Ethnological Society of London - 1850s

1850s

In 1850 the Society was based at 17 Savile Row. It saw a period of decline in the middle of the decade. Among active members on the Council was William Devonshire Saull, who died in 1855. George Bellas Greenough was a vice-president. Richard Cull's 1852 report mentioned Singapore connections, in particular James Richardson Logan.

Thomas Richard Heywood Thomson delivered a paper in 1854 to the Society on interfertility, casting doubt on comments of Paweł Edmund Strzelecki about female infertility among Aboriginal Australians after they had given birth to a child with a Caucasian father. The communication was well received, but as a contribution to the ongoing debate on race, was far from settling the significant underlying issue.

James Hunt joined the ESL in 1854, and became a divisive figure because of his attacks on humanitarian attitudes of missionaries and abolitionists. He served as secretary from 1859 to 1862. He found an ally in John Crawfurd, who had retired from service as colonial diplomat and administrator for the East India Company. Crawfurd came to ethnology through its section in the BAAS. His published views on race were discordant with the Quaker and APS tradition in the ESL. Hunt and Crawfurd in 1858 tried to dislodge the President Sir James Clark at an ESL meeting, unsuccessfully, while Hodgkin was out of the country.