John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

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John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury (30 April 1834 – 28 May 1913), known as Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet, from 1865 until 1900, was an English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath. Lubbock worked in his family company as a banker but made significant contributions in archaeology, ethnography, and several branches of biology. He coined the terms "Palaeolithic" and "Neolithic" to denote the Old and New Stone Ages, respectively. He helped establish archaeology as a scientific discipline, and was influential in debates concerning evolutionary theory.<ref name="Steven">Template:Cite book</ref> He introduced the first law for the protection of the UK's archaeological and architectural heritage. He promoted the establishment of public libraries and was also a founding member of the X Club.

Early life

John Lubbock was born in 1834, the son of Sir John Lubbock, 3rd Baronet, a London banker, and his wife Harriet. He was brought up in the family home of High Elms Estate, near Downe in Kent. The family had two homes, one at 29 Eaton Place, Belgrave Square where John was born, and another in Mitcham Grove. Lubbock senior had studied mathematics at Cambridge University and had written on probability, and on astronomy. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was keenly involved in the scientific debates of the time, as well as serving as the Vice Chancellor of London University. During 1842, his father brought home a "great piece of news": the young Lubbock said later that he initially thought that the news might be of a new pony, and was disappointed to learn it was only that Charles Darwin was moving to Down House in the village.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> The youth was soon a frequent visitor to Down House, and became the closest of Darwin's younger friends.<ref name=F192>Template:Harvnb</ref> Their relationship stimulated young Lubbock's passion for science and evolutionary theory.<ref name=Steven/> John's mother, Harriet, was deeply religious.<ref>Patton (2007): 15.</ref>

In 1845, Lubbock began studies at Eton College. After finishing school, he was employed by his father's bank, Lubbock & Co. (which later amalgamated with Coutts & Co.), of which he became a partner at the age of 22. Around 1852, he assisted Darwin's research by examining and illustrating barnacles. In 1865, he succeeded to the baronetcy.<ref name=EB1911>{{#if: | 

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Business and politics

In the early 1870s, Lubbock became increasingly interested in politics. In 1870, and again in 1874, he was elected as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone. He lost the seat at the election of 1880, but was at once elected member for London University, of which he had been vice-chancellor since 1872.<ref name=EB1911/> As an MP, Lubbock had a distinguished political career, with four main political agendas: promotion of the study of science in primary and secondary schools; the national debt, free trade, and related economic issues; protection of ancient monuments; securing of additional holidays and shorter working hours for the working classes.<ref name=Steven/> He was successful with numerous enactments in Parliament, including the Bank Holidays Act 1871 and the Ancient Monuments Act 1882, along with another 28 acts of Parliament. When the Liberals split in 1886 on the issue of Irish Home Rule, Lubbock joined the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party in opposition to Irish home rule. A prominent supporter of the Statistical Society, he took an active part in criticizing the encroachment of municipal trading and the increase of the municipal debt.<ref name=EB1911/>

Lubbock portrayed in Strand Magazine, 1891

Lubbock's thoughts about the nature and value of politics were deeply influenced by his scientific research, particularly his writings on early human society. He believed that the cognitive foundations of morality could be shaped through political economy, particularly through a national education system that implemented subjects mandated by the state. He held that the minds of children could be shaped in the direction of democracy, liberalism and morality through learning how to read and write. To this goal he was a strong supporter of the Elementary Education Act 1870 and he defended the introduction of the national curriculum during the 1870s and 1880s.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 1879, Lubbock was elected the first president of the Institute of Bankers. In 1881, he was president of the British Association, and from 1881 to 1886, president of the Linnean Society of London.<ref name="EB1911" /> In March 1883, he founded the Bank Clerks Orphanage, which in 1986 became the Bankers' Benevolent Fund – a charity for bank employees, past and present, and their dependants.

In January 1884, he helped found the Proportional Representation League, later to become the Electoral Reform Society. He authored the pamphlet Proportional Representation shortly after the founding of this organization.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is credited with the now-common use of multi-member districts instead of country-wide districting proposed by Thomas Hare in his 1859 single transferable voting (STV) proposal.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Caricature from Punch, 1882

In recognition of his contributions to the sciences, Lubbock received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge (where he was Rede lecturer in 1886), Edinburgh, Dublin and Würzburg; and was appointed a trustee of the British Museum in 1878. He received the German Order Pour le Mérite for Science and Arts in August 1902.<ref>Template:Cite newspaper The Times</ref>

From 1888 to 1892, he was president of the London Chamber of Commerce, and he was later President of the Association of Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom. In local politics, he was from 1889 to 1890 vice-chairman and from 1890 to 1892 chairman of the London County Council.<ref name="EB1911" /> In February 1890 he was appointed a privy councillor;<ref>London Gazette issue 26022 11 February 1890 Template:Webarchive</ref> and was chairman of the committee of design for the new coinage in 1891. On 22 January 1900, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Avebury, of Avebury, in the county of Wiltshire,<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> his title commemorating the largest Stone Age site in Britain, which he had helped to preserve. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1900 to 1902.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In November 1905, together with Lord Courtney of Penwith, he founded the Anglo-German Friendship Committee which sought to counteract the influence of the British war party, whose anti-German propaganda was then at its zenith, and smooth the way towards more amicable relations between England and Germany.

Lubbock was a proponent of easy access for all to books and was deeply involved in the passing of the Public Libraries Act, 1892.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref> The quotation, "We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth", is often attributed to Lubbock. This variation appears in his book The Pleasures of Life.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Archaeology and biological science

Kingsgate Castle in Kent was rebuilt by Lord Avebury. He sought legal protection for heritage buildings.

In addition to his work at his father's bank, Lubbock took a keen interest in archaeology and evolutionary theory. In 1855, he and Charles Kingsley discovered the skull of a musk ox in a gravel pit, a discovery that was commended by Darwin.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> A collection of Iron Age antiquities Lubbock and Sir John Evans excavated at the site of Hallstatt in Austria is now in the British Museum's collection.<ref>British Museum Collection</ref><ref>British Museum Collection</ref> He spoke in support of the evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley at the famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate. During the 1860s, he published many articles in which he used archaeological evidence to support Darwin's theory.<ref name=Steven/> In 1864, he became one of the founding members (along with Thomas Henry Huxley and others) of the elite X Club, a dining club composed of nine gentlemen to promote the theories of natural selection and academic liberalism. He held a number of influential academic positions, including President of the Ethnological Society from 1864 to 1865, vice-president of Linnean Society in 1865, and President of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology in 1868. In 1865 he published Pre-Historic Times, which became a standard archaeology textbook for the remainder of the century, with the seventh and final edition published in 1913.<ref name=Steven/>

His second book, On the Origin of Civilization, was published in 1870. He held the position of President of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland from 1871 to 1872,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> as well as the position of Vice President of the Royal Society in 1871. During this period he worked with John Evans, the other key figure in the establishment of the discipline of archaeology.<ref name=Steven/> He invented the terms "Palaeolithic" and "Neolithic" to denote the Old and New Stone Ages, respectively.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He also introduced a Darwinian-type theory of human nature and development. "What was new was Lubbock's ... insistence that, as a result of natural selection, human groups had become different from each other, not only culturally, but also in their biological capacities to utilize culture."<ref>Trigger, Bruce G. (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought, Cambridge, p. 173.</ref>

Pages from a book of obituary cuttings following the death of Sir John Lubbock in 1913

Lubbock complained in the preface to Pre-Historic Times about Charles Lyell: Template:Quote

In the 1870s, he bought land at Avebury to prevent part of the ancient stone circle from being built on.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This, and other threats to the nation's heritage, persuaded him that some legal protection was needed. In 1874, he introduced a parliamentary bill that would identify a list of ancient sites that deserved legal protection. After several later attempts and against some opposition, it was not until 1882 that a much watered down version, The Ancient Monuments Act, came into being. Though restricted to 68 largely prehistoric monuments, it was the forerunner of all later laws governing the UK's archaeological and architectural heritage.<ref>Thurley, Simon."The Men from the Ministry", Yale University Press. 2013. Template:ISBN</ref>

Lubbock was also an amateur biologist of some distinction, writing books on hymenoptera (Ants, Bees and Wasps: a record of observations on the habits of the social hymenoptera. Kegan Paul, London; New York: Appleton, 1884), on insect sense organs and development, on the intelligence of animals, the first monograph on UK Springtails (Collembola) (Monograph on the Collembola and Thysanura, Ray Society, London), and on other natural history topics. He discovered that ants were sensitive to light in the near ultraviolet range of the electromagnetic spectrum.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He also noted that ants used the angle of the sun for orientation.<ref name=":0" /> In 1874 he became the first President of the British Beekeepers Association.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A verse in Punch in 1882 described his activities:

Lord Avebury speaking during the presentation of the first replica of Diplodocus carnegii to the trustees of the British Museum of Natural History, 12 May 1905

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He corresponded extensively with Charles Darwin, who lived nearby at Down House.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Lubbock stayed in Downe except for a brief period from 1861 to 1865, when he lived in Chislehurst. Both men were active advocates of English spelling reform, and members of the Spelling Reform Association, precursor to the Simplified Spelling Society. Darwin rented land, originally from Lubbock's father, in Sandwalk wood where he performed his daily exercise, and in 1874 agreed with Lubbock to exchange the land for a piece of pasture in Darwin's property.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> When Darwin died in 1882, Lubbock suggested the honour of burial in Westminster Abbey, organising a letter to the dean to arrange this, and was one of the pallbearers.<ref name=F192/>

In May 1884, an article appeared in Scientific American describing experiments by Lubbock in the field of human-animal communication.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1884, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in 1889, as an honorary member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society,<ref>Memoirs and proceedings of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society, FOURTH SERIES, Eighth VOLUME, 1894.</ref> and in 1893, a member of the American Antiquarian Society.<ref>American Antiquarian Society Members Directory</ref>

He received the 1903 Prestwich Medal from the Geological Society of London.<ref>Template:Cite newspaper The Times</ref>

Family

Alice, Lady Lubbock, and her three eldest children, portrait by Frederick Samuel Beaumont

Lubbock was one of eight brothers and three sisters;<ref>Hutchinson (1914): family tree chart</ref> three brothers, Alfred,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Nevile<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Edgar,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> played first-class cricket for Kent. Edgar and Alfred also played football and played together for Old Etonians in the 1875 FA Cup Final. His nephew, Percy Lubbock, was a prominent man of letters and another nephew was the writer and historian Basil Lubbock.

Lubbock married Ellen Frances Horden in April 1856. Five years after her death, on 17 May 1884 he married Alice Lane Fox, the daughter of Augustus Pitt Rivers .<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He rebuilt Kingsgate Castle, near Broadstairs in Kent, as his family home, where he died in 1913. He was succeeded by his eldest son, John.

He was buried in St Giles the Abbott Church, in Farnborough, London. Three years later, his remains were disinterred and placed in a family burial ground a few hundred yards from the church, along with the original stone Celtic cross marking his grave. In 1986, Bromley Council, unknown to the Lubbock family, moved the cross back to the main church graveyard.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

References

Battersea Library plaque, 1899. Lubbock was a promoter of public libraries.

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Books

The following is a list of publications by Sir John Lubbock, arranged in chronological order by the dates of the first editions of each work.

Further reading

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  • Hutchinson, H. G. (1914) Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury, London. Volume 1, 2
  • Parsons, F. D. (2009) 'Thomas Hare and Political Representation in Victorian Britain' (Palgrave Macmillan)
  • Patton, M. (2007) Science, politics & business in the work of Sir John Lubbock – a man of universal mind, Ashgate, London.
  • Pearn, Alison (2014) "The teacher taught? What Charles Darwin owed to John Lubbock". Notes Rec R Soc Lond. Mar 20; 68(1): 7–19.
  • Sir John Lubbock in The Columbia Encyclopedia, (Sixth Edition, 2001)
  • Trigger, B. G. (1989) A history of archaeological thought, (revised 2006) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  • Kains-Jackson, C. P. (1880) " Our Ancient Monuments and the Land Around them, with a preface by Sir John Lubbock", Elliot Stock, London.

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