Gilbert, John (1812 - 1845)

Summary

John Gilbert was the principal, and only salaried, collector for John Gould in Australia. During his visits to Australia Gilbert collected hundreds of specimens, mostly birds and mammal and many of them unknown species. He also became an expert bushman. Gilbert was working as a taxidermist for the Zoological Society of London when he met Gould and agreed to travel to Australia with him. They were together for five months in Tasmania in 1838 before Gilbert travelled to Fremantle, Swan River Colony (later Western Australia), to continue on his own. After a successful ten months of collecting, he travelled to Sydney where, finding Gould had already returned to the United Kingdom, Gilbert's own journey home included visits to Port Essington in northern Australia and Timor. He made a second visit to Western Australia for Gould, based at Fremantle from July 1842 to January 1844. During his visits to Western Australia Gilbert was often in the field with James Drummond. After a period in Sydney and collecting in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, Gilbert joined Ludwig Leichhardt on his first overland exploring expedition to Port Essington. Gilbert was killed when the party reached Cape York Peninsula. Among the animals and geographical features names in Gilbert's honour are the endangered Gilbert's potoroo (Potorous gilbertii) and the Gilbert River (Queensland).

Details

Chronology

1838

Career position - Zoological assistant to John Gould in Tasmania

March 1839 - January 1840

Life event - Collecting in Western Australia for John Gould

1841

Taxonomy event - Hypsiprymnus gilbertii (= Potorous gilbertii) Gould was named in his honour

1841

Life event - Returned to the United Kingdom

July 1842 - January 1844

Life event - Collecting in Western Australia for John Gould

September 1844 - July 1845

Career position - Naturalist with Ludwig Leichhardt's first overland expedition to Port Essington

1953

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus gilbertensis (Maiden & Blakely) S.T.Blake was named in his honour

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

• Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

John Oxley Library, Manuscripts and Business Records Collection, State Library of Queensland

• John Gilbert - Records, 1843 - 1845, OM81-100; John Oxley Library, Manuscripts and Business Records Collection, State Library of Queensland. Details

JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia

• John Gilbert - Records, 1839 - 1842, LBWA/155A ..; JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia. Details

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• John Gilbert - Records, 1839 - 1845; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• John Gould - Records, 1839 - 1843, ML MSS 547; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

Western Australia Herbarium

• John Gilbert - Records, 1842, 58(044) Gil; Western Australia Herbarium. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

• Chisholm, A. H., The Incredible Year (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1940). Details
• Chisholm, A. H., An Explorer and His Birds. John Gilbert's Discoveries in 1844-5 (Melbourne: Brown, Prior, Anderson, 1945), 37 pp. Details
• Chisholm, A. H., Strange New World: the Adventures of John Gilbert and Ludwig Leichardt (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1955). Details
• Fisher, Clemency and Calaby, John, The Top of the Top End: John Gilbert's Manuscript Notes for John Gould on Vertebrates from Port Essington and Cobourg Peninsula (Northern Territory, Australia); with Comments on Specimens Collected during the Settlement Period 1838 to 1849, and Subsequently (Darwin: Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, 2009), 239 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Chisholm, A. H., 'Gilbert, John (1810?-1845)' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 1: 1788 - 1850 A-H, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1966), pp. 441-442. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010407b.htm. Details
• Fisher, Clemency, 'A man of great zeal and assiduity: the pioneering naturalist John Gilbert in Australia 1838-1845' in Contributions to the history of Australasian ornithology, Davis, W. E.; Recher, H.F.; Boles, W. E.; and Jackson, J. A., eds (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 2008), pp. 1-119. Details
• Fisher, Clemency Thorne, 'John Gilbert, 1812-1845' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details

Conference Papers

• Jackes, Betsy R., 'Retracing the Botanical Steps of Leichhardt and Gilbert in June 1845', in History of Systematic Botany in Australasia: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the University of Melbourne, 25-27 May 1988 edited by Short, P.S. (Melbourne: Australian Systematic Botany Society, 1990), pp. 165-170.. Details

Edited Books

• Davis, William E.; Recher, Harry E.; Boles, Walter E.; and Jackson, Jerome A. eds, Contributions to the History of Australasian Ornithology (Cambridge (Mass.) : Nuttall Ornithological Club, 2008), 481 pp. Details

Journal Articles

• Chisholm, A. H., 'John Gilbert. Some Letters to Gould', Emu, 38 (2) (1938), 186-99. Details
• Chisholm, A. H., 'The Story of John Gilbert.', Emu, 39 (1940), 156-176. Details
• Chisholm, A. H., 'Birds of the Gilbert Diary, part [1-] 2', Emu, 44 (2-3) (1944-1945), 131-150, 183-200. Details
• Chisholm, A. H., 'Some Early Letters in Australian Ornithology', Emu, 63 (1964). Details
• Conigrave, C. Price, 'The "Gilbert country" of Western Australia', Emu, 38 (2) (1938), 233-5. Details
• Fisher, C. T., 'Two previously unpublished letters with the correct version of a third from John Gilbert to John Gould', Australian zoologist 22(1): 7-14, 22 (1) (1985), 7-14. Details
• McAllan, Ian, 'John Gilbert's missing months', Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 35 (1) (1994), 155-79. Details
• Noonan, Patrick, '"Sons of science": remembering John Gould's martyred collectors', Australasian journal of Victorian studies, 21 (1) (2016), 28-42. Details
• Olsen, Penny, 'Mr Gilbert's Beautiful Parrakeet', National Library of Australia News (2005). http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/131760/20120120-0944/www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2005/mar05/story-1.pdf. Details
• Torrens, H. S., 'John Gilbert (1812-1845), the Australian Naturalist and Explorer: New Light on his Work in England', Archives of Natural History, 14 (2) (1987), 211-219. Details
• Whitley, G. P., 'John Gould's Associates', Emu, 38 (2) (1938), 141-67. Details
• Whittell, H. M., 'A review of the work of John Gilbert in Western Australia: part II', Emu, 41 (3) (1941), 216-42. Details
• Whittell, H. M., 'A Review of the Work of John Gilbert in Western Australia', Emu, 41 (2) (1941), 112-29. Details
• Whittell, H. M., 'The Visits of John Gilbert, Naturalist, to Swan River Colony', Journal of the Western Australian Historical Society, 4 (1949), 23-53. Details
• Whittell, H. M., 'A review of the work of John Gilbert in Western Australia, part III', Emu, 41 (4) (1951), 289-305. Details
• Whittell, H. M., 'A review of the work of John Gilbert in Western Australia: part IV', Emu, 51 (1) (1951), 17-29. Details
• Whittell, H. M., 'John Gilbert's Notebook on Marsupials', Western Australian Naturalist, 4 (1954), 104-114. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1700218. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/94289714. Details
• 'Gilbert, John (1810-1845)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1466614. Details

Reviews

• Fisher, Clemency and Calaby, John, The Top of the Top End: John Gilbert's Manuscript Notes for John Gould on Vertebrates from Port Essington and Cobourg Peninsula (Northern Territory, Australia); with Comments on Specimens Collected during the Settlement Period 1838 to 1849, and Subsequently (2009)
  Longmore, N. W., Historical Records of Australian Science, 22 (1), (2011), 180-1, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR11005. Details
• Fisher, Clemency and Calaby, John, The top of the top end: John Gilbert's Manuscript Notes for John Gould on Vertebrates from Port Essington and Cobourg Peninsula (Northern Territory, Australia) (2009)
  Short, P. S., 'Natural History Collecting at Port Essington', Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter, (2010), 13-7. Details

Theses

• Fisher, Clemency Thorne, 'The importance of early Victorian natural historians in the discovery and interpretation of the Australian fauna, with special reference to John Gilbert', PhD thesis, Liverpool Polytechnic, 1992, 643 pp. Details

See also

• Chisholm, A. H., 'Bird seeking in Queensland 1779 - 1922 (part 1-2)', Queensland naturalist, 3 (5) (1922), 66-70, 93-101. Details
• Maiden, J. H., 'Records of Queensland Botanists', Report of the twelfth meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 12 (1910), 373-383. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15379603. Details
• McGregor, Russell, Idling in green places: a life of Alec Chisholm (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019), 285 pp. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details