THOMAS BOLTON, F.R.M.S. 
297 
THOMAS BOLTON, F.R.M.S. 
It is with deep and unfeigned regret that we record the 
death of probably by far the most widely known of all our 
local naturalists, Thomas Bolton, who, after a short and, to 
most people, unknown illness, passed quietly away to his 
rest on Monday, November 7th, at the comparatively early 
age of fifty-seven. About a couple of months before, he had, 
for the good of his health which was suffering somewhat from 
an inactive liver, gone for a holiday to Bournemouth, from 
which place he returned with, however, but little relief. 
Shortly after his return, complications, arising probably in 
the main from a weakened heart, set in, and with comparative 
rapidity brought about the end. 
Thomas Bolton had seen more troubles than most men. 
Born to good estate, he saw himself reduced to accepting, 
with thankfulness, the meagre pittance that the Birmingham 
Natural History and Microscopical Society could spare to 
him as its curator. And yet nothing appeared to disturb the 
natural happiness of his disposition, and probably few in the 
many hundreds or thousands of those who encountered him 
in the course of recent years dreamt that in him they saw a 
ruined ironmaster.* 
Yet so it was. His father, likewise named Thomas, was 
partner in the firm of Messrs. Lee and Bolton, of Kinver, 
Staffordshire, at whose works at the Hyde were employed 
upwards of three hundred men. The chimney stacks of the 
works can still be seen down in the valley just beyond the 
point on the road from Stourbridge to Kinver where you pass 
Stourton Castle, the birthplace of Cardinal Pole ; but, like 
many another former hive of industry, they lie idle and silent, 
and the busy hands who worked there have nearly all gone, 
God alone knows where. At Kinver, Thomas was born, the 
eldest son of his father and inheritor of his name, in the year 
1831. He was educated in the first instance at Kinver 
Grammar School, and subsequently at King’s College, London, 
then, more than now, a famous place for educating the 
children of the Staffordshire coal and iron masters, especially 
such as, like Bolton, were destined to become engineers. 
* We are asked to mention, in the interest of the late Mr. Bolton’s 
family, that he has by his will given all his scientific instruments, 
books, and apparatus to his son, Mr. Thomas Bolton, Junr., who was 
carefully trained as a microscopist by his father, and who will continue 
to carry on in Birmingham the business carried on for many years by 
his late father of supplying living objects for the microscope.— Eds. 
“M. N.” 
