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Perilous life of a Victorian explorer
The Camden History Review, no 32, is published by the Camden History Society. £5.95.
It is available from Holborn Library, Theobalds Road, WC1, and local bookshops.
THE forgotten life of an Amazonian adventurer whose trips into the rainforest in the 1800s helped bolster Darwinian thought is just one of the stories in this year’s Camden History Review.
Henry Bates, who lived in Bartholomew Road, Kentish Town for 15 years and spent much of his life in Camden, collected thousands of new insect specimens and was the assistant secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.
Historian Shirley Neale, who has researched his story, reveals the incredible dangers he faced in his quest to further scientific knowledge.
The History Review, published annually, covers a wide variety of subjects. Previous editions range from Samuel Pepys’s Camden to Robert Blincoe, the real Oliver Twist, and a history of the Aerated Bread Company, whose bakery was on the site of Sainsbury’s in Camden Road.
Highlights in the current issue include Dr Peter Woodford’s work on three Bloomsbury doctors who furthered medical knowledge at the height of the Age of the Enlightenment. Drs John Radcliffe, Hans Sloane and Richard Meade all worked in the area between 1700 and 1750. While Sloane and Radcliffe are well known, Richard Mead, who was equally famous in his day, is all but forgotten and Dr Woodford’s comprehensive piece tells his story.
Meade spent his formative years training on the Continent, living off a stipend from his father. He was forced to return to London when this cash ran out – and he set up his first medical practice where he experimented with poisons, cages of snakes and tested their venoms.
Dan Carrier |
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