William Parker Foulke

Who was William Parker Foulke?

William Parker Foulke discovered the first full dinosaur skeleton in North America in Haddonfield, New Jersey in 1858.

Born in Philadelphia, and a descendant of Welsh Quakers who had emigrated in 1698, William Parker Foulke was an abolitionist, prison reformer, pamphleteer, philanthropist, lawyer, historian and geologist, the last of which directly led to the discovery, which was partially named for him by Joseph Leidy and for which he is now best-known.

Foulke was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1841, though the law could hardly be said to be his life's work. Four years later he began an association with the two reforms that would occupy so much time and energy in his short life. Sensitized to the problems of incarceration through his legal training, Foulke joined the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries in Public Prisons in July 1845.

Foulke spent several years comparing alternative disciplinary models and writing on correctional issues in the Journal on Prison Discipline and Philanthropy. Following a tour of mid-Atlantic correctional institutions in 1847 and 1848, Foulke was instrumental in erecting the new Lancaster County Prison, and contributed materially to later penitentiaries in several other counties in Pennsylvania. He was associated with the American Association for Improvement of Prison Discipline and the Convention of State Prison Wardens.