Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Shore, William Thomas
SHORE, WILLIAM THOMAS (1840–1905), geologist and antiquary, born on 5 April 1840 at Wantage, was son of William Shore, architect, by his wife Susannah Carter. Brought up at Wantage, he became (about 1864) organising secretary to the East Lancashire Union of Institutions at Burnley. In 1867 he was sent (with others) by the science and art department at South Kensington to the Paris Exhibition to report on scientific and technical education, and gave evidence on the subject before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1868. In 1873 he was appointed secretary to the Hartley Institution (now the Hartley University College) at Southampton and curator of the museum, and later became executive officer of the institution. Shore was the founder of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, and remained its honorary secretary until his death. He contributed many papers to the society's 'Transactions,' including 'Ancient Hampshire Forests' (1888), 'The Clays of Hampshire and their Economic Uses' (1890), and 'Hampshire Valleys and Waterways' (1895). In 1882 he was secretary of the geological section of the Southampton meeting of the British Association. He was elected fellow of the Geological Society on 3 April 1878. Both as a geologist and an antiquary he was an authority of high repute upon Hampshire. In 1896 Shore moved to London and founded the Balham Antiquarian Society. Shortly before 1901 he became joint honorary secretary of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society, and contributed to its 'Transactions' a series of papers on 'Anglo-Saxon London and Middlesex.' He died suddenly at his residence, 157 Bedford Hill, Balham, on 15 Jan. 1905, and was buried at the cemetery of St. Mary Extra, Woolston, Southampton.
On 24 Jan. 1861 he married Amelia Lewis of Gloucester, who died on 31 May 1891; by her he had two sons, William Shore, M.D., dean of the medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and Lewis Erle Shore, lecturer on physiology at Cambridge, and three daughters.
Shore published: 1. 'Guide to Southampton and Neighbourhood,' 1882. 2. Letter-press description to 'Vestiges of Old Southampton,' by Frank McFadden, 1891. 3. 'A History of Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight' (Popular County Histories), 1892. At his death he was engaged on 'Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race,' which was edited posthumously by his sons. A 'Shore Memorial Volume' (pt. i. 1908, ed. G. W. Minns), undertaken by the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society, contains his contributions to the society and other papers.
[Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc. 61, lviii-lix; private information.]