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OBITUARY NOTICES.
We have lately mourned the loss by death of several
prominent members of the Club. It is proposed to
publish short memoirs of these deceased members, with portraits.
Two of these are here given and others will follow in future
parts.—Ed.]
THE LATE SIR WILLIAM HENRY FLOWER,
K.C.B., F.R.S., &c.
[With Plate VI.]
By the death of Sir William Flower, which occurred at his residence in
Stanhope Gardens on the 1st July, 1899, we have lost one of our most dis-
tinguished Honorary Members ; who has been among us and rendered good
service on various occasions, and also contributed to our Journal.
Kindly by nature, he was always as ready to receive as to impart
information concerning his life-study, Zoology ; and to those who knew him
well, his friendship was a true and real pleasure.
The ordinary facts of his career have been so fully detailed in obituary
notices that we need scarcely dwell upon them here. Of his lineage ; he was
descended from an old Hertfordshire family, latterly settled in and near the
County Town. His grandfather Richard was a Brewer and Banker, and was
known also as a breeder of fine sheep : he bought and resided at Marden
Hall, a small estate in Tewin parish, near Hertford ; from 1809 to 1817. He
appears to have been somewhat eccentric, and in the latter year sold the
property ; and with his son, the late Edward Fordham Flower, then aged 12,
emigrated to Illinois, U.S. The son, however, returned to England in 1824 ;
was married in 1827 to Celina, eldest daughter of John Greaves, of Radford
House, near Leamington ; and settled at Stratford-on-Avon, where he founded
the well-known Brewery, and there his three sons were born. In later years
he lived mostly in London, and was famous for his crusade against the use of
the bearing-rein for horses.
Sir William, his second son, was born in November, 1831. Having no
taste for his father's business as he grew up, he matriculated at University
College, London, where he subsequently qualified as a Surgeon ; and took the
Gold Medal for Physiology, and the Silver one for Zoology.
The outbreak of the Crimean War having then caused a demand for Army-
Surgeons, induced him to join the 63rd Regiment in the capacity of Assistant ;
and he served throughout the whole campaign, suffering those terrible trials
in field and trench which had such an unfortunate and lasting effect upon
his health to the close.
On his return, with the Crimean Medal and clasps for all the great
battles from Alma to Sevastopol ; he spent some years as Assistant, and
Demonstrator in Anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital, and become Curator of
its Museum. In 1861 he succeeded Professor Owen as Conservator of the
Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons ; and in 1870 (on Owen's appoint-