page_title: Joseph Dalton Hooker
section_title: Attacks on Hooker and on Kew
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Dalton Hooker / Work / Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew / Attacks on Hooker and on Kew
caption_attribution_description: Statesmen No.34: Caricature of Mr AS Ayrton MP. Caption reads: "Mind and Morality."
context_page_description: Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI CB PRS was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.
context_section_description: The Herbarium at Kew was founded in 1853, and quickly grew in size and importance. At the time, Richard Owen was the Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum, reporting only to the Head of the British Museum. Hooker, appointed in 1855 as Assistant Director of Kew, was the man most responsible for bringing foreign specimens to Kew.
  There is no doubt that rivalry resulted between the British Museum, where there was the very important Herbarium of the Department of Botany, and Kew. The rivalry at times became extremely personal, especially between Joseph Hooker and Owen. ... At the root was Owen's feeling that Kew should be subordinate to the British Museum (and to Owen) and should not be allowed to develop as an independent scientific institution with the advantage of a great botanic garden. 
  The relationship between the two men continued to deteriorate after Hooker became a supporter of Darwin’s views and a member of the X-Club, who set out to get their way with the Royal Society. In 1868 Hooker had proposed that the whole of the huge herbarium collection of Joseph Banks should be moved from the British Museum to Kew, a reasonable idea, but a threat to Owen's plans for a museum in South Kensington to house the natural history collections. Hooker cited mismanagement at the British Museum as a justification.
  After Joseph had succeeded his father as Director, in 1865, the independence of Kew was seriously threatened by the machinations of a member of parliament, Acton Smee Ayrton, whose appointment as First Commissioner of Works by Gladstone in 1869 was greeted in The Times with the prophecy that it would prove "another instance of Mr. Ayrton's unfortunate tendency to carry out what he thinks right in as unpleasant a manner as possible". This was relevant because Kew was funded by the Board of Works, and the Director of Kew reported to the First Commissioner. The conflict between the two men lasted from 1870 to 1872, and there is a voluminous correspondence on the Ayrton Episode held at Kew.
  Ayrton behaved in an extraordinary way, interfering in matters and approaching Hooker's colleagues behind his back, apparently with the aim of getting Hooker to resign, when the expenditure on Kew could be curtailed and diverted. Ayrton actually took staff appointments out of Hooker's hands. He seemed not to value the scientific work, and to believe Kew should be just an amusement park. Hooker wrote:
  My life has become utterly detestable and I do long to throw up the Directorship. What can be more humiliating than two years of wrangling with such a creature!
  — Hooker to Bentham, 2 February 1872, in Huxley 1918, p. 165, Chapter XXXV The Ayrton Episode
  Finally, Hooker asked to be put in communication with Gladstone's private secretary, Algernon West. A statement was drawn up over the signatures of Darwin, Lyell, Huxley, Tyndall, Bentham and others. It was laid before Parliament by John Lubbock, and additional papers laid before the House of Lords. Lord Derby called for all the correspondence on the matter. The Treasury supported Hooker and criticised Ayrton's behaviour.
  One extraordinary fact emerged. There had been an official report on Kew, which had not previously been seen in public, which Ayrton had caused this to be written by Richard Owen. Hooker had not seen the report, and so had not been given right of reply. Nonetheless, the report was amongst the papers laid before Parliament, and it contained an attack on both the Hookers, and suggested (amongst much else) that they had mismanaged the care of their trees, and that their systematic approach to botany was nothing more than "attaching barbarous binomials to foreign weeds". The discovery of this report no doubt helped to sway opinion in favour of Hooker and Kew (there was debate in the press as well as Parliament). Hooker replied to the Owen report in a point by point factual manner, and his reply placed with the other papers on the case. When Ayrton was questioned about it in the debate led by Lubbock, he replied that "Hooker was too low an official
caption: Owen was supported in parliament by Acton Smee Ayrton Caracature, Vanity Fair, 1869
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