OBITUARIES
Obituaries
STANLEY THOMAS JERMYN, F.L.S.
(1909-1973)
It was with great sadness that the President, Council and members of
the club learned of the death on 23 September 1973 of Stanley T.
Jermyn at his home at Felsted. Stan joined the club in 1951, when he
commenced to widen his activities in the county. He had joined the South
Essex Natural History Society early in the 1930s, taking a special interest
in botany and developing a wide knowledge of the other disciplines. In
1949 he became Joint Secretary of this society. In 1955 this society pub-
lished the 21st Anniversary number of the South Essex Naturalist, which
included a 29-page account of the plants of the Rochford Hundred, con-
tributed by him, which demonstrated clearly not only his ability as a
botanist but also the care and accuracy with which he recorded the sites
where the plants occurred. This article listed some 830 species and varieties.
He was born at Benfleet, one of ten children. In childhood he was
troubled with illness and having to leave school at the age of 14 to com-
mence work his education had suffered. By his own efforts in taking
correspondence courses and with study after business hours he quickly
remedied any shortcomings in his education and improved his position.
His botanical activities and knowledge enabled him to make extensive
contributions to the Essex section of the Atlas of Plants prepared by the
Botanical Society of the British Isles, which was published in 1962. At
about the same time he commenced the serious amassing of plant records
and herbarium specimens with a view to issuing an entirely new flora of
the county. The last Essex Flora by George Stacey Gibson had been
published as long ago as 1862. In 1959 the Essex Naturalists' Trust had
been founded and when, in 1965, Stan was working part-time he under-
took the Treasurership of the Trust and later in 1968 the full-time joint
Treasurership and Secretaryship. Under his guidance the Trust became
the biggest County Trust with over 6,000 members and managing 33
reserves and with an influential position in county affairs.
Amongst his best remembered talks to this club were those which
demonstrated the differences between the many species in the Umbellifer
family and, in conjunction with his brother Leonard, a series of stereo-
photographic pictures of plants.
In 1962 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, an honour of
which he was justly proud.
Although he collected a herbarium of some 15,000 sheets in the course
of which he travelled many miles through the county and acquired a
detailed knowledge of the area, visiting fields, woods, marshes, commons,
and he knew every roadside verge and its flora, through his work for the
County Trust he saw the need to conserve not only our heritage of wild