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- Major P H G Powell-Cotton
- Also known as
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Major P H G Powell-Cotton
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primary name: Powell-Cotton, Percy Horace Gordon
- Details
- individual; military/naval; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1866-1940
- Biography
- Major Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton (1866-1940), explorer, big game hunter, naturalist and anthropologist, founder in his inherited country house of the Quex Museum, Birchington (the Powell-Cotton Collection). His travels included an 'around the world' trip and numerous overseas collecting expeditions. From the early 1880s, he was much involved in taking and developing his own photographs. When he set off for the Congo in 1905 he took a phonograph and several wax cylinders survive from this visit. Quex Museum survives and has a considerable archive of family papers.
He married his wife Hannah [q.v.] in Nairobi on 23 November 1905. They had four children: Diana (1908-86], Mary (1910-98), Antoinette (1913-97) and Christopher (1918-2006) who followed him in his pursuits.
He was a close friend of Joyce and Braunholtz, and gave many collections to the BM and encouraged his children and many others to do the same (eg Frederick Merfield, qv).
See AOA Ethdoc 190 - papers relating to the Powell-Cottons in the 1930s.
AOA Ethdoc 231 papers relating to Af 1930,1111 and Af 1932,1021.
AOA Ethdoc 232 papers relating to Af 1928,0303.1 to 18, and 1934,0308.1-251.
List of his expeditions
1889-1890 India, Baltistan, Ladak and Kashmir
1892-1893 Kashmir, Ladak, north India
1894-1895 Baltistan, Ladak, north India
1895-1896 Somaliland and Ogaden, east Africa
1897-1898 Kishtwar, Baltistan, Ladak, Tibet, Zanscar (India)
1899-1900 Somaliland and Abyssinia, east Africa
1902-1903 British East Africa and Uganda
1904-1907 Lado enclave, Ituri Forest, Lake Edward, Equatorial Africa
1911 Portuguese and French Guinea, west Africa
1920 Algeria, north Africa
1921-1922 Angola, Portuguese West Africa
1923 Corsica and Sardinia
1924 Abyssinia, Arussi, Sahatu Mountains
1924-1925 Nigeria, Lake Chad, Eguei Desert, Lake Iro, French Equatorial Africa
1926-1927 French Congo, West Central Africa
1931-1932 Cameroons
1932-1933 Southern Sudan
1933-1934 Red Sea Province, Sudan
1934 Italian Somaliland
1935 Tunisia, north Africa
1935 Zululand, South Africa
1936 Morocco, north Africa
1937 South West Africa
[1937 and again in 1938 his two daughters went to Angola]
1938-1939 Tanganyika Territory, east Africa
- Bibliography
- Keith Nicklin, 'Ethnography at the Powell-Cotton Museum', Newsletter of the Museum Ethnographers Group, No. 11 (April 1981), pp.35-41 (with a list of his expeditions, copied below, and of his publications of ethnographical concern).
Contributor to Major H C Maydon (editor), 'Big Game Shooting In Africa', 1932.
