John Boddam-Whetham

John Whetham Boddam-Whetham (25 May 1843 – 23 March 1918) was an English naturalist, traveler and first-class cricketer.

John Boddam-Whetham

Personal information
Full name	John Whetham Boddam-Whetham
Born	25 May 1843 Kirklington, Nottinghamshire, England
Died	23 March 1918 (aged 74) Folkestone, Kent, England
Batting	Unknown
Bowling	Unknown
Career statistics
Competition First-class Matches 1 Runs scored 12 Batting average 6.00 100s/50s –/– Top score 7 Balls bowled 8 Wickets 0 Bowling average – 5 wickets in innings – 10 wickets in match – Best bowling – Catches/stumpings –/–
Source: Cricinfo, 28 September 2019

Cricketer

The son of Colonel Alexander Boddam-Whetham and his wife, Maria, Boddam-Whetham was born at Kirklington Hall in May 1843.[1] He was educated at Eton College, though he did not represent the college XI in cricket.[2] He did however make a single appearance in first-class cricket for the Gentlemen of the North against the Gentlemen of the South at Beeston in 1870.[3] Batting twice in the match, he was dismissed for seven runs in the Gentlemen of the North first-innings by W. G. Grace, while in their second-innings he was dismissed by his brother, Fred Grace, for five runs.[4]

Travels

During the 1870s he became a well known naturalist and traveller. He toured the western United States in the early 1870s, which included an ascent of Mount Shasta.[5] From there he departed for Australia, and from Sydney he took a boat to Honolulu, arriving in July 1874. During his tour of the Hawaiian Islands, he attempted unsuccessfully to recover a specimen of Moho nobilis for the British Museum, a now extinct bird which was endemic to the islands. After travelling to Fiji and Samoa, he returned to Hawaii and was this time successful in recovering a pair of the birds. While travelling through Central America in 1875, Boddam-Wetham purchased two fragments from a carved wooden lintel in Flores, El Petén. Now in the British Museum, they are known to be from Lintel 3 of Temple I at Tikal.[6] He returned to London in 1876.[5] but left for a tour of Central and South America in 1877, setting out to climb Mount Roraima in British Guiana, arriving in Georgetown in January 1878. He joined a colonial government led exhibition to reach the summit of the mountain, but after a long trek through the rainforest they were unsuccessful.[5] He continued his travels around Central America, returning to London in 1879. He published several accounts of his travels.[5]

Later life

Following his travels in the 1870s, little is known of his later life, besides his marriage to Harriet Manning in November 1882 at North Shore, Sydney.[1] He died at Folkstone in March 1918.[5]

Bibliography

• Tikal Report No 6 - Latin American Studies,THE CARVED WOODEN LINTELS OF TIKAL, William R. Coe and Edwin M. Shook, Appendix by Linton Satterthwaite [www.latinamericanstudies.org/tikal/tikal-lintels.pdf]

References

1. "John Whetham Boddam-Whetham". www.thepeerage.com. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
2. "Wisden - Other deaths in 1918". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
3. "First-Class Matches played by John Boddam-Whetham". CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
4. "Gentlemen of the North v Gentlemen of the South, 1870". CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
5. Troelstra, Anne S. (2017). Bibliography of Natural History Travel Narratives. BRILL. pp. 73–4. ISBN 978-9004343788.
6. British Museum Collection

External links

• John Boddam-Whetham at ESPNcricinfo