John Whetham Boddam-Whetham (25 May 1843 – 23 March 1918) was an English naturalist, traveler and first-class cricketer.

John Boddam-Whetham
Personal information
Full name
John Whetham Boddam-Whetham
Born25 May 1843
Kirklington, Nottinghamshire, England
Died23 March 1918(1918-03-23) (aged 74)
Folkestone, Kent, England
BattingUnknown
BowlingUnknown
Career statistics
Competition First-class
Matches 1
Runs scored 12
Batting average 6.00
100s/50s –/–
Top score 7
Balls bowled 8
Wickets 0
Bowling average
5 wickets in innings
10 wickets in match
Best bowling
Catches/stumpings –/–
Source: Cricinfo, 28 September 2019

Cricketer

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The son of Colonel Alexander Boddam-Whetham and his wife, Maria, Boddam-Whetham was born at Kirklington Hall in May 1843.[1] He was educated at Eton College, though he did not represent the college XI in cricket.[2] He did however make a single appearance in first-class cricket for the Gentlemen of the North against the Gentlemen of the South at Beeston in 1870.[3] Batting twice in the match, he was dismissed for seven runs in the Gentlemen of the North first-innings by W. G. Grace, while in their second-innings he was dismissed by his brother, Fred Grace, for five runs.[4]

Travels

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During the 1870s he became a well known naturalist and traveller. He toured the western United States in the early 1870s, which included an ascent of Mount Shasta.[5] From there he departed for Australia, and from Sydney he took a boat to Honolulu, arriving in July 1874. During his tour of the Hawaiian Islands, he attempted unsuccessfully to recover a specimen of Moho nobilis for the British Museum, a now extinct bird which was endemic to the islands. After travelling to Fiji and Samoa, he returned to Hawaii and was this time successful in recovering a pair of the birds. While travelling through Central America in 1875, Boddam-Wetham purchased two fragments from a carved wooden lintel in Flores, El Petén. Now in the British Museum, they are known to be from Lintel 3 of Temple I at Tikal.[6] He returned to London in 1876,[5] but left for a tour of Central and South America in later 1877 and arrived in British Guiana in January 1878, where he was to set out to climb Mount Roraima. He joined a colonial government led exhibition to reach the summit of the mountain, but after a long trek through the rainforest they were unsuccessful.[5] He continued his travels around Central America, returning to London in 1879. Boddam-Whetham published several accounts of his travels.[5]

Later life

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Following his travels in the 1870s, little is known of his later life, besides his marriage to Harriet Manning in November 1882 at North Shore, Sydney.[1] He died at Folkestone in March 1918.[5]

Bibliography

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  • Tikal Report No 6 - Latin American Studies,THE CARVED WOODEN LINTELS OF TIKAL, William R. Coe and Edwin M. Shook, Appendix by Linton Satterthwaite [2]

References

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  1. ^ a b "John Whetham Boddam-Whetham". www.thepeerage.com. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  2. ^ "Wisden - Other deaths in 1918". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  3. ^ "First-Class Matches played by John Boddam-Whetham". CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  4. ^ "Gentlemen of the North v Gentlemen of the South, 1870". CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  5. ^ a b c d e Troelstra, Anne S. (2017). Bibliography of Natural History Travel Narratives. BRILL. pp. 73–4. ISBN 978-9004343788.
  6. ^ [1] British Museum Collection
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