Introduction
Leopold Hartley Grindon, member of the Manchester Lit & Phil, was a self-taught botanist, nature writer and a pioneer in adult education. In his many books he sought to pass on his love of nature and poetry. His writings also record the habitat loss and pollution caused by the huge expansion of the city in the Industrial Revolution. His plant collection and botanical drawings and notes became a major asset at the herbarium at Manchester Museum.
Early Life and Background
Leo Grindon was born in Bristol on 28 March 1818, the second of seven children, to Joseph Baker Grindon, solicitor, and Sophia Grindon (née Wolf). He was educated at Bristol College. He showed an early interest in botany and at the age of 13 he started collecting dried plants. He founded the Bristol Philobotanical Society while still at school and was self-taught in other areas of science, such as astronomy and geology. He moved to Manchester in 1838, aged 20. After spending about a year as a warehouse apprentice, he became a cashier for the cotton merchants John Whittaker & Company, remaining with the firm until 1864.
He loved to take long walks into the countryside, often with fellow botanists, and in 1860 he and a calico printer Joseph Sidebotham, founded the Manchester Field-Naturalists’ Society. Throughout his lifetime he was its active president. At the time many ordinary working men, often handloom weavers and craftsmen, loved to study nature and, though entirely self-taught, became experts. At the end of the walk, on a Sunday afternoon, they would meet in a local pub, “such being the only place where working men can assemble inexpensively” to discuss the plant specimens they had gathered. Several pubs, such as The Railway and Naturalist in Prestwich, have names commemorating this custom. Grindon had a great respect for the knowledge of these men. He wrote “It is the peculiar characteristic of intelligent delight in the objects of nature, that, with very rare exceptions, it brings with it a moral and harmonising influence on the heart.”
From the age of 18 Grindon planned to create a herbarium of all the cultivated and wild plants found in Britain, there being over 40,000 specimens. Many of these plants he obtained by buying the seeds and rearing the plants in his little garden. He began to hold lectures at the Mechanics Institute and Manchester’s Athenaeum Club and started to add illustrations and notes to the dried specimens to act as a kind of botanical library. In modern terms, he was creating a database. He seems to have had a real gift for teaching.
The influential Leopold Hartley Grindon
Grindon’s authority as a botanist and his excellence as a teacher were recognised by his appointment as lecturer at the Manchester Royal School for Medicine in 1852, a position which he held for 25 years. In the earlier part of his time with the School of Medicine, he had to fix the time of his lectures to the traditional dinner hour as he was still working as cashier for John Whittaker & Co. He started to write books about nature in which his love of plants shines through. His books included Manchester Walks and Wild-Flowers (1858), The Manchester Flora (1859), and the expanded Country Rambles, and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers (1882).
Grindon recorded that there were around 750 species of plants growing around Manchester. In this work he began to record the loss of biodiversity and habitat as the industrial city expanded. He wrote “Neighbourhoods once familiar as delightful rural solitudes, are now covered with houses, and densely crowded with population; the pleasant field-paths we trod in our youth have disappeared”. Read today, Grindon’s observations provide an early local example of the phenomenon now described as ‘shifting baselines’. We notice changes occurring in our lifetimes and take the status from when we were young to be the best condition of natural places. We cannot go back and see the conditions as they were when our parents and grandparents were young. This is the same for older generations who cannot see times before when they were young. Ecologists, conservationists and environmentalists gradually come to accept the deterioration of the natural world. This can have a profound impact on wildlife and conservation efforts.
He wrote:
“No longer than fifteen years ago (in around 1840) the fields by St. George’ Church, in the Chester Road, were blue every March and April with the spring crocus, and on the very spot where Platt Church [Holy Trinity, Platt Lane] now lifts its tall and graceful spire, there was a large pond filled with the Stratiotes, or water aloe”.
“Among the more remarkable insects then to be captured on White Moss [Charlestown, now drained] were the showy beetle called Carabus nitens, the glittering green stripes of its wingcases edged with a band of brilliant copper-colour”
“Carabus nitens”
by Udo Schmidt, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Grindon had a great love of poetry, particularly Shakespeare and his lectures and books were full of Shakespearian quotations. His book The Shakespeare Flora describes every flower mentioned in Shakespeare.
The 1861 census shows him living in Rumford Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, where he was able to cultivate a garden, with his first wife Elizabeth Wright. Sometime in 1883 the couple moved house to 20 Cecil Street, Greenheys, (now demolished) on the southern edge of Manchester.
Following his retirement in 1864, he had more time to devote to teaching and writing and continued these activities until he was nearly 70. The majority of his books were published in that period, and he also contributed to a wide range of journals. When he became too old to go on walks, he would sit in his garden, surrounded by the plants he loved.
He was married to Elizabeth for 49 years until her death in 1892. The following year, at the age of 75, he married Rosa Elverson, a feminist, writer, and lecturer, thirty years his junior, a woman who shared a deep love of Shakespeare with him. Leo Grindon passed peacefully away in 1904 in his 87th year His headstone in Southern Cemetery in Manchester bears the inscription “A most gentle and winsome Teacher of Nature’s ways”
“Leo Grindon headstone at Southern Cemetery, Manchester”
by Cnbrb, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Key Contributions and Achievements
Grindon is reported to have collected more than 40,000 plant specimens, together with illustrations, newspaper/journal articles, handwritten notes, medicinal uses, and pages from key botanical works. The surviving Grindon collection at Manchester Museum comprises approximately 10,000 herbarium sheets. In 1910, his widow Rosa presented his herbarium, illustrations, notes and related material to Manchester Museum. His teaching, and books on plants and nature (more than fifteen in number) inspired and informed generations of botanists and nature lovers.
Impact on Manchester and Beyond
In her will, Rosa Grindon left £1,000 for stained-glass windows depicting scenes from Shakespeare. The principal window, designed by Robert Anning Bell and created as a memorial to Leo, is now displayed above the entrance to Shakespeare Hall in Manchester Central Library.
“The Shakespeare Window, Manchester Central Library”
by David Dixon, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.
She also started what became the Shakespeare Garden in Platt Fields Manchester, containing some of the 175 plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s works.
Connection to the Manchester Lit & Phil
Leo Grindon joined the Manchester Society in 1863. As a self-taught citizen scientist, he was typical of the early members of the Lit and Phil, both in his research and his desire to pass on his knowledge. Another member, Henry Spencer Bickham, studied botany under him and became so enthusiastic he started his own herbarium with specimens of every British flowering plant. Grindon was also consulted by other members on plant identification.
Surprising or Lesser-Known Details
In 1898 a lavish party was thrown in Grindon’s honor at Manchester’s Town Hall to celebrate his 80th birthday. At this event he was given a cheque for £500. He was also given an armchair, and after his death his widow gave it to be used as a professorial chair at the University.
Conclusion: Legacy and Inspiration
His popular nature books encouraged ordinary people to go out and appreciate nature, while his teaching and herbarium collection helped to inspire generations of botanists. A stained-glass window in Manchester Library and the Shakespeare Garden in Platt Fields, helps to pass on his love of Shakespeare. But perhaps his greatest achievement is his manner of recording the abundance of nature, now lost to us.
Celia Cropper, member of Manchester Lit & Phil