Talk:George Humphrey (naturalist)
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Two dealers
[edit]The conchologist George Humphrey died in 1825 [1] or 1826.[2]. There was a contemporary George Humphrey in London, [3] the nephew of Hannah Humphrey mentioned in the ODNB (per reference I have now removed). He lived on into the 1830s, according to Robert L. Patten's major biography of George Cruikshank. Identification of the naturalist-dealer with the latter, a bookseller and printseller, is therefore a mistake to avoid. The elder was involved in printselling in the 1780s.
A shell dealer George Humphrey is said in the ODNB to have supplied Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, and to have died in 1830. This is therefore the younger dealer, so that their fields overlapped.
It seems, putting the ODNB and BM pages together that William Humphrey (b. 1742?, d. in or before 1814), the printseller, Hannah Humphrey, George the elder and Elizabeth Forster were siblings; and that the younger George Humphrey was son of the elder, and his wife Sarah. This is not all stated in one place, though, as far as I know.
Again, the British Museum does not identify the printseller with the son George of William Humphrey, suggesting his father might have been George Humphrey. This opens up the possibility that the conchologist and printseller were father and son.