Stanley Smyth Flower

Major Stanley Smyth Flower OBE
Born	1 August 1871
Died	3 February 1946
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Rank	Major

Major S. S. Flower OBE (1 August 1871 – 3 February 1946) was an officer in the British army, a science advisor, an administrator, a zoologist, and a conservationist. After a brief career in the army from 1914 to 1918, he took a keen interest in the maintenance and study of animals in captivity. For most of his life he served as the director of the Zoological Gardens at Giza, conducting researches in Asia and Africa, collecting animals for the zoo and studying them. He also took an interest in conservation in the wild and helped in the establishment of game laws in many parts of British administered Africa.^[1][2]

Career

Wellington College, Berkshire

As a youth Flower was educated at Rottingdean and Wellington College, Berkshire. As the second son of Sir William Flower, Stanley took an early interest in natural history and from the age of eleven regularly attended the meetings of the Zoological Society with his father. After leaving Wellington, Stanley went to King's College London for a brief time, but joined the Artists' Rifles in 1888. in 1890 he obtained a regular commission with the Northumberland Fusiliers. With his regiment he went to India and the Straits Settlements, where he studied the fauna. In 1896 he married and was sent to Bangkok as Scientific Advisor to the Government of Siam. He spent two years in Siam, where he was in charge of the Zoological Museum in Bangkok; he took several trips in Siam and the Malay Peninsula to study the vertebrate fauna. Flower left Bangkok in 1898 because he was appointed by Lord Cromer to the post of Director of the Zoological Gardens in Giza. With the exception of military service during the 1914–1918 war, Flower remained as director until his retirement in 1924. While in the post of director, Flower went on many trips. In 1913 Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener sent him to India to report on the collections of wild animals held in captivity there. In World War I, Flower organized and commanded the Transport Corps in the Suez Canal Zone, the Sinai, and southern Palestine. During the Insurrection of 1919, Flower acted as Inspector of the Interior, Giza and as Political Officer, Giza; it was for his role in this conflict that he was appointed as an Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.^[3] While he was in Egypt, Flower organized the Zoological Museum in a building at the Gardens, started the Fish Garden with aquarium on Gezira Island, and was appointed Ranger of Central Africa. He established and enforced game laws in Egypt and the Sudan.^[4]

In April 1924, upon his resignation his as Director of the Zoological Gardens, Flower and his wife Sybil (daughter of C. Wallace Napier, married on 30 August 1896. After her death in 1938 he married again in 1939) returned to England to settle at Spencer's Green, Tring. After his retirement, he wrote many papers on the mammals, reptiles, and amphibians of Egypt and on animal longevity. He was vice-president of the Zoological Society from 1927–1929 and chair of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1930–1933.^[4]

Selected publications

• Report on a zoological mission to India, 1913. Cairo: Government Press. 1914. 
• List of fishes, 1901–1921. Cairo: Government Press. 1921. 
• List of the vertebrated animals exhibited in the gardens of the Zoological society of London, 1828–1927 (10th ed.). London: The Zoological Society. 1929. 

References