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Philip Henry Gosse

English naturalist, Father of the Aquarium, and pioneer of marine biology.

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Philip Henry Gosse

via Wikipedia: Philip Henry Gosse · see source

Philip Henry Gosse was an English naturalist, author, and scientific illustrator who pioneered the study of marine biology and ornithology.[1] His 1854 work The Aquarium sparked a mid-Victorian craze for household aquariums.[2] In 1853, the first public marine aquarium anywhere was built and filled with specimens by Gosse at London Zoo, and he also invented the word "aquarium".[3]

Last updated 2026-10-08 from the source article.

Life and work

In Newfoundland, he became a dedicated self-taught student of entomology and experienced a religious conversion in 1832.[4] After farming unsuccessfully in Lower Canada from 1835 to 1838, he taught for eight months on a plantation in Alabama, where he recorded negative impressions of slavery.[5][6][7] Returning to England in 1839, his fortunes improved when John Van Voorst agreed to publish his Canadian Naturalist (1840).[8] In 1844, Gosse went to Jamaica to collect natural history specimens, and his study there earned him recognition as the "Father of Jamaican Ornithology"[9]

He published three major works on Jamaica after returning to London in 1846.[10] Gosse was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1856.[11] After his wife Emily died of breast cancer in 1857, he published Omphalos that same year, attempting to reconcile geological ages with the biblical account of creation.[12][13] He moved permanently to St Marychurch, Devon, in 1857 and became pastor of the Brethren meeting there.[14]

Gosse married Eliza Brightwen in 1860, and the couple lived simply, giving much of their income to charity.[15][11] In his later years, he studied butterfly genitalia and collaborated on a three-volume monograph on Rotifera.[16] Gosse died on 23 August 1888.[1] At age 15, Gosse started employment as a clerk in Poole, and during 1827 he traveled by sea to Newfoundland to take up a clerk position in Carbonear.[4]

During 1853, Gosse built and populated the globe's initial public aquarium, located in London.[17]

What the cited sources add

The Wertheimer biography notes that Gosse was educated at local schools in Poole and especially valued classical training at a boarding-school in Blandford from 1823 to 1824.[18] The National Museums Liverpool account states that Samuel Campbell, a young Black Jamaican, started work as Gosse's natural history collector on 1 January 1845 at a salary of $4 per month.[19] The Fenton review describes how Gosse set down an account of his wife's breast cancer treatment, involving a secret remedy from a dubious American doctor, Jesse Weldon Fell.[20] The treatment involved removing skin with nitric acid and scoring the flesh with a scalpel, causing weeks of excruciating pain.[20]

A BBC News report states that a blue plaque was unveiled at Skinner Street Church in Poole to commemorate Gosse in 2021.[21] Because Campbell possessed local expertise, the zoological and botanical items that he and Gosse gathered became a significant addition to European understanding of Jamaica's biodiversity.[19]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: John P. Hodges, "Mode of address of the nineteenth-century naturalist P.H. Gosse", Annals of Natural History vol. 38, April 2011, 172-4; Freeman, Richard B. and Douglas Wertheimer (1980), Philip Henry Gosse: A Bibliography. Folkestone, Kent: Dawson.; Wertheimer, Douglas (2024), Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, Glasgow: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, pp.194, 208-212. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Katherine C. Grier (2008) Pets in America: A History. p. 53. University of North Carolina Press; Quoted in Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p.xix (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, page 198. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wertheimer, "Gosse, Philip Henry"; ; Quoted in (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thwaite 2002; Edmund Gosse, "The Life of Philip Henry Gosse", 1890 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gosse, "Letters from Alabama, (U.S.) chiefly relating to natural history", University of Alabama Press, 1993, p. 7–21 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thwaite 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thwaite 2002; . In his son's telling, Gosse "broke down utterly into hysterical sob upon sob, while Mr. Van Voorst, murmuring, 'My dear young man! my dear young man!' hastene (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p. 125 and fn.141.; Thwaite 2002; Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p. 149; Schwartz, Albert and Richard Thomas. 1975. A Check-list of West Indian Amphibians and Reptiles. Carnegie Mu; Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p. 142; 125, 129. Gosse's insatiable curiosity included trying to eat the birds. On one occasion, he literally ate crow and called the breast "well-based and juicy" but; "Samuel Campbell and The Birds of Jamaica", National Museums Liverpool; The previou en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pp. 149-152.; The title pages of Birds of Jamaica and Naturalist's Sojourn state that those works were "Assisted by Richard Hill", who was Jamaica's first resident naturalist (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thwaite 2002; Thwaite 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  12. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: John Rendle-Short, Green Eye of the Storm (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1998), 20-21;; Thwaite 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  13. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: . She was buried at Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington.; . "It was his son's misfortune to have to face this formidable opponent, burning with the trust Emily had placed in him, a shepherd with one precious lamb to ke; Fenton, James. "Turgenev's Banana" (review of A Memorial and other books). The New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  14. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pages 286.; Thwaite 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  15. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pages 368-370.; Croft, "Gosse, Philip Henry (1810–1888)"; Thwaite 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  16. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thwaite 2002; , "On the clasping organs ancillary to generation in certain groups of Lepidoptera".; Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pages 374-377, 546-7, 556. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  17. Wikipedia, "Philip Henry Gosse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Philip Henry Gosse: the man who invented the fishtank", Discover Wildlife, 23 March 2023; "The Pioneering Fish House: A Look at the World's First Public Aquarium (1853) – Your Aquarium", 20 March 2023; ; www.ParlourAquariums.org.uk/ (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  18. Wertheimer, "Gosse, Philip Henry". facts only, no text reused. biographi.ca
  19. "Samuel Campbell and The Birds of Jamaica", National Museums Liverpool. facts only, no text reused. liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
  20. Fenton, James. "Turgenev's Banana" (review of A Memorial and other books). The New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003.. facts only, no text reused. nybooks.com
  21. "Poole: Sea-life mural celebrates aquarium creator", BBC News, 2022-11-18. facts only, no text reused. bbc.com

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Philip Henry Gosse (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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