Biographies

This section has been produced to show the persons involved in the historical records of rare birds. This has an effect of highlighting a person's involvement and if that person has been found to be unreliable a quick check here will display the rare bird records the person was involved with. Like with the "Hastings Rarities" fraud, centred around George Bristow, a taxidermist based in St Leonards, Sussex, who imported frozen rare birds and passed them off as British-killed. Another taxidermist in Brighton, George Swaysland, has been found to be unreliable and suspected of fraud.

Another fraud called the "Tadcaster Rarities" centred on another taxidermist, David Graham of York, whereby some unusual records began to evolve from an area around Tadcaster. Richard Meinertzhagen was another who supposedly found some first for Britain, but this turned out to be a stolen museum specimen and it had been suspected for some time that he was pilfering specimens out of the BMNH so much so that someone had to be with him all the time while he was there. For an interesting read about this man try Garfield (2007).

Other unreliable people are: J. Baker and F. Doggett, Cambridge, W. Howlett, Newmarket, J. T. White and E. T. Clarke, Cheltenham, Stephen Miller and George Smith, Great Yarmouth, Green a dealer from London, Stephen Mummery, Kent and Abraham Pincombe, Plymouth, to name a few.

Some of the persons recorded may be duplicates as they often didn't publish their full name. Also, it was customary then for a son to have the same forename as his father.

Further information can be gleaned from Mullens & Swann (1917) and Mearns & Means (1988 and 1998).