Henry Tibbats Stainton

Henry Tibbats Stainton

Henry Tibbats Stainton (13 August 1822 – 2 December 1892) was an English entomologist.

He was educated at King's College London.

He was the author of A Manual of British Butterflies and Moths (1857–59) and with the German entomologist Philipp Christoph Zeller, a Swiss, Heinrich Frey and another Englishman, John William Douglas of The Natural History of the Tineina (1855–73).

Stainton was a very wealthy man and his house in Lewisham, "Mountsfield", was one of London's more substantial residences set in its own park. Other wealthy entomologists often stayed at Mountsfield when visiting London, notably Alexander Henry Haliday and Deiterich Carl August Dohrn. The zoologist Nicholas Aylward Vigors was a close friend. Such people, sought by the growing number of scientific societies, wielded enormous influence on scientific development. Stainton was a regular visitor to both Haliday's house in Lucca and to Dohrn's in Stettin. He was a member of both the Entomological Society of London and the Stettin Entomological Society. Besides this, from 1856, he encouraged interest in entomology among the wider public by holding weekly 'open evenings' at his house. Anyone over the age of 14 could freely visit Mountsfield on such evenings, perhaps to have a specimen identified; to view his collection; or simply to learn more about entomology from Stainton himself, or other guests who may have been present.

External links

• Stainton's manuscripts, letters etc in the Natural History Museum, London
• Stainton, Henry Tibbats (1822-1892), entomologist by Yolanda Foote in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• 1855-73 BHL The natural history of the Tineina (with Douglas, J.W., Frey, H. and Zeller, P.C. London, J. Van Voorst
• 1869 BHL The Tineina of Southern Europe London, J. Van Voorst
• 1872 BHLThe Tineina of North America, by (the late) Dr. Brackenridge Clemens. (Being a collected edition of his writings on that group of insects.) With notes by the editor, H.T. Stainton London,J. Van Voorst,1872.