Arthur William Whatmore was a person  of  outstanding ability. It is strange that so little is known about him and his life. If anyone who lives near Ashby de la Zouch reads this post and are in a position to undertake some researchinto Arthur’s life, I would be most grateful to hear of their findings.

Arthur was born about 1867 at Woodville near Swadlincote in Derbyshire. His birth is not recorded in the GRO. His father was Herbert Whatmore who was born in 1830 at Smisby, a village near Woodville and who married Ann Measures in 1856 in the Asby de la Zouch Registration District. Arthur was the youngest of five children. He lived at home in Ashby de la Zouch until his marraige in 1892 to Amelia Adcock in the Ashby Registration District. At that time he was a solicitor’s clerk. In 1901 Arthur and Amelia were living at Brook Street, Ashby and Arthur was still  working as a solictor’s clerk. With them was their daughter Zelia Joan Marshwood Whatmore who had been born in 1897. She died aged only 18 in 1915, at Ashby.

In 1892, the year of his marriage, Arthur’s  genealogical chart of ‘Whatmore of Wilton’ was printed in ‘Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica’ Vol IV Second Series, published by Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke of London. This chart traces the Wilton Whatmore family from Humphrey Whatmore of Wilton (born 1669) down to about 1824.  Arthur was only 25 at the time he drew up this remarkable chart and he must have had access to detailed records of his family.  Arthur must also have received a good education to have been capable of such a task.

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In 1913, Arthur published ‘ Insulae Brittannicae - The British Isles, Their Geography, History and Antiquities  down to the close of the Roman Period’.  The contining value of this work is indicated by the fact that it was reisssued in 1971 by Kennikat Press of Port Washington , New York and London. Second hand copies are available on the internet.

In his preface to the book, Arthur Whatmore states:

‘In this work, founded pricipally upon the classic references to the British Isles, an attempt is made to review the geography, history, and antiquities of the group from the earliest times to the withdrawal of the Romans. The task has not been easy. The mass of matter to be handled, and the innumerable problems involved, have engaged the greater part of the author’s limited leisure for many years. Originating in an effort to locate the stations noticed in the itineraries of Richard of Cirencester, so far as they lay in or near the counties of Leicester and Derby, the plan was extended from time to time until it embraced the Iter Britanniarum, the Notitia, Ravennas, Ptolemy, and the whole range of classic literature to which access was possible, thus springing from a local effort into a particular survey of all the Britains.’

Surely a historian capable of such a work would have gone on to produce further volumes and given his intelligence, Arthur cannot have remained for long a solictor’s clerk. All we know of him thereafter , however, is that  his wife died in the June Quarter 1951 in the Coalville Registration District (Ashby de la Zouch) and that Arthur died in  the September Quarter 1951 in the Leicester City Registration District.

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Similar talent was not evident in Arthurs’ brother Herbert who was a railway porter and messenger (Arthur’s other brother John Middleton  died as an infant) nor in the men his sisters married  - Lucy’s husband was a plumber and gas fitter and Katherine Honor’s husband was a domestic coachman. This is not to suggest that his siblings and their spouses were anything other than capable and honourable people - but they did not share Arthur’s remarakable talents. Arthur’s father had been a bricklayer and his mother was a draper. Whilst we know little of Arthur’s grandfather, Herbert Charles Whatmore, his great grandfather had been Edward Whatmore Esquire of Marshwood House, (described in earlier post) - another Whatmore of great ability.