ROBERT NEWSTEAD

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ROBERT NEWSTEAD 1859-1947 R obert N ew stead was born at Swanton Abbott, Norfolk, on 11 September 1859, the first of a family of eleven.

2 ROBERT NEWSTEAD R obert N ew stead was born at Swanton Abbott, Norfolk, on 11 September 1859, the first of a family of eleven. His father was butler to Squire Boulton of Oulton Hall, but later moved to Sedgeford where he was employed as a gardener. From him Newstead got his love of plants and animals and his interest in natural history for, together, he and his father collected natural history specimens in the Fen Country, in Gloucestershire, and later in Cheshire. This last county became his adopted one and was the scene of his life s work. Leaving school when ten years old, Newstead first worked as a labouring gardener, then worked for a time in a printing works, and later as a telegraphist, but, in 1883, returned to gardening in the employment of Mr Osten Walker, a keen amateur naturalist. Walker s influence on Newstead s career was decisive. In the first place he provided Newstead for the first time in his life with accommodation and facilities for his natural history studies, he advised him to apply for the Curatorship of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, just then established, and was instrumental in his getting it. Later still, he induced Newstead to take up the study of the Coccidae or scale insects, and Newstead s work in this group first established his reputation as an entomologist. In 1900, he was invited by the Ray Society to prepare a monograph on the British Coccidae. In this he was encouraged by the late Sir Edward Poulton, who secured for him a grant of 20 from the Royal Society to enable him to visit various localities in search of material. In 1902 he had the honour of being made an Associate of the Linnaean Society. During these years Newstead had made the acquaintance of Eleanor Omerod who followed John Curtis as one of the pioneers of agricultural entomology. For some years Newstead acted as her assistant and compiled the indices for her annual reports on injurious insects. This gave him his first interest in applied entomology. In 1905, Newstead was appointed lecturer in Medical Entomology and Parasitology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and then he began the study of Diptera and other insects of medical and veterinary importance, visiting Jamaica, Malta and Nyasaland to investigate such problems as ticks, sandfly fever and sleeping sickness. In 1911, he was appointed to the Dutton Chair of Entomology in Liverpool, and, in 1912, was 2m 549

550 Obituary Notices elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1913, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the City and County of the City of Chester.

3 550 Obituary Notices elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1913, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the City and County of the City of Chester. When, in 1914, war with Germany broke out, Newstead immediately became active in urging the Government to recognize the importance of insects in warfare, and in 1915 he was appointed by the War Office to the charge of an Entomological Commission to deal with insect prophylaxis in France and Flanders. He served on this Commission for six months, and a year later joined the late Sir John Fryer in the establishment, at the request of the Board of Agriculture, of the Royal Society Grain Pests (War) Committee. He himself undertook the investigation of the acarids, or mites, as pests of grain and flour as his contribution to the Committee s work. In 1924, Newstead retired from his Chair at Liverpool, but continued work for the University for a time, and in the intervals devoted himself to archaeological investigation of Roman Chester and in this work his skill, his knowledge and his enthusiasm earned him high respect. In 1936 he was elected an Honorary Freeman of Chester. He died on 17 February Newstead s career is readily divisible into three periods, his early days as a naturalist and museum curator, a middle period as a University teacher, and the period of his closing years when he established a reputation as an archaeologist. His contributions to natural history were many, ranging from studies of the anatomy of the grebe ( Podicepsminor) and the behav horseshoe bat ( Rhinolophus)to his classical work on the scale insects. With these studies he combined work on the insect pests of the garden and the farm, and while his work in that field is now outmoded, it is, nevertheless, important because with the work of F. V. Theobald it was laying the foundation of agricultural entomology as we know it to-day. The publication of Newstead s monograph on the Coccidae marked a big step forward. These insects number among them some of the most serious enemies of agriculture throughout the world and Newstead s work, confined though it was to the scale insects of Britain, set a standard of taxonomic description and of detailed observation that is still unsurpassed. To-day the student of the British species finds Newstead s descriptions and especially his acute and accurate biological observation confirmed again and again, not infrequently to the disadvantage of later workers. Newstead s coccid collections are now in the British Museum (Natural History) and the original drawings he made from them for his monograph are in the possession of the Royal Society. With his appointment, first as Lecturer and later as Professor, in Medical Entomology, Newstead s field of work changed. It was not merely that he worked on Diptera rather than on Homoptera, but that he obviously had less time to devote to personal research. The late Professor Herdman testified to Newstead s ability as a teacher, and it is evident that he took great pains in the preparation of his lectures,

Robert N ew stead 551 but especially in the preparation of the practical work and of demonstrations. His long experience as a museum worker greatly helped in this.

4 Robert N ew stead 551 but especially in the preparation of the practical work and of demonstrations. His long experience as a museum worker greatly helped in this. But meanwhile he had become an official consultant entomologist and editor of the newly-founded Annals of Tropical Medicine, and his publications were now confined to notes on a variety of topics or to reports on such subjects as the house-fly (for the City of Liverpool) or on his expeditions to the tropics either for the University or for the Colonial Office. At this period (1912) there was great activity in medical or public health entomology, sleeping sickness caused by the tsetse flies ( spp.) was causing grave concern to the colonial administrator and the medical officer alike, and the general view at that time was that the Diptera were the major enemies of man. Beelzebub was the lord of flies. So when Newstead undertook insect prophylaxis it was directed primarily against flies. It is interesting to note how fly-conscious the health authorities and the public were at that time. Apart from those flies like tsetse and mosquitoes, which were proven vectors of disease, non-biting flies like the house-fly ( domestica) and the smaller house-fly ( Fanniacanicularis) were also regarded a enemies of public health. The internal combustion engine had not yet replaced the horse as a prime mover of vehicles and stableyards, especially those in towns, provided prolific breeding grounds for flies. In the United States L. O. Howard was urging a national campaign against the house-fly, but the most startling evidence came from a veterinary entomologist, A. B. Herms, who studied the incidence of poliomyelitis in New York City and found that its rise and fall coincided exactly with rise and fall of the house-fly population. It was not surprising that Newstead stressed the importance of flies; the awful slaughter in the first battles of the 1914 war afforded ghastly opportunities for the breeding of flies on a hitherto undreamt of scale. Soon after Newstead s Commission for the War Office had terminated a new and more serious enemy than the flies was recognized in the louse (. Pediculushumanus). At first it was regarded as a serious nuisance, but by 1916 it was suspected as a vector of the relapsing fever known as trench fever and perhaps of typhus. Two years later these suspicions.were confirmed. Newstead took little part in the louse campaign, but the leaven he had introduced in the War Office had worked. At the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine and at the Quick Laboratory at Cambridge intensive work on the louse and on the itch mite ( Sarcoptes)was promoted by the Two new companies of the R.A.M.C. (the 1st and 2nd London Sanitary Companies) were established, and to these were attached as commissioned officers a number of scientists who were either engaged in research or in the application of research to the control or combating of lousiness. Administratively this was a great achievement and great part of the credit for it must be given to Robert Newstead. He made applied entomology respectable and respected. The third period in Newstead s career was almost wholly devoted to

5 552 Obituary Notices archaeology. His interest in this, too, he ascribed to his father who took a keen interest in old coins and other artifacts as they turned up in his digging, and at the Grosvenor Museum, Robert Newstead had facilities for developing this early interest. His contributions to archaeology concern mainly the Roman occupation of Chester. He had often discussed this with Professor R. C. Bosanquet, and together they had proposed digging a site belonging to the Ecclesiastical Commission, known as the Deanery Field. Before permission for the excavation was obtained Professor Bosanquet had retired and for four years ( ) Newstead carried on the digging with the help of one labourer. After that at the age of 67 Newstead dug on alone until 1929 when he was joined by Professor J. P. Droop. Meanwhile, funds in aid of the work almost certainly the result of Newstead s tracing of the remains of Roman barracks were now available, and the excavation of the Roman amphitheatre and the S.E. corner of the Roman fortress at Chester were begun. Work was also undertaken at the Roman station at Prestatyn, North Wales. The record of Robert Newstead s work throughout a long life is a remarkable tribute to his character and intellect, but to those who had the privilege of knowing him the strongest impression was his simplicity of character and his friendly charm. His success in many fields might well have made him pompous or superior. These defects were never apparent and his charm was not polished suavity, but sincerity and above all his charity towards his fellows. When the first German war broke out his first thought was for the young men, and it was because he thought entomology could alleviate their lot that he urged the War Office to use its services, not because^he wanted either himself or his subject to be thought important. In discussing the entomological problems of the day with his much younger colleagues he never posed as a senior authority and always in dealing with him, one had the feeling that here was a man honest to the core in whom one could trust implicitly. Robert Newstead was twice married, first to M artha Rodgers, of Chester, who died in 1891, and, second, to Julia Hannis, of Great Witcombe, Gloucestershire, in He had three sons and one daughter by his first wife, and a daughter by his second wife. His youngest son who had, in 1915, served with his father on the War Office Entomological Commission, fell in action in J. W. M u n r o

Robert Newstead 553 B IB LIO G R A PH Y N ew stead s publications range over a wide field, beginning in 1889 w ith a paper on the anatom y of the grebe and ending in 1939 w ith his publication on

6 Robert Newstead 553 B IB LIO G R A PH Y N ew stead s publications range over a wide field, beginning in 1889 w ith a paper on the anatom y of the grebe and ending in 1939 w ith his publication on archaeological finds at Chester. His contributions to our knowledge of the scale insects are m ainly em bodied in his m onograph of the Coccidae published by the R ay Society in 1900 and in 1902, supplem ented by a series of short papers published in various journals, but particularly in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine and the Bulletin of Entomological Research. His contributions to agricultural entomology are scattered in various journals such as the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of London, the Kew Bulletin and the Journal of the Board of Agriculture. His contributions to stored products entomology are contained in the Reports of the Royal Society Grain Pests ( War) Committee, published in 1917 and From 1920 onwards a series of papers on insects of medical im portance were published in the Bulletin of Entomological Research and the Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, of w hich the following are the more im portant: O n the genus Phlebotomus. Pt. IV. Bull. Ent. Res. 11, (W ith J. B. D a vey.) Mosquitoes and other bloodsucking arthropods of the U pper Shiri River, Nyasaland. (Royal Society s Commission.) Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 15, (W ith J. A. S in to n.) O n a collection of Papatasi flies from India. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 15, (W ith A. M. E v a n s.) New tsetse flies (Glossina) from the Belgian Congo. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 15, (W ith A. M. E v a n s.) R eport on rat flea investigation. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 15, (W ith A. M. E v a n s.) A new tsetse fly from the South Cameroons. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 16, O n a new species of Phlebotomus from Ja p an. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 17, Glossina ziemanni, G runberg, a synonym of Glossina palpalis sub sp. fuscipes, Newst. Ann. Trop. Med. Parasit. 17, 533. In 1924 his Guide to the Study of tsetse flies, in which he was assisted by A. M. Evans and W. H. Potts, was published as Memoir No. 1 of the Liverpool School of Tropical M edicine. T he following are his more im portant publications in archaeology: A report on the excavations on the site of the R om an fort, D eanery Field, Chester. Ann. Arch. Anthro. 11, R eport (No. 2) on the excavations on the site of the R om an fortress, D eanery Field, Chester. Ann. Arch. Anthro. 15, 3-32, pis. I-X III (W ith J. P. D r o o p.) Excavations in the D eanery Field, Chester, Pt. I. Ann. Arch. Anthro. 18, 6-18, pis. II-V II R om an Chester: T he extra-m ural settlem ent at Saltney. Ann. Arch. Anthro. 22, 3-18, pis. X -V I.

FARNDON DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR. Remembering the Men of Farndon. Private SAMUEL PUGH

FARNDON DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Remembering the Men of Farndon Private 43542 SAMUEL PUGH 73rd Company, Labour Corps Formerly 66517 8th Labour Company, King s Liverpool Regiment (1239 2 nd Cheshire Yeomanry?)