William Barnard Clarke (1807–1894), was an English physician, naturalist and museum curator, who collaborated with Professor John Stevens Henslow in the formation of Ipswich Museum in 1847–1850, the first Museum founded with a specific mission for the scientific education of the working classes. He is not to be confused with his contemporary, the Suffolk-born geologist William Branwhite Clarke.
Ipswich origins Clarke's grandfather, Peter Clarke (1722–1804Will of Peter Clarke, Gentleman of Ipswich (P.C.C. 1805, Nelson quire).), attorney, was town clerk of Ipswich in 1750–55 and 1767–79, and several times one of the two bailiffs (heads of the Borough's governance).G.R. Clarke, The History and Description of the Town and Borough of Ipswich (S. Piper, Ipswich & London 1830), pp. 441-43 (Google). Attached to the nonconformist meeting in Tacket Street, he married Anne Barnard (of the notable Ipswich shipwright familyJ.E. Barnard, Building Britain's Wooden Walls: The Barnard Dynasty, 1697–1851 (A. Nelson, Oswestry 1997).) in 1754, and his son William Barnard Clarke the elder was christened in 1756.
The elder William, father of the curator, was articled clerk in 1773The National Archives (UK), Ref. CP 5/110/56 (Discovery). and, following the calling of an attorney, became a senior portman (a civic role equivalent to alderman).Accounts and Papers relating to Corporate Offices and Charitable Funds vol XLV (Vol 3 of 9), (Feb – Aug 1834) pp. 305-06 (Google). In 1804 he married Susan, daughter of John Conder and Deborah Barnard of Ipswich (and widow of William Lloyd), and they had a family of three sons, William Barnard, Henry and Edward, and three daughters, Susan, Fanny and Anne. William was a principal sponsor of the new Provision Market in Ipswich in 1811.J. Wodderspoon, Memorials of the Ancient Town of Ipswich (Pawsey, Ipswich 1850), pp. 11-12 (Internet Archive). In 1815 he was appointed a Gentleman Usher Quarterly Waiter in Ordinary to the monarch, and in that year read an address to H.R.H. the Prince Regent at Sudbourne Hall.Clarke, The History and Description of the Town and Borough of Ipswich, pp. 138-40 (Google). Serving as a Bailiff of the Borough in 1820, and its treasurer in 1821–1823,D. Allen, Ipswich Borough Archives, 1255–1835: A Catalogue, Suffolk Records Society XLIII (Boydell Press 2000), p. 251, items C/3/4/1/122 and C/3/4/1/123. (Google). William the elder kept his position at Court until his death,The London Gazette for the year 1833, Part 1: January–June (London 1833), p. 1110 (Google). which occurred at Ipswich in 1833.Will of William Barnard Clarke (P.C.C. 1833, Farquhar quire).
Education and family The Curator, William Barnard Clarke the younger, having received certificates of honour in Anatomy, Physiology, Materia medica and Practical Anatomy from the University of London in the session of 1829–30,The London University Calendar for the year MDCCCXXXII (John Taylor, London 1832), pp. 204, 206, pp. 212-13, 216 (Google). obtained his M.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1835, presenting a Thesis On the Vital Principle in Animals and Vegetables.'Graduation of Physicians in the University of Edinburgh', in M. Ryan (ed.), London Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 6 (G. Henderson, London 1835), p. 85 (Google). He married Maria Jennings in Ipswich in 1834, and practised as a physician in Suffolk and Essex. His sister Frances (Fanny) married Dr Henry Pilkington Drummond, of Silent Street, Ipswich: his brother Dr. Edward Clarke, also a medical student, produced architectural drawings for the papers of the short-lived Suffolk Archaeological Association.
A heraldic bookplate of c. 1835 for W.B. Clarke, M.D.,View at Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Item cwbp0724.dc. The Catalogue record mistakenly gives Dr Clarke the life-dates of the Revd. William Branwhite Clarke (1798–1878). shows in the dexter party per pale the arms attributed by Burke to Clarke of Henstead and Bungay,A.I. Suckling, The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk (Author, London 1847), p. 377 (Internet Archive). as shown by Suckling: "argent on a bend gules between three torteaux as many swans proper", and Crest, "a swan proper";B. Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (Harrison, London 1884), p. 199 (Internet Archive). with the motto "Animo venustateque delecto". The arms may be presumptive, but the bookplate is correctly attributed to Dr Clarke of Ipswich:Henry-André, Les Ex-Libris de Médicins et de Pharmaciens (Author, Paris 1908), p. 88 (Internet Archive). Clarke is impaled with Jennings, "Argent a lion rampant gules holding in the paws a battle-axe proper on a chief azure three ducal coronets or", arms of the King's Procurator-General in the Cape Colony and Proctor in the High Court of Admiralty, William David Jennings,'Government notice of 19 November 1813', in R. Plaskett & T. Miller (comp.), Proclamations, Advertisements and other Official Notices Published by the Government of the Cape of Good Hope, 1805–1827 p. 271 (Google). and of his father David Jennings, Esq., of Dublin, from whom Mrs Clarke was no doubt descended.Burke, Armory, p. 540 (Internet Archive).
The Clarke family home was a large two-storey house ("Shakespeare House") fronting on Falcon Street in central Ipswich, its garden containing a pool with golden carp and a large conservatory. The family life is described by Henry Button (born 1829, son of Clarke's half-sister Harriet, née Lloyd), who lived in the household as a child after his parents and brethren emigrated to Launceston, Tasmania in 1833, until joining them in 1837. Henry was taught to read by his aunts, and joined his uncle William (who carried a percussion fowling-piece or a "gunstick") on country excursions up and down the rivers Orwell and Gipping in search of natural history specimens for taxidermy.H. Button, Flotsam and Jetsam, Floating Fragments of Life in England and Tasmania (A.W. Birchall and Sons/Simpkin, Marshall and Co. Ltd., Launceston/London 1909), pp. 4-23 (Internet Archive).
Henry Button described a respectable but kindly, bible-reading home, with servants, under the elder figure of his grandmother Mrs Susan Clarke. The Clarkes attended the Anglican St Nicholas church, but one of Henry's aunts attended the Congregational church daily. He recalled William reading aloud the Travels of Mungo Park and The Last of the Mohicans as his sisters did their needlework. William and Edward were both studying medicine, and there were gifts and tearful farewells when Henry went to join his parents in 1837.Button, Flotsam and Jetsam, pp. 4-23.
Curator
In 1837 Dr. Clarke contributed an article to the Magazine of Natural History describing his discovery of an Argentine (a fish then seldom recorded in British waters) at Portobello on the Firth of Forth in April 1833.(Dr.) W.B. Clarke, 'IV. Notice of the fourth occurrence of the Argentine (? Scopelus Humboldtii, Yarr.) upon the British shores', in E. Charlesworth (ed.), The Magazine of Natural History, New Series Vol. 2 (London 1838), pp. 22-26 (Google). The editor, Edward Charlesworth, obtained a comment from William Yarrell, later one of the scientists very active in the first years of the Ipswich Museum. In 1838 Clarke published observations on the European nightjar, derived from investigations near Ipswich in 1832.(Dr.) W.B. Clarke, 'Observations on the Caprimulgus Europæus (Night-Jar)', in Jardine, Selby and Johnston (eds), The Magazine of Zoology and Botany, Vol. 2 (1838), pp. 158-63 (Google) Clarke's observation (made in 1839) that the red-legged partridge had been introduced as game by the Marquess of Hertford and Lord Rendlesham into the Sudbourne Hall and Rendlesham Hall estates around 1770 earned a particular mention in Yarrell's History of British Birds.W. Yarrell, A History of British Birds, 3 vols, 2nd edition (John van Voorst, London 1845), II, p. 382 (Google).The sense of Clarke's statement may be true, but the first Lord Rendlesham was aged only 9 in 1770, and Rendlesham Hall was built in 1780: and whether the elder or the younger Marquess of Hertford was intended is unclear. See H.S. Gladstone, Record Bags and Shooting Records (Witherby, London 1922), p. 57. In 1840 he offered a descriptive sketch of the flora of the Ipswich neighbourhood,W.B. Clarke, M.D., F.B.S.Ed., 'Sketch of the flora of the neighbourhood of Ipswich: including the Phænogamic plants, the Filices, and the Equisetaceæ', Magazine of Natural History, New Series, Vol. IV (London, 1840), pp. 124-30 and pp. 317-25 (Google). together with a short piece on the behaviour of water shrews.W.B. Clarke, M.D., 'Habits of the water shrew (Sorex fodiens) as observed near Ipswich', Magazine of Natural History, New Series, Vol. IV (London, 1840), pp. 149-50 (Google).
With a strong interest in natural history, William Barnard Clarke lectured to meetings of the Ipswich Philosophical Society (The Ipswich Scientific Book Club) – a self-electing group of townsmen (including Charlesworth) who met regularly to hear and deliver papers on scientific and technical subjects from its membership – during the 1840s, and formed a collection of specimens.
The promoters of the Ipswich Museum, which was founded and built in 1846–47, had given comparatively little thought to the choice of a Curator until shortly before the opening, all being preoccupied with their own important roles. (Charlesworth had by then migrated to the Yorkshire Museum.) As it progressed, through the concerted energies of the Quaker Alexander and Ransome families, and under the direct scientific guidance of Professor Henslow (Charles Darwin's friend and mentor), Clarke was rather belatedly invited to be its first Curator."Rambler" (H.R. Lingwood), 'William Barnard Clarke', East Anglian Daily Times, 13 January 1934.
Clarke served in the stipendiary office of Curator during the founding Presidency of the very elderly William Kirby, one of the fathers of entomology. Kirby's role was essentially honorific, but Clarke worked alongside Henslow in the early formation and arrangement of the collections, and in the routine lecturing and exposition to groups of the working classes for whose benefit the Museum was overtly founded. With his assistant William Bilson he was also responsible for taxidermy of many specimens, and had the somewhat disagreeable task of stuffing the carcass of a lion named "Wallace" (obtained from Wombwell's Menagerie) during a hot summer.R.A.D. Markham, A Rhino in High Street (Ipswich Borough Council 1990).
In 1847 Clarke published the record of seal not previously found in Britain.W.B. Clarke, M.D., 'Notice of a species of seal apparently new to the British shores' (R. Appel's Anastatic Press, Ipswich 1847). In 1849 he published on a species of zoophyte discovered in the New Dock at Ipswich (with illustrations by his co-author engraved on wood by Edward Clarke),E. Giles and (Dr.) W.B. Clarke, 'A few remarks upon a species of Zoophyte which has been discovered in the New Docks of Ipswich', Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 2nd Series Vol. 4 (London 1849), pp. 26-28 (Google). and also reported on a bottlenose dolphin lately found at Bawdsey, which had been sent to him at the Museum.W.B. Clarke, M.D., 'Notice of a Bottle-nosed Dolphin (Delphinus tersio, Fabr.) upon the Suffolk coast', Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 2nd Series Vol. 4 (London 1849), pp. 100-102 (Google).
Wreck of the "Favorite"