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REPUTATIONS go up and down,” said Dr Andrew White, curator of Lancaster City Museums. “It doesn't change what he did but just that they are looking more critically at him.”
Sir Richard Owen was one of the most celebrated men in Lancaster's history.
In 1846 the Times called him, “the most distinguished man of science in the country.”
Most academics have attributed to him the birth of modern palaeontology - the study of dinosaurs. He also founded the Natural History Museum, was a personal friend of Queen Victoria and two of her prime ministers and even advised Stanley Livingstone on the best way to write up his adventures in Africa.
In 1841 Owen coined the word ‘dinosaur' from the Green words Deinos (fearfully great) and sauros (lizard).
But now, the very reputation of one of Lancaster's most influential sons is being challenged by Deborah Cadbury in her new book, The Dinosaur Hunters.
In it she claims that Owen stood on the shoulders of Gideon Mantell, a doctor from East Sussex and based his conclusions on Mantell's fossil discoveries.
Lizards
To cut a long story short, she argues that Mantell discovered the fossils and envisaged huge lizard-like creatures stalking the earth.
Using this information, Owen's own studies developed but crucially he was the first to recognise how important the fossils actually were.
“He understood the significance of what he was looking at which people hadn't appreciated before,” said Dr White. “He reached the understanding that these things were of great age which was in itself a great leap forward.”
He was very typical of his age and believed the entire world could be classified. He had a very wide knowledge and saw beyond the everyday.”
But the row caused by the book has at least renewed interest in Owen and his extraordinary life.
Owen was born in Lancaster in 1804. He made an inauspicious start to his academic career at the Royal Grammar School.
One foreboding school report stated: “He will come to a terrible end.”
His teachers sensed perhaps the macabre scenes which would soon follow.
He started his career in science as an apprentice to the surgeon at Lancaster Castle. Owen had to stand and watch as prisoners were dissected.
He soon developed a taste for it.
Local historian Peter Wade describes how one evening, Owen, who was building up an anatomical collection, hankered after the head of a dead prisoner.
He bribed the jailor who was about to screw down the coffin lid, relieved the body of its head and set off with it under his arm.
Unfortunately, he slipped on the ice and dropped the head which proceeded to bound and roll down Castle Hill. It eventually landed in the doorway of one of the cottages.
Curiously, Owen's obsession with bones extended to his great rival Mantell. After Mantell died following a carriage accident, his bones were thought to be of scientific interest and were placed in Owen's museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Owen's expertise extended beyond anatomy however.
While still a young man he did a survey for the Health of Towns Commission on the poor state of water supply to cities. He used Lancaster as an example, whose water supply at the time consisted of just the Lune and a handful of wells.
Owens findings helped to bring about the Public Health Act of 1848 which revolutionised the way cities were planned. And it was after this report that Lancaster's first reservoirs were built.
“I think in practical terms,” said Peter Wade, “that was his great contribution to Lancaster. It is a bit sad that Richard Owen's importance is perhaps overlooked. He is a bit neglected and that is rather unkind and unfair. It would be nice to have his memory given a higher profile.”
Flattened
Few reminders of Owen remain in Lancaster today.
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His house, which jutted out on the corner of Brock and Thurnham Street, was unceremoniously flattened in the 1960s to widen the road.
This oversight could soon change. Ron Sands, head of tourism at the city council, said that the council had recently been approached by, among others, the local branch of the Institute of Physics with a view to honouring more scientists and engineers with plaques. |
Owen Road in Lancaster |
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Peter Wade himself would like to see a more inventive approach promoting Lancaster's role in the prehistoric history and suggest putting giant footprints in the pavement allowing people, as it were, to walk with dinosaurs.
“We already make a bit of Lancaster's link with dinosaurs,” joked Dr White. “The dinosaur business is booming, they have never been in better health.”
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