A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND LABOURS 
OF 
SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 
( With Portrait). 
CHAPTER I. 
Norwich and Halesworth, 1785-1820. 
William Jackson Hooker was born in St. Saviour’s 
parish, Norwich, on July 6 , 1785. He was the younger of 
two sons, the only children of Joseph and Lydia Hooker, 
of that city. His father was a native of Exeter, the home of 
many generations of the Devonshire Hookers 1 , where he had 
been a confidential clerk in the house of Baring Brothers, 
wool-staplers, with whose family his was distantly connected. 
From Exeter he went to Norwich, and into business there, 
where he had a collection of ‘ Succulents,’ the cultivation of 
which class of plants was a favourite pursuit of many of his 
fellow citizens 2 . He was mainly a self-educated man, and 
a fair German scholar. My father’s mother was a daughter 
1 Descendants of John Hooker, alias Vowell, First Chamberlain of Exeter and 
member for the city, editor of Holinshed’s Chronicles, for which he wrote the 
history of the Irish Parliament and translated the Irish Histories of Giraldus 
Cambrensis, &c. He was uncle of Richard Hooker, whom he sent to college. 
My grandfather was seventh in descent from John, whose ancestors (fide 
Heralds’ College) date back for six generations to a Seraph Voell, of Pembroke; 
but except John, Richard, and a John who was M.P. for Exeter, temp. Edward V, 
Richard III and Henry VII, not one of the long line, in so far as I know, emerged 
from obscurity. 
The best known of these collections was that of Thomas Hitchin, a dyer of 
Norwich, after whom Wallich named the noble Burmese plant Hitchinia glauca. 
In 1882 I could hear of but one collection remaining in the city, that of Dr. Masters, 
since dispersed, some of the contents coming to Kew. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XVI. No. LXIV. December, 1902.] 
b 
