Biography
Gertrude Ricardo was born at Gatcombe Park House in Gloucestershire on 11 September 1862 [1] and baptised on 15 October 1862 as Ellen Gertrude Ricardo at Minchinhampton church, Gloucestershire. [2] Her parents were Henry David Ricardo (1833–1873) and his wife Ellen (née Crawley, 1839–1902). Ricardo's grandfather was the Liberal Member of Parliament David Ricardo the younger (1803–1864) and her great-grandfather was the economist and Whig Member of Parliament David Ricardo (1772–1823). [3]
Ricardo was one of 11 siblings. [3] The early education of the Ricardo children was at home, by a governess from Jersey named Julia Le Couteur. [4]
Gertrude's father Henry David Ricardo died at the age of 39 in 1873 [5] and her older brother Henry George Ricardo (1860–1940) inherited Gatcombe Park, though it was held in trust for Henry George until he reached majority. [6]
In 1895 Ricardo was living at number 25 Cleveland Square, Hyde Park, [7] a house that was the residence of her mother Ellen. [8] Ricardo was listed as an Associate of The Sanitary Institute; she had also passed examination to become an Inspector of Nuisance [7] - this role would have involved trying to protect the public from sources of disease and contaminated food and was a precursor to the modern role of Public Health Inspector. [9]
By the early 1900s Ricardo lived at 12 Cottesmore Gardens in Kensington [10] [11] [12] with her sister Katharine Cecil Ricardo (1865-1957 [13] [14] ); both were listed as registered to vote in local elections, [15] which had become legal for property-owning women after the 1894 Local Government Act.
From 1900 Ricardo began to publish taxonomy research papers based upon her studies of Diptera in the collection of the British Museum (Natural History). Some of Ricardo's work included examining flies collected in South Africa by William Lucas Distant [16] [17] and working with Pangoniinae material from the Budapest Museum which had been loaned to her by Kálmán Kertész so that she could compare them with Types from the collection of Francis Walker. [18] In 1906 George Henry Verrall allowed Ricardo to borrow material from his private collection for her work on the genus Haematopota . [19] Ricardo also worked on Tabanid flies from Algeria collected by Alfred Edwin Eaton. [20] Ricardo was associated with the British Museum until 1927, and during her time working there she described many new Diptera species [21] (see selected list below). The British Museum's Keeper of Entomology Norman Denbigh Riley (1890–1979) summed up Ricardo's work like this in 1964: "she broke new ground, but left it very rough." [21]
Ricardo's brother William Crawley Ricardo (1864–1946) had emigrated to North America in 1895 with the intention of working as a ranchman, [22] later becoming resident in the Vernon area of British Columbia, Canada. In 1901 William was managing a farm at Vernon and living with another Ricardo sister, Arabel Mary Ricardo (later Hodges, 1868–1954). [23] In 1902 Gertrude Ricardo traveled to Canada, including a visit to the area where her siblings lived, and she would later send a collection she had made of Canadian Hymenoptera to Charles Thomas Bingham at the British Museum. [10] Bees collected by Ricardo at Vernon and Calgary were examined in 1912 by Theodore D. A. Cockerell, from which he described two new species: Stelis ricardonis (Cockerell, 1912) named in Ricardo's honour (originally named as Chelynia ricardonis, also known as Ricardo's Cuckoo Carder bee), [24] [25] [26] [27] and Megachile vernonensis Cockerell, 1912. [28]
In 1938 Ricardo was presented with a medal bearing an image of King Leopold III of Belgium for her work on material from Leopold III's tour of the Far East in 1928–1929. [29]
In later life Ricardo lived at Phelps House, Castle Cary, Somerset, with her sisters Katharine Cecil Ricardo and Rachel Bertha Ricardo (1870–1961): all three women were described in 1939 as living by independent financial means and supported by two domestic servants. [30] In the 1940s Ricardo occasionally opened Phelps House garden to the public as part of a scheme to raise money for local nursing charities. [31] [32] In February 1946 Ricardo enquired of Norman Denbigh Riley at the British Museum as to how to best divest her personal library of books about Diptera; Riley's reply suggesting that she donate them to the Museum survives in the NHM Archives. [33]
Ricardo died at Springfield House, Pilton, Somerset, on 31 October 1950 [34] at the age of 88.
Ricardo's own Diptera collection was gifted to the British Museum (Natural History) by her sister Rachel Bertha Ricardo. [21]
