William Saville-Kent
1845–1908
Fisheries scientist. Studied at King’s College, London, and at the Royal School of Mines under Thomas Henry Huxley. Assistant in the natural history department of the British Museum, 1868–72; resident naturalist at the Brighton aquarium, 1872–3; Manchester aquarium, 1873–6. Floated a company in a failed attempt to establish a national marine research laboratory. Worked in aquariums in Jersey, London, and Norfolk, 1877–9; Brighton aquarium, 1879–83. Superintendent and inspector of fisheries, Tasmania, 1884–7; Victoria, 1887–8. Commissioner of fisheries, Queensland, 1889–92; Western Australia, 1893–95. Worked on corals, sponges, and lizards. Published A manual of the Infusoria (1880–2), The Great Barrier Reef (1893), and The naturalist in Australia (1897). Brother of Constance Emilie Kent, who confessed to the murder of her infant stepbrother, Savill, in 1865. He adopted the surname Saville-Kent to distance himself from the adverse publicity generated by the murder.
Sources
Aust. dict. biog.
ODNB
Bibliography
Aust. dict. biog.: Australian dictionary of biography. Edited by Douglas Pike et al. 14 vols. [Melbourne]: Melbourne University Press. London and New York: Cambridge University Press. 1966–96.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
