Two hundred years ago …

Friday 23rd September 2022

Not a YPS founder!

Over recent weeks we have met a disparate trio – an eccentric surgeon, a solicitor, and a gentleman of means with time on his hands, all three accustomed to sitting on worthy committees, and all three with a keen interest in geology, bones, and suchlike: what could be more natural than that they should come together to form a Philosophical Society?   More of that, later …

I did suggest (see blog entry for 29th April 2022) that Philip Francis Sidney, alias Thomas Ashe, might make a return, space permitting.  In 1806, while travelling on the Ohio River, Ashe (under the name of d’Arville) persuaded the collector of the fossils, Dr William Goforth, to allow him to act as agent to sell them.  He then absconded, took ship for England, fell foul of Customs at Liverpool, was forced to sell his entire embezzled fossil collection to William Bullock’s Museum for a pittance, then made some money out of writing a guide to the collection.

All this took place before Thomas Ashe had metamorphosed into Philip Francis Sidney of York, respectable newspaper editor.  Aren’t we lucky he didn’t get his hands on the Kirkdale discoveries?

Peter Hogarth

This one escaped Thomas Ashe’s clutches …