British Museum (Natural History): Department of Entomology: Coleoptera Section: Papers...

DF 333

British Museum (Natural History): Department of Entomology: Coleoptera Section: Papers and Correspondence

1928-1988

This series consists largely of the correspondence of two prominent members of the Coleoptera Section, Everard Baldwin Britton (b1912) and John William Alexander Francis Balfour-Browne (b1907). The Balfour-Browne correspondence contains a considerable number of letters addressed to Britton, as well as some to Kenneth Gloyne Blair (1882-1952).

Some correspondence of Kenneth Blair and Hugh Scott is held in the Entomology Library, together with a notebook of Balfour-Browne. Scott's expedition diaries and photographs are in the General Library.

Public Record(s)

English

31 boxes and files

Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

The series was transferred to the archives in 1991.

At the time of formation of the Department, Blair, Gilbert John Arrow and Charles Joseph Gahan (1862-1939), the Keeper, were responsible for the Coleoptera collections. Hugh Scott succeeded Gahan in 1930 to look after the Clavicornia, and in 1935 Britton was appointed to take over the Carabidae and, later the Lamellicornia. Howard Everest Hinton worked on the cucujoid groups for a short time in 1939, being briefly succeeded by Mrs Helen Elizabeth Balme, and then in 1951 by Christina Maria Felicitas von Hayek. Balfour-Browne, having worked in the Section as a volunteer since 1934, was taken onto the staff in 1948, and became Head of Section on Britton's resignation in 1964. Richard Thomas Thompson joined the staff in 1957 to work on the Curculioneidea (weevils), and Robert Dennis Pope transferred from the Commonwealth Institute of Entomology to the Section in 1964, succeeding Balfour-Browne as Head of Section in 1967 and retiring in 1988. The scientists were backed up by a number of support staff, including Charles Alfred Cockley and Sydney John Turpin, as well as by distinguished unofficial workers such as Malcolm Cameron and Sir Guy Marshall.

Everard Baldwin Britton (b1912) was born and educated in South Wales. He was appointed to the Museum staff as an Assistant Keeper in 1935, being transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture for the duration of the War. He made a special study of the Carabidae and Melonthinae (the chafers). Britton collected in Arabia with Hugh Scott in 1938, visited Australia and New Zealand in 1948-1949, and Australia in 1961-1962. He resigned in 1964 to take up a post with CSIRO in Canberra.

John William Alexander Francis Balfour-Browne (b1907), the son of a well-known entomologist, was educated at Rugby School and at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. He worked in Madeira before becoming an unofficial worker at the Museum, specialising on the aquatic Coleoptera. He joined the staff as a Senior Scientific Officer in 1947 and collected in South and Southwest Africa in 1954. Balfour-Browne retired in 1967, but continued to work in the Section as a volunteer. He married Miss Frances Stephens, a mycologist in the Botany Department, in 1948. Balfour-Browne was profoundly deaf from the age of ten, but developed an outstanding ability to lipread, eventually in several languages.