Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/77

This page has been validated.
Bowie
65
Bowlby

the English to victory. He died on 20 Oct. 1423, and was buried at the east end of York minster, opposite the tomb of his ill-fated predecessor.

[Anglia Sacra; Walsingham; Rymer; Rolls of Parliament; Proceedings of Privy Council; Annales Ric. II et Hen. IV, ed. Riley; Adam of Usk, ed. Thompson; Memorials of Henry V, ed. Cole; Gesta Henrici V, ed. Williams; Hingeston's Royal and Historical Letters under 'Henry IV;' Torr's MS. collections at York are often referred to as a great source of information; there are original brief lives of Bowet by a Canon of Wells (Anglia Sacra, i. 571), and by the continuator of Thomas Stubbs; short modern lives are to be found in Godwin's De Præsulibus and Cassan's Bishops of Bath and Wells; Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ; Drake's Eboracum. Bowet's will is printed in Raine's Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Soc.), i. 398-402.]

T. F. T.


BOWIE, JAMES (d. 1853), botanist, was born in London, and entered the service of the Royal Gardens, Kew, in 1810. In 1814 he was appointed botanical collector to the gardens in conjunction with Allan Cunningham. They went to Brazil, where they remained two years, making collections of plants and seeds. In 1817 Bowie was ordered to proceed to the Cape; here he worked with much energy, taking journeys into the interior, and sending home large collections of living and dried plants, as well as of drawings; the last are in the Kew herbarium, the dried specimens for the most part in the British Museum. A vote of the House of Commons having reduced the sum granted for botanical collectors, Bowie was recalled in 1823, taking up his residence at Kew. After four years of inactivity he set out again for the Cape, where he was for some years gardener to Baron Ludwig of Ludwigsberg. He became a correspondent of Dr. Harvey, who, in dedicating to him the genus Bowiea, says 'by many years of patient labour in the interior of South Africa he enriched the gardens of Europe with a greater variety of succulent plants than had ever been detected by any traveller.' He left his employment in or before 1841, and made journeys into the interior to collect plants for sale; his habits, however, were such as to interfere with his prospects, and he died in poverty in 1853.

[Gardeners' Chronicle, new ser. xvi. 568 (1881).]

J. B.


BOWLBY, THOMAS WILLIAM (18171860), 'Times' correspondent, son of Thomas Bowlby, a captain in the royal artillery, by his wife, a daughter of General Balfour, was born at Gibraltar, and when very young was taken by his parents to Sunderland, where his father entered on the business of a timber merchant. Young Bowlby's education was entrusted to Dr. Cowan, a Scotch schoolmaster, who had settled in Sunderland. After leaving school he was articled to his cousin, Mr. Russell Bowlby, solicitor, Sunderland. On completion of his time he went to London and spent some years as a salaried clerk in the office of a large firm in the Temple. In 1846 he commenced practice in the city as junior partner in the firm of Lawrence, Crowdy, & Bowlby, solicitors, 25 Old Fish Street, Doctors' Commons, and for some years enjoyed a fair practice; but the profession of the law was not to his taste, and he made many literary acquaintances. Although remaining a member of the firm until the year 1854, he went to Berlin as special correspondent of the 'Times' in 1848. Bowlby married Miss Meine, the sister of his father's second wife, and on the death of her father Mrs. Bowlby became possessed of a considerable fortune. During the railway mania Bowlby got into pecuniary difficulties, which caused him to leave England for a short time, but he made arrangements for the whole of his future earnings to be applied in liquidation of his debts. On returning to England he was for some time associated with Jullien, the musical director and composer. He next repaired to Smyrna, where he was employed for a while in connection with the construction of a railway. In 1860 he was engaged to proceed to China as the special correspondent of the 'Times.' Lord Elgin and Baron Gros were fellow-passengers with him in the steamship Malabar, which was lost at Point de Galle on 22 May. His narrative of this shipwreck is an admirable piece of work. His various letters from China afforded much information and pleasure to the readers of the 'Times.' After the capture of Tien-tsin on 23 Aug. 1860, Bowlby accompanied Admiral Hope and four others to Tang-chow to arrange the preliminaries of peace; here they were treacherously captured and imprisoned by the Tartar general, San-ko-lin-sin. Bowlby died from the effects of the ill-treatment he received on 22 Sept. 1860; his body was afterwards given up by the Chinese, and buried in the Russian cemetery outside the An-tin gate of Pekin on 17 Oct. His age was about forty-three; he left a widow and five young children.

[Gent. Mag. 1861, pp. 225-6; Times, 26, 27, 30 Nov., 10, 11, 15, 17, 19, 25 Dec. 1860; Illustrated London News, with portrait, xxxvii. 615-616 (1860); Annual Register, 1860, pp. 265-71; Boulger's History of China (1884), iii. 499-521.]

G. C. B.