90 JOHN GIBBS : AN ESSEX BOTANIST.
Natural Science. I knew him in my early boyhood. He will be
remembered also by not a few members of the Essex Field
Club and of the "Chelmsford Set of Odd Volumes." Of both
these bodies, he was a member for some years towards the end
of his life. In the last-named, he formed "Volume 40." Yet
his last years were spent in such poverty and obscurity that,
when he died, his passing away was hardly known to his friends
of earlier years, and his death went almost unrecorded. For
this reason, information as to his life-history has been hitherto
almost unobtainable. Mr. Britten and Prof. Boulger, authors
of The Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists (1893,
with later supplements), have asked me more than once to
supply them with biographical matter relating to him, but I
have been unable to do so until now. Within the last few
weeks, however, the discovery of a totally-forgotten bundle of
letters which he wrote me more than thirty years ago and the
receipt of other information (kindly obtained for me by Mr.
Henry Mothersole) have revived my recollection of him and
enabled me to put together the following very-belated obituary
notice.
Gibbs was not an Essex man by birth, though he spent
practically the whole of his life in the county. He was born in
1822, "within a mile of London Bridge, in Bermondsey Street,
on a spot now covered by the Railway Arches," as he informed
me in letters written in February 1881. His wife (whose
maiden name I do not know) was born in 1824, also in London.
Early in life (but in what year I know not), he settled in Chelms-
ford, where he followed his trade—that of a wool-sorter. In
this work, he is said to have been very expert. He worked for
many years—all his active life, I believe—for the old-established
firm of W. & T. Johns, wool-staplers, of the Baddow Road,
Chelmsford; which firm ceased to exist some ten or twenty years
ago, having long been the only firm in the county to carry on
this business.
The income Gibbs derived from his trade was small at best;
and it tended to become steadily smaller as the industry in
which he was engaged gradually died out in the district. He
held a Certificate from South Kensington as a Teacher of Botany;
and, as early as 1858, he was already adding to his income by
teaching botany classes at the local Literary and Mechanics'