Library and Archive volunteer Maureen Flisher explores the life and library of a citizen scientist from West Cramlington
I was introduced to the Pitman Naturalist John Simm via an entry by Mr Gill in the Curators Report for June 1917. “After the Council meeting I went by appointment to Cramlington to inspect a large collection of books chiefly on Natural History which had formed part of the library of the late John Simm who had evidently been a keen naturalist. My son tells me that he well remembers him as one of the remarkable band of Miner Naturalists associated with [Thomas] Atthey and the Hancocks.”
Who was this man, I wondered, and why is his name not spoken of in the same way other leading coal measure fossil experts of the day are? I delved into his background to find he had worked in the West Cramlington mine from the age of eleven until he was seventy two years old. Not only relying on the owners of the mine for his livelihood, but also for the two-roomed house he lived in from the day he married until the day he died, aged seventy five, helping raise five children along the way.
John was an extraordinary individual. His father, Oswald Simm, was also a miner. They would walk the fields on a Sunday and study the nature around them. However, their real passion, according to John, was for the “mysterious treasures” they uncovered as they worked the coal face.
On looking through the rest of the 1917 report, it is apparent that John, a prolific letter writer, had corresponded with Lord Avebury, Grant Allan and other eminent writers on natural history about his coal measure fossil collection. Mr. Gill also noted that “several of his books bore autograph signatures as gifts from the authors.” Were these gifts, I wondered, in return for rare or unusual fossils that he had sent them and then discussed?
Mr. Gill eagerly accepted over a hundred books and scientific journals from John’s collection, on subjects from travel to science to the natural world, noting that NHSN staff at the time “would go on to use these as reference material in their Natural History work.”
John was a member of a small club of Microscopists in Cramlington. A self- taught slide maker, he would enter various shows mostly run by the local Mechanical Institutes winning top prizes for his entries. As he became more proficient he went on to write articles, offering them up for publication to the likes of Hardwick’s Science Gossip, a popular scientific magazine, and using their exchange pages to offer slides in return for items he needed for his collection or a book he was keen to read.
Thomas Pallister Barkas (1819-1891), Alderman of Newcastle, member of NHSN and the Mining Institute, was well known to the miners of the area. He could often be found hunting for fossilised remains on the shale heaps or visiting miners in their homes to debate and view their fossil collections.
John assisted Barkas, working with him on his illustrated book published in 1873, A Manual of Coal Measure Palaeontology. It is particularly gratifying to see that John, his brother-in-law Joseph Taylor and another miner, John Salt, were given the appropriate credit in the forward to this book for their assistance with the content. I will be exploring the lives of these other two miners in later blogs.
John’s reputation as a geologist and palaeontologist grew, with his name appearing in a 1876 report by Edward Young, an American government statistician, Labour in Europe and America, under the heading ‘Miners with Scientific Tastes’ and again in 1890, in the forward to A Catalogue of the British Fossil Vertebrata by A.S. Woodward and C.D. Sherborn of the British Museum.
It was a local newspaper report (from which paper exactly I have been unable to trace), titled ‘Science In The Pit Cottage’ that fascinated me the most, shining a light on this man’s passion, curiosity and intellect. The article describes his student’s microscope “well-polished and bright”, his display cases against the wall, and a bookshelf at the foot of the bed that was curtained off from the rest of the living area.
During the interview he quoted a passage from a tract on geology by the Revd. William Buckland, a prominent member of the movement to reconcile science with scripture: “[t]he most elaborate imitations of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Italian palaces bears (sic) no comparisons with the beauteous profusion of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these dark caverns of coal mines are over hung.”
When asked if he had seen such things he replied: “only once whilst he was working in a stone-drift, a layer of thin blue clayey stone for the roof. In the overhanging canopy there nature was displaying her antique wealth. Shining in the light of the lamp might be seen a whole mass of ferns, their delicate fronds intermingling with each other and making a group of surpassing beauty. I sat down and thought of the time when these delicate leaf forms grew and flourished when there was no song of bird, no hum of a bee, no innocent prattle of children and when only a fish would now and then lift up its head and look at the gorgeous flora that linked the banks of water”.
The author wishes to thank:
Rebecca Knight and Sarah Seeley, for their support in helping me to identify all of John’s Library within the larger NHSN Library collection.
Sylvia Humphrey, Assistant Keeper of Geology at Great North Museum: Hancock, for patiently answering the many queries I posed regarding the GNM: Hancock collection of Coal Measure Fossils.
Sue Pemberton at Newcastle City Library Local Studies Dept, who found the article “Science in the Pit Cottage” in a book of newspaper cuttings.
Jim Fagan, for further newspaper and genealogy research via Find My Past.
Dr Brian Stevenson Ph.D., whose fascinating website on the history of microscopy deserves to be more widely known.
