Henry Tibbats Stainton

Who was Henry Tibbats Stainton?

Henry Tibbats Stainton was an English entomologist.

He was educated at King's College London.

He was the author of Manual of British Butterflies and Moths and with the German entomologist Philipp Christoph Zeller, a Swiss, Heinrich Frey and another Englishman, John William Douglas of The Natural History of the Tineina.

Stainton was a very wealthy man and his house in Lewisham, "Mountsfield", was one of London's more substantial residences set in its own park. Other wealthy entomologists often stayed at Mountsfield when visiting London, notably Alexander Henry Haliday and Deiterich Carl August Dohrn. The zoologist Nicholas Aylward Vigors was a close friend. Such people, sought by the growing number of scientific societies, wielded enormous influence on scientific development. Stainton was a regular visitor to both Haliday's house in Lucca and to Dohrn's in Stettin. He was a member of both the Entomological Society of London and the Stettin Entomological Society. Besides this, from 1856, he encouraged interest in entomology among the wider public by holding weekly 'open evenings' at his house.