When the Galton Institute meets at the London Zoo it is like a homecoming for several of us. Colin Bertram’s son was once Curator of Mammals and as a child I lived there in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In biographical terms I was born in Tamerton Foliot when my father was at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth, and educated at the Hall School Hampstead and Shrewsbury School before entering Guy’s Hospital where I read medicine and taught for several years. For over a decade I have been a partner in a large urban and semi-rural practice in West Berkshire. We have thirteen partners, nearly 25,000 patients, are first wave fund holders and are extensively computerised. My particular interests within medicine include Dermatology and Occupational Medicine and until recently I was School Director to Downe House, a girls boarding school with nearly 500 pupils.
Shortly after my father joined the zoo as Curator of the Aquarium we moved into the Curator’s House which A.A. Milne immortalised in When We Were Very Young where he found...
“badgers and bidgers and bodgers,
and a Super-in-Tendants House...”
It was not strictly the Superintendent’s House and my grandfather, also Dr Geoffrey Vevers, who had been Superintendent for 25 years never lived there. It had about half an acre of garden which was much too large a proportion of the Zoo’s total of 36 acres for one family to monopolise so it was pulled down to make way for the Cotton Terraces. A sensible decision, but this has lost one of Decimus Burton - the architect’s - small London houses.
The Zoo built us a flat behind the main offices and I remember watching the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine and the Society’s meeting room being built, the outside being formed of concrete cast with corrugated iron sheets, the resulting ridges being chipped by hand to form the rough textured surface which characterises the building.
Before these changes the meetings were held in the main offices in a lofty room lined with books and with a gallery half way up to aid access to the books. The room now has one extra floor and is the Society’s Library. In addition to the Society’s symposia and scientific meetings there used to be a series of children’s lectures at Christmas time, rather like the Royal Institute’s Children’s lectures. We were introduced to the world of Natural History by Peter Scott illustrating his talk with wonderful polychrome bird drawings, James Fisher’s explanation of Bird migration, Desmond Morris encouraging chimpanzees to perform and David Attenborough showing the films of his early expeditions. Animals were often brought to these lectures and I clearly remember chasing Pipistrelle bats which had escaped and were hiding in every imaginable crevice. I wonder how many children were encouraged into the biological sciences by this high quality of science popularisation.
The London Zoo was a very exciting place in those days and a centre for zoologists - long may it remain so.
Dr Geoffrey Vevers