Reginald Innes Pocock 1863-1947

Abstract

Reginald Innes Pocock was born at Clifton, Bristol, on 4 March 1863, and was the fourth son of the Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith, daughter of James Cowles Prichard, F.R.S., the ethnologist. After attending a preparatory school in Clifton, he was sent to St Edward’s School, Oxford, where his education was chiefly on classical lines, but where, nevertheless, he began to show a liking for natural history. He was fortunate in receiving special tuition in zoology from the late Sir Edward Poulton and was allowed to study comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum. When he left St Edward’s his parents decided to let him adopt a scientific career and he became a pupil at Frank Townsend’s School at Clifton and attended the biological and geological courses at University College, Bristol, under Professor Lloyd Morgan and Professor Sollas. In 1885 he obtained by competitive examination an Assistantship on the staff of the Zoological Department of the British Museum where, after working for a year in the Section of Entomology, he was placed in charge of the Collections of Arachnida and Myriopoda by Dr Albert Gunther who was then keeper. His first task, however, was to arrange the British Birds in the Public Gallery and this experience, which he was quick to supplement by knowledge gained in the field, gave him a lasting interest in ornithology and a fairly complete acquaintance with our native birds. From the first Pocock evinced great aptitude for the work required of him as curator of a museum collection and it proved a wise decision to put him in charge of two comparatively neglected groups of invertebrates. He worked enthusiastically at the collections in the museum and his enormous output of scientific papers (more than two hundred during the eighteen years he held his assistantship) soon made him a recognized authority on Arachnida and Myriopoda