Charles Carter Blake

Charles Carter Blake DSc FGS FASL (1840 – 13 December 1897) was an English anthropologist, palaeontologist, and comparative anatomist.

Biography

In his early career he was a pupil and assistant of Sir Richard Owen in the Osteological Department of the British Museum, and with Sir Samuel Birch in the Egyptian Gallery. Later on he became one of the founders — subsequently secretary, curator and librarian — of the Anthropological Society of London (ASL), where he worked with Cardinal Wiseman, Sir Richard Burton, among others. Blake was also a foreign associate of the Anthropological Society of Paris, honorary fellow of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, lecturer of zoology at the London Institution and lecturer on comparative anatomy at the Westminster Hospital Medical School.

Blake was a tenacious disciple of Owen. According to Adrian Desmond and James Moore, the ASL was the only place in London where Darwinism and evolution could be freely disussed. The first number of the Anthropological Review, which appeared in May 1863, carried an anonymous review of Huxley's Man's Place in Nature (1863), and a pseudonymous letter to the editor regarding Huxley’s work from Blake both adversely criticised Huxley. Blake's contribution was particularly hostile. In 1864, he edited Paul Broca's book On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo.

Blake played a role in the early Theosophical Society in Great Britain. He was a Spiritualist and a close student of Theosophy. Blake claimed to be able to project his astral body. He corresponded with the Russian occultist H. P. Blavatsky during the first half of 1878, and was present at the first meeting of the London Lodge on June 27. He was expelled from the Society for publishing derogatory remarks about the Arya Samaj organization and accusing the New York Theosophical Society of "practicing Shiva worship—performing the Linga and Sakti Puja". He was later permitted to rejoin. In 1889–1890 he was a visitor to the Thursday meetings held at the Blavatsky Lodge, in which Blavatsky explained concepts in her recently published book The Secret Doctrine. In the 15 March 1889 issue of the Theosophical Society’s journal Luficer, Blake praised W. B. Yeats' collection of poems The Wanderings of Oisin in an anonymous review.

Private life

He married Louisa Mary Theresa Faulkner (1846–1888) at the Church of Our Lady of Victories in London on June 29, 1870. The couple had two children.

Works

• "On the Discovery of Macrauchenia in Bolivia," The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 7 (1861), pp. 441–43.
• "On the Distribution of Mastodon in South America," The Geologist, 4 (1861), pp. 469–72.
• "On some Points in the Structure of the Skull of Fossil Musk-Deer (Cainotherium)," The Geologist, 5 (1862), pp. 32–34
• "On a Fossil Elephant from Texas (E. Texianus)," The Geologist, 5 (1862), pp. 57–58
• "Notes and Queries, Mammalian Remains (February 1862)," The Geologist, 5 (1862), p. 72
• "Fossil Monkeys," The Geologist, 5 (1862), pp. 81–86
• "On the Geological Evidences of Horses in the New World," The Geologist, 6 (1863), pp. 24–29
• "Note on Stone Celts, from Chiriqui," Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, 2 (1863), pp. 166–70
• "On the Physical, Mental, and Philological Characters of the Wallons," The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 (1873), pp. 10–17 (with Richard S. Charnock
• "On the Cranial Characters of the Peruvian Races of Men," Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, 2 (1863), pp. 216–31
• Sulphur in Iceland (1873)
• "Notes on Human Remains from the Holy Land," The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 (1873), pp. 53–63
• "Note on a Veddah Skull," Anthropologia 1 (1873/75), pp. 251–53
• Zoology for Students: A Handbook (1875; with a preface by Richard Owen)

References

• Rainger, Ronald (1978). "Race, Politics, and Science: The Anthropological Society of London in the 1860s," Victorian Studies, Vol. XXII, No. 1, pp. 51–70 .

External links

• Works by Charles Carter Blake at JSTOR