Event Date – 8 May 1884
Event – The Yorkshire Naturalist’ Union Meeting at Roche Abbey, which included members of Doncaster Micrological & Scientific Society.
For an indication of how Stiles would have produced the glass plate negative, see his paper which was read before the Doncaster Micrological Society on the 3rd March 1882 (see here)
Colin has already referenced this photograph in a letter to the YNU, which he has allowed to be copied below.
Howes, C.A. (2011) Mathew Henry Stiles. The Naturalist 136: 200.
Letter to the Naturalist Editorial Panel,
What-ho! Editors-all,
Having recently received a copy the magnificent new YNU publication ‘The Story of South Yorkshire Botany’ by that impressively thorough and critical researcher Graeme Coles, I was delighted to see page 2 entirely given over to the photograph of the assembled participants at the YNU (VC63) meeting to Roche Abbey 8 May 1884. This detailed image, produced originally from a glass plate negative in Doncaster Museum, was taken by the pharmacist photographer and pioneer in photo-microscopy Mathew Henry Stiles FRMS (1846-1935). It is a tribute to the quality of Stiles’ photograph that Graeme Coles was able to identify, isolate and print a full length portrait of the botanist F.A. Lees from the assembled crowd (see figure 39 on page 72), and indeed this group-photograph provides a unique photographic archive of many of Yorkshire’s leading naturalists of the late 19th century.
Stiles, one of the founder members (in 1880) of the Doncaster Microscopical Society, later named as Doncaster Microscopical and General Scientific Society (now the Doncaster Naturalists’ Society), took part in this YNU meeting along with his friend and fellow Diatomist John Maw Kirk FRMS (1850-1894), both of whom joined the Union on that occasion (Naturalist 9 (1883/84): 198-200). Actually, a large contingent travelled over from the Doncaster Society, some of whom helped to lead battalions of YNU members and illustrious guests including Civic dignities and Clerics to the various far flung venues including Martin Beck Common near Bawtry.
Stiles’ and Kirk’s association with the Union led to the formation of the very productive YNU Micro Zoology and Botany section in 1886. Stiles was a prolific field worker publishing some 12 papers on diatoms in the Naturalist (1893 to 1931) and others in the North western Naturalist and the proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He also supplied material which Messrs. W. and G.S. West utilised in the Alga-Flora of Yorkshire (1901).
His competence in producing photo-micrographs was demonstrated in his paper ‘Structure of Oolitic Limestone’ (Naturalist 40 (1915): 60-63) and his talents in this respect were frequently used by other workers, including the noted Yorkshire geologist W.S. Bisat FRS (1886-1973), both in published work and public lectures.
A number of Stiles’ landscape and portrait photographs still exist in the collections of Doncaster Museum, some featuring in a temporary exhibition at Cusworth Hall Museum during 2010. A collection of anonymous photographic plates, including photo-micrographs, recently purchased at auction in the United States have been researched by Dr James McCormic and found to be the work of M.H. Stiles.
C.A. Howes