Catalogue description Papers of botanist, Dr William Arnold Bromfield

This series contains the papers of botanist, Dr William Arnold Bromfield. It consists of three groups of records, journals and manucsripts relating to travels in America and the West Indies (BRO/1), Flora Vectensis manuscript (BRO/2), and an annotated map (BRO/3).

A number of volumes were donated to the RBG library, along with those to the archive. The archive also holds a related volume entitled 'Catalogue of Books Presented by Miss Bromfield and by G Bentham'. The volume contains information about the volumes presented by Miss Bromfield to RBG Kew in 1853 following her brother's death two years earlier.

William Arnold Bromfield, (1801-1851)

Access conditions: Open unless otherwise stated

The material was given to Kew as a gift by Miss Bromfield, sister of the botanist, following his death, in 1851.

Custodial history: Bromfield's 'Flora Vectensis' was given to its editors Hooker and Bell Salter following her brother's death. The two botanists sought to sympathetically 'fill out' the somewhat fragmentary nature of Bromfield's work, using quotations from other words to create the Flora, a practice Bromfield had also followed. These manuscript volumes were also presented to Kew by Miss Bromfield.

Not accruing

William Arnold Bromfield was born in the New Forest on 4 July 1801, the only son of the priest, John Arnold Bromfield (c1770-1801) and the grandson of the physician and Royal Society fellow, Robert Bromfield (died 1786). Aged 20 he entered Glasgow University studying medicine. In this period anyone wishing to practise medicine had to be licensed by the Society of Apothecaries and for this knowledge of herbs and medicinal use was essential. In order to attain this knowledge Bromfield studied under the then Professor of Botany of Glasgow, Sir William Hooker.

Upon his father's death, Bromfield gained an inheritance that would fund his subsequent botanic research and travel, which lead to him not pursuing a career in medicine. After graduating in 1826 he travelled on the continent in France, Germany and Italy before returning and setting up home with his sister. The pair finally settled in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in 1836.

A preliminary version of Bromfield's Flora Hantoniensis was published in the New Physiologist between 1848 and 1850, though he never considered his flora for the Isle of Wight, the Flora Vectensis to be ready for publication. He continued to travel widely, visiting Ireland in 1842, the West Indies in 1844 and North America in 1846. His observations on climate and plant life in the USA were in fact used in Hooker's Journal of Botany (1848-1849). Finally in 1850 Bromfield journeyed East, to Egypt and Syria. Letters written to his sister from this period were posthumously published, following Bromfield's death from typhus in Damascus on 9 October 1851.