Carruthers, William F.R.S. (1830 – 1922)
Dr. William Carruthers F.R.S. 1830 – 1922 – 14 Vermont Road 1896 -1910
William Carruthers born in Moffatt, Dumfries-shire, Scotland and educated in Scotland, graduating from Edinburgh University before starting at the British Museum in 1859. He was particularly interested in geology and specialised in cryptogamic botany (plants that reproduce via spores, without flowers and seeds), palaeobotany (recovery and identification of plants from fossils) and in the application of botany to agriculture. There are two portraits of William Carruthers at the National Portrait Gallery:
He lived in Upper Norwood at Woodside Villas, Victoria Road (1881 census), 44 Central Hill (1891 census), 14 Vermont Road (1896 – 1910) and then again at 44 Central Hill until his death in 1922. Locally, William Carruthers gave lectures to the Literary Society of the Upper Norwood Wesleyan Church.
He was Keeper of Botany at the British Museum from 1871 to 1895, overseeing the transfer of the natural history sections to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington in 1881.
He served as President of the Linnean Society, the world’s oldest active biological society, from 1886 to 1890. He was fellow of the Royal Society, president of the Geologists’ Association 1875 and president of the Royal Microscopical Society 1901. He was appointed consulting botanist to the Royal Agricultural Society in 1871 and continued to act for them until 1910 after his retirement from the Natural History Museum. He worked on the development of a seed-testing network with regards to grass choice for meadows and pastures, weeds and parasitic fungi. William Carruthers established a seed-testing laboratory – the London Botanical Laboratory and Seed Testing Station of the Royal Agricultural Society – under the address of his eldest son, Dr. Samuel William Carruthers M.D., at 44 Central Hill, Upper Norwood.
William Carruthers was also active in the Presbyterian Church. For thirty years, 1880-1910, he was Secretary and afterwards Chairman of the Committee on Publications, and from 1876 until the year before his death he edited, for the latter part of the time with the assistance of his son, Dr. Samuel William Carruthers M.D., its juvenile magazine, the “ Messenger for Children.” In his later years William Carruthers spent an increasing amount of time on such publications at the expense of botanical research, possibly because he was out of sympathy with the Darwinian theories on botany. His son was the author of the 1926 ‘Fifty Years, 1876-1926: Being a Brief Survey of the Work and Progress of the Presbyterian Church of England since the Union’ and continued to write and edit publications. e.g. on the Westminster Assembly, for the Presbyterian Church, at least up to the 1950s.
William’s younger son, John Bennett Carruthers FLS 1890 and FRSE 1906, also took up botany. He worked as an assistant to his father in his role as Consulting Botanist to the Royal Agricultural Society up to 1897, focussing on problems affecting the quality of seeds and the diseases affecting farm-plants. During this time he also worked as demonstrator of Botany at the Royal Veterinary College of Great Britain (appointed in 1893).
John Bennett Carruthers worked for the Ceylon Planters’ Association as Cryptogramist (1897-1899), investigating the Cacao disease which was then ravaging the cocoa plantations in Ceylon. He published a number of articles in 1899 and 1900 on the Cacao disease in “the Contemporary Review”. Following his success in this role he was appointed Government Mycologist and Assistant Director of the Botanic Gardens, Perademya in Ceylon (1900-1905). In 1905 he was appointed the first Director of Agriculture and Government Botanist of the Federated Malay States (Perak, Selangor, Pahang, Negri Sembilan), where he became known as an authority on rubber cultivation and where he founded the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Gardens. During his time in Kuala Lumpur, he was co-editor of the local Agricultural Bulletin with botanist Henry Nicholas Ridley. At the request of the colonial office, Carruthers was appointed assistant director, Departure of Agriculture, Trinidad in 1909, where he died in 1910 from complications following an attack of malaria.
A road in Kuala Lumpur is named after him – ref the December 2016 edition of Living on the Hill – Page 21 -What’s in a Street Name. http://btra.com.my/files/2016/magazine_2016_12.pdf
With thanks to the help received from Roy Vickery of the South London Botanical Institute