The illustrated natural history lectures of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins given in Britain, 1850s–1880s

Abstract

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894), celebrated in Britain and the United States for his models and illustrations of extinct animals, also had an extensive lecturing career. This paper discusses the reports of Hawkins’s lectures in Britain, delivered between the 1850s and the early 1880s. Unabbreviated transcriptions of his lectures are rare, but newspaper reports are numerous. Hawkins spoke on comparative anatomy, geology, palaeontology and art, his most prominent themes being the origin of dragon myths and the impossibility of human evolution. Above all, he was known for his ability to sketch natural forms rapidly and accurately as he spoke. Hawkins saw significant success in metropolitan centres, but he also built rewarding relationships with provincial towns. This allowed for substantial engagement with civic scientific communities, whose fossil specimens were used by Hawkins and whose local science initiatives were promoted in press accounts of his lectures. Hawkins’s fervent anti-evolutionism aroused attention, although his alternative explanation of life’s development, “the unity of plan”, led to some confusion, and he became embittered by the spread of evolutionary naturalism. Hawkins’s career faded in the 1880s, but memories of his lecturing style lingered with audiences at the century’s close.