William Weekes Fowler - Obituary Quotes

Obituary Quotes

'In his small and apparently delicate frame Fowler held a great store of vitality and an apparently inexhaustible appetite for hard work, notwithstanding which he was by no means a hard taskmaster to those under him, and by his invariably cheerful and amiable disposition never failed to win popularity and esteem from his pupils and associates of every kind. Although possessed of little critical power or gift for origination, he had a taste for the not usually attractive labour of collating and tabulating the records of others' results and a readiness to undertake toil from which other men turned away which led him sometimes into fields for which his qualifications were not apparent. Entomology has reason for gratitude to him for much useful spadework, and, to all who study British Beetles, his principal achievement, the Coleoptera of the British Islands, is the indispensable starting-point for any fresh advance, and is not likely soon to be superseded' (G.J. Arrow Ent., 722, July 1923, p. 170).

'about 1879 Canon Fowler, then a schoolmaster at Repton... developed a purposeful interest in Coleoptera. Realising perhaps that time was not on his side, he established a close contact with the Powers and was thus able to draw extensively on the Doctor's knowledge of our Fauna. For a period Fowler had apartments in the house next door to the Powers as a pied-a-terre for use on his many trips from Lincoln, and this house, no 83 Ashburnham Road, Bedford, was the wartime HQ of the 5th Beds. Battalion of the Home Guards. "And who", asked Miss Power of me on one occasion, "was the young clergyman we always had in the house? My mother said that she thought that he did most of his collecting in my father's cabinets".' (Charles MacKechnie-Jarvis in his 1975 BENHS Presidential Address)