Herbert Edwin Bradley (December 20, 1871April 22, 1961) was a Canadian-born American lawyer, real estate investor, big-game hunter and zoo director. Born to a farmer in

Brooklin, Ontario Brooklin is a community in the town of Whitby, Ontario, Canada, north of Central Whitby, at the south junction of Ontario Highways 12 and 7. Brooklin was located primarily in rural area about two decades ago, but it is now part of the urban Wh ...

, Bradley graduated from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and the

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law is the law school of Northwestern University, a Private university, private research university. It is located on the university's Chicago campus. Northwestern Law has been ranked among the top 14, ...

. Bradley practiced in the field of mining law before becoming involved in real estate investment in Chicago. He married

Mary Hastings Bradley Mary Hastings Bradley (April 19, 1882 in Chicago – October 25, 1976) was a traveler and author. She was the mother of the author Alice Sheldon ("James Tiptree, Jr."). Life and work She was born Mary Wilhelmina Hastings in 1882 in Chicago, I ...

in 1910, and their daughter,

Alice Bradley Sheldon Alice Bradley Sheldon (born Alice Hastings Bradley; August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987) was an American people, American science fiction and fantasy author better known as James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. It was not ...

, was born in 1915. Bradley took his family to the

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...

in 1921 as part of

Carl Ethan Akeley Carl Ethan Akeley (May 19, 1864 – November 17, 1926) was a pioneering American taxidermist, sculptor, biologist, conservationist, inventor, and nature photographer, noted for his contributions to American museums, most notably to the Milwauk ...

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

expedition. This was one of the first expeditions to study

gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...

s. The expedition trailed some of the animals and shot five for display in American museums. Bradley undertook other expeditions to Africa in 1924 and 1930–1; he also traveled to

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

and

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

in 1935 to hunt tigers. Bradley became chair of the

Brookfield Zoo Brookfield Zoo, also known as the Chicago Zoological Park, is a zoo located in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, Illinois. It houses around 450 species of animals in an area of . It opened on July 1, 1934, and quickly gained international recogni ...

's animal committee in 1933, with responsibility for sourcing animals for the collection. He held this position and appointment as vice-president of the zoo until 1951, when he resigned to undertake an animal-collecting expedition in Africa.

Early life

Herbert Edwin Bradley was born in

, on December 20, 1871, the third son (of six) of a farmer. He trained as a teacher at the

in the United States before attending the

in Chicago. After graduation he specialized in mining law and practiced in Chicago from 1901. At around this time he became involved in real estate investment and erected apartments on

South Side, Chicago The South Side is an area of Chicago, Illinois, U.S. It lies south of the city's Loop area in the downtown. Geographically, it is the largest of the three sides of the city that radiate from downtown, with the other two being the north and we ...

. Bradley married Mary Hastings, a traveler and writer, in 1910. The couple moved into an apartment at 5344 Hyde Park Boulevard in Chicago in 1912, where they would live for the rest of their lives. The block has one building that had been built by Bradley, and they occupied the top floor, plus a penthouse and roof garden, and were accompanied by a staff of servants. The couple had a daughter,

Alice Alice may refer to: * Alice (name), most often a feminine given name, but also used as a surname Literature * Alice (''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''), a character in books by Lewis Carroll * ''Alice'' series, children's and teen books by ...

, in 1915; she later became a science fiction writer under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr.

1921–22 expedition

Bradley was a

big-game hunter Big-game hunting is the hunting of large game animals for meat, commercially valuable by-products (such as horns/antlers, furs, tusks, bones, body fat/oil, or special organs and contents), trophy/taxidermy, or simply just for recreation ("spo ...

and took his family onto

expedition to the

in 1921. Some contemporaries described his decision to take his wife and child on the expedition as "madness". The expedition searched for

s, which had been little studied up to that time. As well as trailing and photographing the animals, the expedition shot and killed five for recovery and preservation as museum exhibits. Some of the gorilla meat was eaten by members of the expedition. Akeley recalled that when Bradley shot one large and placid male that "it took all one's scientific ardour to keep from feeling like a murderer" and Mary, discussing the same event, noted she would "never forget the humanness of that black, upturned face". She later campaigned for gorillas to be protected from game hunters and for protective reservations to be established. During the expedition Bradley and Alice became ill, and a series of blood transfusions from Mary were required to save their lives. The expedition returned to the United States in 1922, and Bradley spent the following two years in convalescence. Mary wrote ''On the Gorilla Trail'' in 1922 about the expedition.

Later life

Bradley and his family undertook a second expedition to the Congo in 1924, which was the first to move through the country west of Lake Edward; Mary published ''Caravans and Cannibals'' in 1926 about this trip. A third expedition of 1930–31 studied the African Pygmies and Mangbetu people. Bradley traveled along in 1935 to

and

to hunt tigers. Bradley was involved with Chicago's

and in 1933 became chair of their animal committee, tasked with gathering animals for the collection. He later became a vice president of the zoo, though he resigned in 1951 to embark upon an animal-collecting expedition to Africa. Bradley had aimed to bring okapis to the zoo since 1939 and achieved his aim in 1955. He died in Chicago on April 22, 1961.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bradley, Herbert Edwin American real estate businesspeople 1871 births 1961 deaths People from Whitby, Ontario University of Michigan alumni Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law alumni Businesspeople from Chicago Lawyers from Chicago American hunters Zoo directors Canadian emigrants to the United States