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JOHN GIBBS (1822-?1892): AN ESSEX BOTANIST.
By MILLER CHRISTY, F.L.S.
With Portrait.
[Read 27th January 1917.]
THE "working-man naturalist" (as he is often called) is.
in the main, a product of the North of England and of
Scotland. There, not uncommonly, one meets with men
of very modest means, living perhaps in a tiny cottage or
in a small house in a back street of some grimy manufacturing
town, working by day in (it may be) a cotton-mill, a boot-
factory, or a chemical-works, yet taking a keen interest in some
branch of Natural Science (usually botany, entomology, or
Conchology), to the study of which they devote all their leisure.
Such men often do really good and original work in the minor
branches of research, corresponding and exchanging specimens
with fellow-workers in their own special lines of study, or
contributing papers to the publications of local scientific societies;
and some are well able to hold their own in controversy on points
of current scientific interest. Of such men, Thomas Edward,
shoe-maker, of Banff, and Robert Dick, baker, of Thurso, are
certainly those whose names are most widely known, through
their lives having been written by the popular author, Samuel
Smiles. Yet these two were probably far from being the best
and most typical examples of their class. For such, we should
probably search most successfully in the industrial districts of
Lancashire and Yorkshire.
In the South of England, men of this particular type are com-
paratively few. In this county, I cannot recall more than two
I have known. The best of these was undoubtedly James L.
English (1820-1888), of Epping, though he was not an altogether
typical example, for he was not a working-man in the strict
sense, having been employed as collector by Henry Doubleday,
who largely trained him and directed his scientific work.1 The
subject cf this article was another man of the same class, of
which he was perhaps more truly typical than English, though
his scientific work was of less value.
John Gibbs, of Chelmsford, was well known in his clay to those
living in the neighbourhood who were interested in the study of
1 For a brief account of him and his work, by Mr. William Cole, see my Birds of Essex. pp.
19-21 (1890).
G