9 - Thomas Bates Blow (1853–1941): Antiquarian, Apiarist and Pioneer Motorist in Japan

Summary

INTRODUCTION

DOROTHY SHUTTLEWORTH DURING her trip to Japan in 1906 recorded: ‘[Kyoto] We went to tea at 3 with Mr Blow an Englishman from Welwyn who has married a Japanese wife & lives here. He is a great collector & sometimes sells things.’ Walter Tyndale in his Japan and the Japanese, wrote in 1909: ‘[Kyoto] I made the acquaintance of an Englishman, Mr Blow, who has lived here a good many years; he has a pretty Japanese house and garden on the slopes of the hills overlooking the city… Mrs Blow, a charming Japanese lady, asked me to lunch, with a promise that I should see her husband’s collection of prints.

LIFE

Thomas Bates Blow was born in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, on 8 November 1853, the only child of James (a carpenter) and Mary Blow. He was educated initially at the village school, later at an academy at Tring (where he developed a flair for languages). In his early life his interests were botany, photography and apiary. His interest in photography led to his first commercial venture – a small laboratory manufacturing ‘Dry Plates’, but it was his interest in bee-keeping, and his development of bee-keeping appliances, that led to his setting up a factory (in Welwyn, next to the railway station) which was known worldwide.

His interests in botany had led in 1872 to him providing herbarium specimens that remain in national collections. In 1873 he was instrumental in the formation of The Botanical Locality Record Club (becoming its treasurer in 1877). In 1879 he was a founder member of the Hitchin Natural History Club; in 1880, he published, in the Hertfordshire Express, a series of articles entitled ‘Outlines of a Flora of the Neighbourhood of Hitchin’; and on 18 December 1884 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

By 1884 he was one of the country's expert apiarists having formed the Hertfordshire Bee Society and was instrumental in the development of similar societies in other counties. He was, by now, travelling to Europe and was responsible for ‘improving’ the quality of the British native bee by bringing in queen bees from Eastern Europe. His book A Bee-Keeper's Experience in the East was published in 1883. In the 1891 census his occupation is listed as ‘Manufacturer Bee Keeping: a change from “Photographer”’ten years earlier.