Beverley R. Morris

Information about Beverley R. Morris is sketchy but a little research reveals the following. He was the brother of the Reverend Francis Orpen Morris, BA, of Nunburnholme Rectory, Bayton, Yorkshire, who was a well-known naturalist, who published a number of books about birds and their nests as well as butterflies and moths. Beverley R. Morris authored a similar two-volume work, British Game Birds and Wild Fowl (1855) which he also illustrated with plates coloured by hand. The book was well reviewed, the Daily News saying that it "has a unique position among works of its class. The sixty hand-coloured plates are splendidly executed".

Beverley Robinson Morris, M.D. was the fourth son of Rear-Admiral Henry Gage Morris. He was born in Ireland on 14 July 1816, but grew up in England, the family moving to Worcester in 1824 and settling in Charmouth, Dorset, in 1826. Morris later trained at Trinity College, Dublin.

He was married to Annie Robinson Skottowe (b. Isle of Man; d. Burnham, Somerset, 21 Jun 1890), daughter of Lieutenant George Augustus Frederick Skottowe, late of the Royal Navy, at St Marylebone Church on 20 June 1850. They had a daughter, Florence Bellenger Skottowe Morris, on 13 March 1851, who married W. B. Saunders in 1874; a second daughter, Annie Leonora Morris, died in 1866 shortly after being born.

Morris worked as a doctor in York and Nottingham; whilst working as Physician to the York Dispensary in the 1840s, his specialty appears to have been the treatment of the insane and he published A Theory as to the Proximate Causes of Insanity and Observations on the Construction of Hospitals for the Insane in 1844.

At the same time he was editor of The Naturalist, which described itself as "A popular monthly magazine illustrative of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms".

He died on 19 March 1883 at 17 Burns Street, Nottingham, aged 66.

Examples of artwork by Beverley R. Morris can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.