George Bristow (1863 – 14 April 1947) was an
English
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* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
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taxidermist and
gunsmith
A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds guns. The occupation differs from an armorer, who usually replaces only worn parts in standard firearms. Gunsmiths do modifications and changes to a firearm that may require a very h ...
of
St Leonards-on-Sea
St Leonards-on-Sea (commonly known as St Leonards) is a town and seaside resort in the Borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. It has been part of the borough since the late 19th century and lies to the west of central Hastings. The origina ...
in the borough of
Hastings
Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...
,
East Sussex
East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...
, in the southeast of England.
He is chiefly remembered as the perpetrator of the long-running "
Hastings Rarities" hoax, in which he succeeded in adding 29 species or subspecies of birds to the
British List, and defrauded his clients of some £7000 for specimens on the basis that they were British.
Life
Bristow served an apprenticeship in taxidermy before working in the family business, established in 1845, at an unpretentious shop at 15 Silchester Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. From the 1890s until the 1930s much of his business involved the procurement of wild birds by himself and others to be made into display specimens or study skins for sale to ornithologists and collectors.
The Hastings Rarities fraud
Among the specimens sold by Bristow were surprising numbers of birds which, though purported to have been shot locally, were considered either rare vagrants to the area or were new to the
British List. Although some ornithologists held doubts about the provenance of such specimens, it was not until 1962, well after Bristow's death, that an article by the statistician
John Nelder
John Ashworth Nelder (8 October 1924 – 7 August 2010) was a British statistician known for his contributions to experimental design, analysis of variance, computational statistics, and statistical theory.
Contributions
Nelder's work was infl ...
in ''
British Birds'', looking at the statistics of ornithological records from the Hastings area, publicly cast doubt on many records, with the implication of extensive serial fraud. The resulting scandal was known as the
Hastings Rarities affair, with Bristow the central figure as the presumed perpetrator of the fraud. Nelder estimated that specimens to the value of £7000 had been sold between 1892 and 1930.
References
Sources
* Harrison, James M. (1968). ''Bristow and the Hastings Rarities Affair''. A.H. Butler: St Leonards-on-Sea, U.K.
* Nelder, J.A. (1962). A statistical examination of the Hastings Rarities. ''British Birds'', August 1962.
External links
Hastings Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bristow, George
English ornithologists
1863 births
1947 deaths
English fraudsters