Francis Trevelyan Buckland - Life

Life

He was the son of William Buckland, the noted geologist and palaeontologist and Mary Buckland, a fossil collector, fossil geologist and illustrator.

Frank Buckland was born and brought up in Oxford, where his father was a Canon of Christ Church. After education by his mother, he went, at eight and a half, to a boarding school in Cotterstock, Northamptonshire. From 1837–39, he went to a preparatory school in Laleham, near Chertsey. This was run by his uncle, John Buckland, who, unfortunately for Frank, was a brutal master who flogged his pupils quite excessively. Relief came with a scholarship to Winchester College, a school with an unbroken history of six hundred years. Here Frank Buckland was taught by the Second Master, Charles Wordsworth, who sent letters of praise to Frank's father. Winchester had a harsh regime, but was much preferable to his previous school. Frank was not a first-rate scholar, but managed to gain entrance to Christ Church, Oxford, after failing to get a scholarship to the smaller Corpus Christi.

Frank studied at Christ Church from 1844–48, obtaining the BA at the second attempt. At once he travelled to London to begin training in surgery. His father had the advice of Richard Owen and Sir Benjamin Brodie. Brodie personally escorted Frank to St. George's Hospital and enrolled him as a student under Mr. Caesar Hawkins FRS, Surgeon to the hospital.

Buckland had a liaison with a woman of humble birth, Hannah Papps, who bore him a son in 1851. They married in 1863, but the son died early.

Buckland's early death was presaged by lung haemorrhages, which might suggest tuberculosis or perhaps lung cancer. His death certificate is, as so often in those days, unhelpful. He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.