John Thomas Cockerell (November 1819 – 25 September 1907) was an English collector of
specimens for zoölogists, active in Australia sometime between 1865 and 1891.
Cockerell was born in 1819 in England, the illegitimate son of Thomas Atkinson, a wealthy
gentleman
A gentleman (Old French: ''gentilz hom'', gentle + man) is any man of good and courteous conduct. Originally, ''gentleman'' was the lowest rank of the landed gentry of England, ranking below an esquire and above a yeoman; by definition, the ra ...
from Hampshire, and Sarah Jane Cockerell. Atkinson, who had also fathered a child out of wedlock with another woman the previous year, was sued for divorce by his wife, Elizabeth Carter Atkinson, on grounds of cruelty and adultry. Cockerell was baptised as John Thomas Atkinson in July 1820 in London, with his mother using the alias Stella.
[''London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1818–1923'']
In reviewing an outlying record of ''
Purpureicephalus spurius
The red-capped parrot (''Purpureicephalus spurius'') is a species of broad-tailed parrot native to southwestern Australia. It was described by Heinrich Kuhl in 1820, with no subspecies recognised. It has long been classified in its own genus ow ...
'' (red-capped parrot) at
Port Essington
Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remote ...
, repeated by
John Gould and other ornithologists, ''
Birds of Australia'' gave this caution on Cockerell's specimens.
The ''
Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive
The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. ...
'' 'Key to Scientific Names' notes possible biographical details, placing him in Hong Kong 1847 in a government position, commissariat storekeeper, also a soldier of fortune, seafarer and naturalist, who settled in Queensland about 1860.
He died in
Lismore, New South Wales in 1907.
His son,
James F. Cockerell (1847–1897), followed in his father's occupation.
References
1819 births
1907 deaths
Zoological collectors
English emigrants to Australia
{{Australia-bio-stub