page Dick. They lived in a house named Porthall on Dyke Road. Much of his income seems to have been derived from his father’s war pension, and when Sir Page died in 1851, Dick inherited relatively little. Other than his title, the house, some furniture, and a collection of armour and painted miniatures, Sir Charles Dick was left with little income. Believing himself to be entitled to a substantial pension from the crown, dating from a settlement made by Charles II, Dick spent much of the remainder of his life petitioning the government for these funds. His efforts would prove unsuccessful and, according to an obituary published in the Brighton Herald, he ‘sank lower and lower in worldly circumstances’. So low did he sink that he became a museum curator.

In the early 1860s, Dick and his family were forced to give up Porthall, and his collection of armour and miniatures were acquired for the museum. Dick’s knowledge of the collection, or charitable feeling, appear to have been the only reason he was appointed to the post. He certainly does not appear to have held much enthusiasm for the job, and spent most of his time fruitlessly pursuing his claim to a pension from the government. According to the Herald obituary:

‘It cannot be said that the now aged Baronet took kindly to his office; doubtless, his “heart was over where,” for his ” claims” were ever uppermost with him.’

Shortly before the museum moved to its present home in 1873, Dick was dismissed from his post with three months pay. Although he pleaded to be kept on, it seems that the town’s authorities had ambitious plans for the museum. An elderly, distracted curator clearly did not match this vision. Indeed, it seems that many people dismissed his museum entirely. John George Bishop in his 1891 The Brighton Pavilion and its Royal Associations fails to mention the museum at all, and simply dates the founding of the museum to 1873, the year it moved to its present site. This is particularly striking, as Bishop was one of the few mourners who attended his funeral several years later.

Sir Charles Dick died on 3 December 1876. The obituary published on 9 December bore the title ‘A Sad Story of a Life’. Although it may be hard to define Dick’s legacy, he is at the very least a reminder of how much has changed in the museum in the last 150 years.

Kevin Bacon
Digital Development Officer

Mary Merrifield

The Victorian era is considered the golden age of natural history collecting. The pursuit of fauna and flora from around the planet was driven both by a desire to learn about nature, as well as a quest to prove oneself against the wilderness.

Phyllophora rubens

Victorians collected almost everything to do with the natural world. However, women were excluded from collecting most things by the rules of Victorian society, usually relegated to collecting plants. Some of these women took full advantage of a science that was acceptable for them to study, becoming leading authorities in botany. One of these women was Mary Philadelphia Merrifield.

Born Mary P. Watkins in Brompton, London on 18 April 1804, to the barrister Sir Charles Watkins, she married trainee barrister John Merrifield in 1827. After qualifying as a barrister, he moved to Brighton with his family to practice law.

Flustra Foliacea

Mary started her career in the academic community by translating and publishing the works of the 15^th century Italian painter Cennino Cennini. This work bought her to the attention of the Royal Commission on the Fine Arts, who employed her to research the history of painters materials and techniques. Assisted in her work by her sons Charles and Frederick, the research was published in book form in 1846 as the Art of Fresco Painting. It proved to be a very useful manual for artists and was reprinted as late as 1952.

Image of her book along with specimens

She wrote several more books on art and fashion, and was awarded a civil pension of £100 in 1857 for services to art and literature. After receiving this pension however, her interests shifted to the field of natural history, and she soon published a book entitled A Sketch of the Natural History of Brighton. Being perfectly cited by the sea, she became an authority in the study of seaweed, and was considered one of the leading algologists in Britain. She wrote many papers for scientific journals including the Journal of the Linnaean Society and the Annals of Botany, and continued to publish articles in the journal Nature until her death.

Image of her book A Sketch of the Natural History of Brighton

During her last few years in Brighton, she helped to arrange the natural history galleries at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, all of which have now been relocated to the Booth Museum. She also learned Danish and Swedish so that she could keep up with botanical research from these countries, and she had a species of marine algae named after her.

Following her husband’s death in 1877, she moved into her daughter’s home in Cambridge, and died on 4 January 1889. Her collection went to the Natural History department of the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum), but some items she had previously given to other colleagues are now housed at the Booth Museum. These are mostly seaweeds but include some other specimens as well. Several of these items will go on display at Horsham Museum in early 2012, as part of the Victorian Collectors exhibition produced by the Booth Museum.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences