William Henry Flower - The Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum

In 1884, on the retirement of Sir Richard Owen, Flower was appointed to the directorship of the Natural History departments of the British Museum in South Kensington. The four natural history departments were Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology. Each department had its own Keeper, who was largely autonomous from the Director. At that time the Director was subject to the supervision of the Principal Librarian of the British Museum; now all three institutions (British Library, British Museum and Natural History Museum) are administered and funded separately.

Lynn Barber, in her excellent Heyday of natural history, paints a too-severe portrait of Flower when she describes him as "an aristocrat and autocrat conspicuously lacking in the common touch... when his assistants complained that they were so poorly paid that their wives were having to take in washing, Flower said yes, he too was feeling the pinch – he had to tell his wife to restrict the use of her carriage." In the first place Flower was not an aristocrat: his family were Puritan in origin, and his father was a brewer: they were middle-class. Flower's knighthood was awarded for merit, not inherited as a baronetcy. Secondly, figures of authority in that age tended to be aloof by present-day standards, and were generally autocratic in manner. Of course his wife had a carriage! The low pay of the assistants was real enough, though.

In addition to his role as Director, Flower also took over from Albert Günther, the ornithologist, as Keeper of Zoology in 1895, remaining so until his retirement in 1898. Apart from his continuing interest in primates, Flower became an expert on the Cetacea (whales and their relatives). He carried out dissections, went out on whaling boats, arranged whale exhibits in the Museum in South Kensington, and studied the new discoveries of whale fossils. It was Flower who made public the "absolute and complete destruction of two species of right whale by the reckless greed of the whalers". (Cornish p175)

His publications were all bar a few on mammals; he was not a field biologist, nor a student of the other vertebrate groups, at any rate in his adult life. He wrote forty articles for the 9th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, every one on a group of mammals.

Flower was an effective Director of the natural history departments of the British Museum, balancing the competing and conflicting needs of the staff, the public, the other professional naturalists, the Trustees and the Principal Librarian. Some later Directors found this difficult until, finally, in 1963, the BM(NH) was hived off as an independent institution. Flower was created a C.B. in 1887, three years after his first appointment to the British Museum, and five years later (1892) followed the higher distinction of the K.C.B. He also received the Jubilee Medal and the Royal Prussian order, "Pour le Mérite".

He died in London at his 26 Stanhope Gardens residence.