Richard King (traveller)

Richard King (1811?–1876) was an English surgeon, Arctic traveller and early ethnological writer.

Early life

He was born about 1811, the son of Richard King, a Londoner. He was educated at St Paul's School, and then was apprenticed to an apothecary in 1824.[1] He also trained at Guy's Hospital and St Thomas's Hospital in London.[2] He studied at Guy's under Thomas Hodgkin, later to be a colleague in the development of ethnology.[3]

King became M.R.C.S. on 29 June, L.S.A. on 16 August 1832, and obtained in the following year the honorary degree of M.D. of New York. He was subsequently made a member of the court of examiners of the Apothecaries' Society in London.[2]

Arctic travels

Shortly after qualifying as a medical man he obtained the post of surgeon and naturalist in the expedition led by Captain George Back, to the mouth of the Great Fish River (now known as the Back River) between 1833 and 1835, in search of Captain John Ross. He took a prominent part in the expedition, and is frequently mentioned in Back's Narrative (1836), to which he contributed botanical and meteorological appendices.[2]

Later life

On 20 July 1842 King issued the prospectus which originated the Ethnological Society of London. He published an address to the society, of which he was the first secretary, in 1844 and when both it and its successor, the Anthropological Society, were in 1870 merged in the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, King became a member of the council of the institute. He was also a member of the general council of the British Association.[2] In 1850 King was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Resolute, in the expedition sent out to search for Franklin under Captain Horatio Austin, and in 1857 he received the Arctic Medal for his services.[2]

King died at his residence in Blandford Street, Manchester Square, London, on 4 February 1876.[2]

Works

King published an independent account of the expedition under George Back, entitled Narrative of a Journey to the Shore of the Arctic Ocean under command of Captain Back, 2 vols. 1836. In it he took a more sanguine view than his commander of the value of the Back River as a base for future arctic exploration. In 1855 he drew up a summary of his correspondence with the Admiralty, entitled The Franklin Expedition from first to last, in which he criticised the government.[2]

King was a contributor to the Journals of the Ethnological Society and Statistical Society, to the Medical Times, of which he was for some time editor, and to other periodicals. With two medical books on the cause of death in still-born infants he published:[2]

Controversy and reputation

King's reputation as argumentative is well-established, but he is now better thought of than by many of his influential contemporaries. His view of the Back expedition as missing opportunities, and implicit argument for recognition of his own contribution, is accepted by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[1] He received sympathy in his grievances from the newspapers of the time, but his perceived eccentricity told against him. The Dictionary of National Biography in its first edition spoke of his dying "in obscurity".[2]

When in 1845 the Admiralty proposed the Franklin expedition, King wrote very strongly to Lord Stanley, then Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, recommending, instead of the polar sea journey, a land journey by the Great Fish River, and offering his services. The Admiralty gave a deaf ear both to this project and to those which King would have substituted for the measures proposed for the relief of John Franklin in 1849.[2] King's May 1847 article in The Athenæum (a letter to Lord Grey the Colonial Secretary) was answered by Charles Richard Weld, countering an alarmist tone with reassurance about the food supplies of the expedition.[4] In the same periodical Alexander Kennedy Isbister took a practical tone: conceding that Knight's speculations on the longitude of the Franklin party might be correct, he argued that Knight's preferred land expedition of relief could not carry enough supplies.[5] Opinions still differ as to whether King's proposal would have in fact saved lives.[1][6]

Further reading

Efram Sera-Shriar, 'Arctic Observers: Richard King, Monogenism and the Historicisation of Inuit through Travel Narratives', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 51 (2015), 23-31

References

  1. 1 2 3 Baigent, Elizabeth. "King, Richard". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15590. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Seccombe 1892.
  3. ↑ George W. Stocking, Jr. (1987), Victorian Anthropology, p. 244.
  4. ↑ Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots (2011), pp. 307–8.
  5. ↑ Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots (2011), pp. 311–2.
  6. ↑ Lady Jane Franklin; Erika Behrisch Elce (1 March 2009). As Affecting the Fate of My Absent Husband: Selected Letters of Lady Franklin Concerning the Search for the Lost Franklin Expedition, 1848-1860. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 167 note 22. ISBN 978-0-7735-3479-7. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Seccombe, Thomas (1892). "King, Richard (1811?-1876)". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography. 31. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

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