Early Life | Eleanor Anne Ormerod | 1828 -1901

Apr 28

“Eleanor Anne Ormerod (11 May 1828 – 19 July 1901) was a pioneer English entomologist. Based on her studies in agriculture, she became one of the first to define the field of agricultural entomology. She published an influential series of articles on useful insects and pests in the Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette along with annual reports from 1877 to 1900. These annual reports were produced by summarizing information provided by her network of correspondents from across Britain. Belonging to the landed gentry, she worked as an honorary consulting entomologist with the Royal Agricultural Society of England and received no pay for any of her work. She also promoted the use of paris green as an insecticide and called for the extermination of the house sparrow. “ Source Wikipedia

“I was born at Sedbury Park, in West Gloucestershire, on a sunny Sunday morning (the nth of May, 1828), being the youngest of the ten children of George and Sarah Ormerod, of Sedbury Park, Gloucestershire, and Tyldesley, Lancashire. As a long time had elapsed since the birth of the last of the other children (my two sisters and seven brothers), my arrival could hardly have been a family comfort. Nursery arrangements, which had been broken up, had to be re-established. I have been told that I started on what was to be my long life journey, with a face pale as a sheet, a quantity of black hair, and a constitution that refused anything tendered excepting a concoction of a kind of rusk made only at Monmouth.

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My first insect observation I remember perfectly. It was typical of many others since. I was quite right, absolutely and demonstrably right, but I was above my audience and fared accordingly. One day while the family were engaged watching the letting out of a pond, or some similar matter, I was perched on a chair, and given to watch, to keep me quiet at home, a tumbler of water with about half-a-dozen great water grubs in it. One of them had been much injured and his companions proceeded quite to demolish him. I was exceedingly interested, and when the family came home gave them the results of my observations, which were entirely disbelieved. Arguing was not permitted, so I said nothing (as far as I remember) ; but I had made my first step in Entomology.

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On looking back over the years of my early childhood, the period when instruction — commonly known as education — is imparted, it seems to me that this followed the distinction between education and the mere acquirement of knowledge (well brought out by one of the Coleridges), and embraced the former much more fully than is the case at the present day.

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It was remarkable the small quantity of food which it was at one time thought the right thing for ladies to take in public. I suppose from early habit, my mother, who was active both in body and mind, used to eat very little. At lunch she would divide a slice of meat with me. Although now the death, in her confinement, of the Princess Charlotte, " the people's darling," which plunged the nation in sorrow, is a thing only of history, yet it is on record how she almost implored for more food, the special desire being mutton chops.”

Excerpted from

Eleanor Ormerod, Ll. D., economic entomologist : autobiography and correspondence

by Ormerod, Eleanor A. (Eleanor Anne), 1828-1901; Wallace, Robert, 1853-1939