British Museum (Natural History): Director's Office: Correspondence of the Director

This series consists of a single volume containing 200 letters from around 100 correspondents addressed to the first Director of the Natural History Departments, William Henry Flower (1831-1899). Many of the letters are purely official in character, such as a series from Sir William Thistleton-Dyer, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (1885-1891). Others relate to Flower's own scientific interests, including a number on anthropological topics from Alfred Corrie (1887), H H Giglioli (1889), R G Haliburton (1888-1889), W Saville-Kent (1887-1891), and J C Silberbauer (1888) among others.

Series held at The Natural History Museum are catalogued more fully in its online catalogue (reference DF DIR/932). Online descriptions of some individual records can also be viewed on Discovery, see DF 932.

Flower's notebooks, drawings and manuscripts on mammalian zoology are held in the Zoology Library Manuscripts.

Topics

Museums and galleries

Flower was a qualified surgeon, who was on the staff of the Middlesex Hospital from 1853 until 1861, when he was appointed Conservator of the Royal College of Surgeon's Museum. He remained at the College for 22 years, reorganising the displays and carrying out important researches in mammalian comparative anatomy. Flower was appointed to the Museum in 1884, to follow Richard Owen (1804-1892). He got on well with both the keepers in South Kensington and with the Principal Librarian in Bloomsbury. He created the Index Museum in the Central and North Halls, although not in the ways that Owen had planned, and used his position to further the cause of nature conservation, particularly in the use of bird plumage. From 1895 Flower was Keeper of Zoology as well as Director.