DEWHURST, Charles Frederick 1946-2025
Richard R
He was s of Col Frederick Wynford DEWHURST 1897-1979 and Patricia Bene Pennefather 1908-2003 d of Sir Thomas Richard Pennefather WARREN 8th Bt 1885-1961 and Ada Bene Costello (Stella) 1882-1987 d of Col Charles HELY c1845-1898 by his 1879 m (Southampton) to Ada Emma GATER 1858-?. He m 1977 Lindsay Mary MacLeod d of Hon Robert George Hugh PHILLIMORE OBE 1913-84 (s of 2nd Baron PHILLIMORE 1879-1947 and gs of 3rd Baron HARRIS 1810-72 etc etc) and Sheila Bruce MACLEOD 1915-2016, and had a son and a dau as above.
Is the third grandchild BASIL either a 2nd son for the Robert Dewhursts, or the first child of Anna Dewhurst by her recent m to Thomas Pinsent?
S R Eglesfield
colinp
Charles Dewhurst, entomologist whose work on the armyworm helped to save crops in Africa
He would bring his Land Rover skidding to a halt hoping to find ungulate nose-fly larvae in the nasal passages of large items of roadkill
Charles Dewhurst, who has died aged 78, was a professional entomologist who worked around the world on projects from controlling armyworms in Africa to the introduction of dung beetles in Australia.
When Charles Frederick Dewhurst was born on August 29 1946 he was the first European baby to be delivered at the Naval Hospital in Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where his father, Colonel Frederick Dewhurst, RM, was stationed. Frederick had served at Gallipoli and later became CO of the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, Devon.
Charles was christened aboard the frigate Glasgow, and after the war, when the family moved to a farm in Devon, he became fascinated by natural history; one of his first entomological memories was squeezing warble-fly larvae (Hypoderma bovis, now eradicated from the UK) out of the backs of cows and feeding them to the farm’s Muscovy ducks. He also discovered the pleasures of the moth-trap[….]
In 1977 Dewhurst married Lindsay, an ophthalmic nurse he had met in London, and they moved to Kenya, where they spent 16 happy years, Lindsay working to help restore people’s vision and bring up their two children, and Charles working on migrant pest control with responsibility for Djibouti, Ethiopia (later also Eritrea), Kenya, Somalia, southern Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen[….]
Before he died he gave his collections to the Natural History Museum in London and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, including donating one of only two known males of the giant stick insect Eurycantha portentosa, from Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea, to the latter.
Dewhurst was editor of the Journal of the East Africa Natural History Society and National Museum (1989-1992), a trustee of the Kafue River Trust, Zambia, and a specialist group member (Orthoptera) of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. His favourite insect was the extremely rare botfly Gyrostigma, the largest adult fly in Africa, whose larvae inhabit the stomachs of rhinoceroses.
Charles Dewhurst is survived by his wife and their son and daughter.
Charles Dewhurst, born August 29 1946, died March 7 2025
Richard R
Obit in the Times of 30 May 2025:
E X T R A C T
Charles Dewhurst obituary: entomologist up against caterpillar invasion
Accident-prone expert who was tasked with preventing an invasion of the crop-eating armyworm in Kenya
… Charles Frederick Dewhurst was born in 1946, the elder of two children of Colonel Frederick Dewhurst, who had seen action at Gallipoli in the First World War and collected specimens for the Natural History Museum while serving in the Royal Marines. His mother was Patricia (née Pennefather Warren); his sister was Sarah and he had a half-sister, Victoria, whose father had been killed in action. Charles was the first European to be born at the naval hospital in Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and was christened on board HMS Glasgow, the flagship of 5th Cruiser Squadron.
After the war the family farmed in Dorset, where one of Dewhurst’s earliest memories was squeezing warble fly larvae (Hypoderma bovis) from the backs of cows and feeding them to the family’s Muscovy ducks; he also recalled catching large eels in a spring at the bottom of the farmyard.
He was educated at Mount House School, Tavistock, where the headmaster and his son collected moths, and Milton Abbey School, from where he once brought home a not-so-wise tawny owl that tried in vain to devour a stuffed shelduck duckling.
… As a student he had shared a flat in Belgrave Mews West with four female nurses whose local pub, the Bell Inn, was frequented by London glitterati including Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. One of their number was Lindsay Phillimore, who once asked her flatmates: “Who is that weirdo with cages of bugs hanging up in the bathroom?” Lindsay married her “weirdo” in 1977, accompanying him to Kenya where he spent the next 15 years working on pest control, later co-authoring The African Armyworm Handbook (1997). She survives him with their children, Robert and Anna.
… In 2014 Dewhurst retired to Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire, where he immersed himself in local insects and had a show on Radio Winchcombe, delighting friends, family and neighbours with his wildly eclectic taste in music. His collections were donated to the Natural History Museum in London and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the latter including one of only two known Eurycantha portentosa males from Rossel Island. He remained fascinated with the Queen Alexandra’s birdwing. “Although it’s an insect, I think it’s as iconic a creature as the panda or the tiger or the rhino,” he said.
Charles Dewhurst, entomologist, was born on August 29, 1946. He died on March 7, 2025, aged 78
https://www.thetimes.com/article/539b6ea6-61b5-4e3f-8294-0199c6e1215b