John Lubbock, 4th Baronet and 1st Baron Avebury, PC FRS
(30 April 1834 – 28 May
1913), English banker, politician, naturalist and archaeologist was born the son of Sir
John William Lubbock, Bart.
Lubbock was educated at Eton College from 1845 and afterwards was taken into his
father's bank (which later amalgamated with Coutts & Co), where he became a partner
at the age of twenty-two. In 1865 he succeeded to the baronetcy.
In 1870, and again in 1874, he was elected as a Liberal
Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone. He lost the seat at the election of 1880; but was at once elected member for the University of London, of which he had been vice-chancellor since
1872. He carried numerous enactments in parliament, including the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 and the Ancient
Monuments Act of 1882. When the Liberals split in 1886 over Irish Home Rule,
Lubbock joined the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party.
Lubbock was elected the first president of the Institute of Bankers in 1879; in
1881 he was president of the British Association, and
from 1881 to 1886 president of the Linnean Society of London. In January 1884
he founded the Proportional Representation Society, later to become the
Electoral Reform Society.
Caricature from Punch, 1882
In 1865 Lubbock published what was probably the most influential archaeological text book of the 19th Century, Pre-historic
Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, and was responsible for inventing
the names Palaeolithic and Neolithic to denote the Old
and New Stone Ages respectively.
Lubbock was also an amateur biologist of some distinction, writing books on hymenoptera
(Ants, bees & wasps), on insect sense organs and development, on the intelligence of animals, and on other natural history
topics. He was a member of the famous X Club founded by T.H. Huxley to promote the growth of science in Britain. The Punch verse of 1882 captured him
perfectly:
How doth the Banking Busy Bee
Improve his shining Hours?
By studying on Bank Holidays
Strange insects and Wild Flowers!
He carried out extensive correspondence with Charles Darwin, who was his neighbor in
Downe except for a brief period 1861-1865, when Lubbock moved to Chislehurst. He helped engineer Darwin's burial in Westminster
Abbey following the latter's death in 1882.
Lubbock received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford,
Cambridge (where he was Rede lecturer in
1886), Edinburgh, Dublin, and Wurzburg; and in 1878 was appointed a
trustee of the British Museum. From 1888 to
1892 he was president of the London Chamber of Commerce; from 1889 to
1890 vice-chairman and from 1890 to 1892 chairman of the London County Council.
In 1890 he was appointed a privy councillor; and was chairman of the committee of
design on the new coinage in 1891. In January 1900 he was raised to
the peerage, under the title of Baron Avebury.
Trivia
The quotation "We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth" is widely attributed to Lubbock. This
variation appears in his book The Pleasures of Life: "Not only does a library contain "infinite riches in a little room,"
but we may sit at home and yet be in all quarters of the earth."
References
- Hutchinson, H.G., 1914, Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury. London.
- Grant Duff, U., 1924, The life-work of Lord Avebury. London: Watts & Co.
- Sir John.Lubbock in The Columbia Encyclopedia (Sixth Edition, 2001)
- Lubbock, J., 1865, Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern
Savages. London: Williams and Norgate.
- Trigger, B.G., 1989, A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
- Lubbock, J., 1887-89, The Pleasures of Life
- Patton, M. 1997, "Science, Politics & Business in the Work of Sir John Lubbock - A Man of Universal Mind". London,
Ashgate.
External links
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