# Midland Naturalist/Volume 10/Thomas Bolton, F.R.M.S.

Thomas Bolton, F.R.M.S.
It is with deep and unfeigned regret that we record the death of probably by far the most widely known of all our local naturalists, Thomas Bolton, who, after a short and, to most people, unknown illness, passed quietly away to his rest on Monday, November 7th, at the comparatively early age of fifty-seven. About a couple of months before, he had, for the good of his health which was suffering somewhat from an inactive liver, gone for a holiday to Bournemouth, from which place he returned with, however, but little relief. Shortly after his return, complications, arising probably in the main from a weakened heart, set in, and with comparative rapidity brought about the end.
Thomas Bolton had seen more troubles than most men. Born to good estate, he saw himself reduced to accepting, with thankfulness, the meagre pittance that the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society could spare to him as its curator. And yet nothing appeared to disturb the natural happiness of his disposition, and probably few in the many hundreds or thousands of those who encountered him in the course of recent years dreamt that in him they saw a ruined ironmaster.
Yet so it was. His father, likewise named Thomas, was partner in the firm of Messrs. Lee and Bolton, of Kinver, Staffordshire, at whose works at the Hyde were employed upwards of three hundred men. The chimney stacks of the works can still be seen down in the valley just beyond the point on the road from Stourbridge to Kinver where you pass Stourton Castle, the birthplace of Cardinal Pole; but, like many another former hive of industry, they lie idle and silent, and the busy hands who worked there have nearly all gone, God alone knows where. At Kinver, Thomas was born, the eldest son of his father and inheritor of his name, in the year 1831. He was educated in the first instance at Kinver Grammar School, and subsequently at King's College, London, then, more than now, a famous place for educating the children of the Staffordshire coal and iron masters, especially such as, like Bolton, were destined to become engineers. ​At King's College Bolton studied with marked success, especially in mathematics and natural philosophy. In 1848, he obtained a Junior Scholarship, and in 1849 was awarded an Associateship in Natural Philosophy. In 1851 he passed the Matriculation Examination of the University of London, being placed fifth in honours in mathematics and natural philosophy. But from this training ground he was suddenly withdrawn by the death of his father, in October, 1851 (likewise at the early age of fifty-five), compelling him to undertake the management of the works, and at about the same time another member of the Lee family, distantly related to Mr. Bolton, likewise entered the firm, namely, Mr. Yate Lee. From this time Mr. Bolton took a most active part in the whole educational and public life of Kinver, then a flourishing little town of some 4,000 inhabitants, and his efforts to promote the moral and intellectual well-being of the people were most untiring and unselfish. He was governor of the local grammar school, an honour which indeed he enjoyed up to the time of his death. He devoted weekly many hours of his evenings, which most other men would have spent in relaxation, to, on the one hand, prosecuting his own studies into microscopic life, and, on the other, to the endeavour to spread amongst the inhabitants of his own neighbourhood a desire for scientific knowledge, long before the value of such knowledge was so generally recognised by the public as it now is. It may be specially mentioned that he organised the first science classes ever held in his own district in connection with the Science and Art Department. When the Education Act first brought School Boards into existence, he shared in the labours of the first Board in putting the Act into operation at Kinver. He took an active part in the institution and management of evening classes, and in the work of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society. His devotion to the study of science brought him early in its formation into the ranks of the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society, of which he became a member nearly five-and-twenty years ago, and likewise brought him into connection with the Dudley and Midland Geological Society, of which he was for several years one of the secretaries; and his scientific pursuits, thus cultivated, soon widely extended his acquaintance with men of similar tastes. Nor was it in these directions only that his interest in the popular good manifested itself. During his whole residence in Kinver, Mr. Bolton was an active man in church and parish matters generally, and filled the position of churchwarden for many years. While he held this office he devoted a good deal of ​time and attention to putting the charities of the neighbourhood upon a better footing, and was instrumental, with others, in securing the restoration of some of the bequests.
Side by side with all this outlying work, however, the state of their own business was a source of much anxiety. The formation of railways, so advantageous to the Midlands generally, was fatal to the trade of Kinver. Lying as they do right off the route of the iron roads, the Hyde ironworks were dependent upon water carriage alike for the coal and iron needed for their trade purposes, and also for the removal of the manufactured produce—bars, wire-rods, and the like. It can hardly be doubted, too, that Mr. Bolton had not a commercial soul, and it is not at all probable that his partner, with the training and instincts of a lawyer, was more fitted than he for the successful pilotage of a great commercial concern through the anxious years of the later sixties. In 1868 the crash came. For some years, it is true, Mr. Bolton continued at the works as manager for one of the chief creditors, who had purchased them, but at length even that despairing effort ceased, and the works were entirely closed. The whole of his private property gone, Bolton had to begin the world afresh at an age when many men are thinking of retiring, and with a young family dependant upon his exertions. He then removed to Birmingham.
It is from this event, however, that the widespread knowledge of Mr. Bolton's name and abilities is dated, for he spent his time and earned his living by searching out and providing materials for the investigations of other naturalists, turning to good account the experience gained during his quarter of a century of study at Kinver, sending living materials to all parts of the three kingdoms, while at the same time continuing his own investigations into the microscopic fauna of the Midlands. Thus, many of the specimens described in Saville Kent's "Manual of the Infusoria" were supplied by Mr. Bolton; and the same may be said of the rotifers in the classic work of Messrs. Hudson and Gosse; and several of these minute organisms have been named in honour of him. In our own columns this year (p. 124) are described four new species found by him and supplied to Mr. Gosse. In 1884 the Council of the Royal Society placed £50 at the disposal of Professor Ray Lankester for the purpose of employing Mr. Bolton to collect material for an investigation of the freshwater fauna of the Midland Counties; and at the Fisheries Exhibition a gold medal was awarded to him for an exhibit illustrating minute life relating to the food of fishes. In the same year (1884), on the death of Mr. W. H. Cox, assistant ​curator to the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society, Mr. Bolton was appointed his successor, a step from which it cannot be doubted that the Society richly profited, as, in his daily attendance at the Society's rooms in the Mason College, he ever placed his knowledge freely at the disposal of all enquirers, and by which, therefore, his loss will be all the more keenly felt.
In bringing together the collection of exhibits in various departments of local natural history which formed such a remarkable feature of the Bingley Hall Exhibition, initiated for the purposes of the visit of the British Association to Birmingham in 1886, a permanent skilled superintendent was found to be necessary, and, without hesitation, the post was offered to Mr. Bolton, the Natural History and Microscopical Society gladly relinquishing its claims upon his time during the ten weeks that the exhibition was open. In this way Mr. Bolton's person became familiar to tens of thousands of visitors, while his own persistent attempts to interest the people in minute life by means of living microscopic exhibits added in no small degree to the interest and success of that unique exhibition. Advantage was taken, too, of the visit of the Association to bring to a successful issue an attempt, initiated by Mr. W. R. Hughes, F.L.S., the first president of the Birmingham Natural History Society, and Mr. T. Grosvenor Lee (son of Mr. Bolton's former partner, Mr. Yate Lee) to obtain from Government some recognition of Mr. Bolton's labours in the cause of science, and a memorial, signed by Sir W. J. Dawson}, President of the Association, and by every biologist of repute who attended the meeting, secured from Lord Salisbury a pension of £50 a year upon the Civil List, dating as from June 30th of that year. This ​pension Mr. Bolton has unhappily not lived long to enjoy, but none the less is it a source of gratification to his innumerable personal and scientific friends that this highest honour that the English Government can pay to deserving merit was paid to him.
The funeral at Kinver, on November 11th, was the nearest approach to private that the circumstances of the case would admit, being attended, besides the immediate family and relations of the deceased, only by Mr. T. Grosvenor Lee, whose close historical relations with the family is sufficiently indicated above, and by the writer of this sketch, as representing Mr. Bolton's scientific friends, and especially the Society whose curator at the time of his death he was. Although the relics of the old works still living at Kinver are few, a small number of them, grey or white with years, spontaneously gathered together and acted as pall bearers to the remains of their former master and master's son. The day was emblematic of the fallen fortunes of Kinver; but the cold grey clinging mist, while it shut out the beauties of the scene as viewed from the grandly-placed churchyard, served but to concentrate thought and attention upon the hero of science, whose last years, spent amidst the gloom of financial difficulty, were yet brightened by a courage which naught could damp, and a Nature love which keepeth all things young.
W. Hillhouse.
* ↑ * We are asked to mention, in the interest of the late Mr. Bolton's family, that he has by his will given all his scientific instruments, books, and apparatus to his son, Mr. Thomas Bolton, Junr., who was carefully trained as a microscopist by his father, and who will continue to carry on in Birmingham the business carried on for many years by his late father of supplying living objects for the microscope.—Eds."M. N."
* ↑ It may be of interest to give a list of the signatures to this memorial, as a permanent record of the widespread estimation in which Mr. Bolton's labours were held:— Sir J. W. Dawson, President British Association. Thomas Martineau, Mayor of Birmingham. Professor Michael Foster, Cambridge, Secretary Royal Society. Professor H. N. Moseley, F.R.S., Oxford. W. Carruthers, F.R.S., P.L.S., President Section D (Biology). P. L. Sclater, F.R.S., Vice-President Section D. Professor Milnes Marshall, F.R.S., Owens College, Manchester. Professor G. B. Howes, Royal School of Mines. Professor D'Arcy W. Thompson, University College, Dundee. Professor W. Stirling, F.R.S., Owens College, Manchester. Professor Marcus Hartog, D.Sc., Queen's College, Cork. Professor Alfred H. Young, F,R.S., Owens College, Manchester. Dr. Patrick Geddes, Lecturer on Zoology, Edinburgh. W. Percy Sladen, Zoological Secretary, Linnean Society. Dr. J. R. Macfarlane, Lecturer on Botany, Edinburgh. Henry B. Brady, F.R.S. Professor F. O. Bower, M.A., Glasgow. Professor Alfred C. Haddon, M.A., Royal College of Science, Dublin. Professor W. Hillhouse, M.A., Mason College, Birmingham. Professor T. W. Bridge, M.A., Mason College, Birmingham. Henry Trimen, M.B., Peredenya, Ceylon. Professor Alfred Newton, F.R.S., Cambridge. Professor Alex. Macalister, F.R.S., Cambridge. Professor Isaac Bayley Balfour, F.R.S., Oxford. Professor E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S.. University College, London. Professor Sir James Sawyer, M.D., Queen’s College, Birmingham. J. B. Stone, J.P., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., Mayor of Sutton Coldfield. Sir John Lubbock, M.P., F.R.S. Professor G. J. Allman, F.R.S., Edinburgh. Dr. W. H. Dallinger, F.R.S., Pres. R.M.S. Professor B. C. A. Windle, M.D., Queen’s College, Birmingham. Professor J. B. Haycraft, M.B., Mason College, Birmingham. Professor W. A. Tilden, F.R.S., Mason College, Birmingham. R. W. Chase, President Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society. Thomas Grosvenor Lee, B.A., Birmingham. W. R. Hughes, F.L.S., Borough Treasurer, Birmingham.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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