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WJ Clarke with a Boa

William James Clarke (1871 – 1945) was a local man of respectable standing. He owned a fishing tackle shop on Huntriss Row (now a jeweller’s), practiced taxidermy and was a keen angler and collector of charms and amulets. Clarke amassed a collection of over 500 charms which were collected between 1913 and 1945. Clarke’s tiny objects are not only fascinating in themselves but are also key to many bold adventurers, telling tales of exploration, longing, bravery and fear; fear of the unknown, fear of death, disablement, hunger, poverty, illness or malice.

Clarke's Fishing Tackle Shop, 44 Huntriss Row

At that time, collecting was a fashionable and aspirational pursuit. Clarke’s correspondence with others, particularly Edward Lovett (1852 – 1933 demonstrates his social status as well as his scholarly interests. Clarke’s collection was accessioned into the museum in 1946, perhaps as a bequest.

‘Folklore’ collecting was a widespread academic and popular pursuit in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was the heyday of organisations such as the Folklore Society, founded in London in 1878. According to their website: ‘the term ‘folklore’ describes the overarching concept that holds together a number of aspects of vernacular culture and cultural traditions, and is also the name of the discipline which studies them.’ After World War I, the study of folklore and of material culture faded out of academic fashion, superseded by disciplines such as anthropology and social history, which were not museum-based.

Clarke himself was a naturalist first and a folklorist second. His prominence as a local natural historian is evident from his obituary in The Naturalist, the journal of The Yorkshire Naturalists Union (YNU), to which he was a frequent contributor. He was born into a middle class Scarborough family – his father founded Messrs. Clarkes Aerated and Bottling Co. Ltd. He had a grammar school education and was apprenticed to Messrs. Theakstons, publishers of the Scarborough Gazette, before setting up his shop.

Advert: William J Clarke, Naturalist & Fishing Tackle Dealer

Clarke was a founding and lifelong active member of the Scarborough Field Naturalists’ Society (SFNS), founded in 1889 and still active today. Apparently his greatest work was his 60 years of records of fish species on the Yorkshire Coast and in 1933 a species of giant squid was named after him. From 1913-15 he was a curator at the Rotunda Museum, He was a Fellow of the Zoological Society from 1902 and a member of the Forge Valley Angling Club, Footpath Preservation Society and of the Scarborough Philosophical Society, which had founded the Rotunda Museum in 1829.

WJ Clarke with Squid, Scalby Mills

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