Richard Higgins Burne, 1868 - 1953

Richard Burne was elected to the Royal Society in 1927 because of his eminence as a comparative anatomist and biologist; he died in a nursing home, at Godstone, Surrey, on the morning of 9 October 1953, being in his 86th year. He was born at 122 Gloucester Terrace, London, W.2, on 5 April 1868. His father, Richard Higgins Burne, was a successful solicitor at No. 1 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, W.C.2; his mother, Mayaretta Louisa Burne, was a distant cousin of his father. With the death of his elder brother Tom, in 1886, at the age of twenty, our Richard became an only child. All members of his ancestry were of pure English stock, being prosperous members of the professional or land-owning class. His father’s people came from Staffordshire (Loynton Hall, near Newport), while his m other’s people, for three generations, had been members of the medical profession in London. None of his forbears could claim a place in science; a niece of his father, Charlotte Sophia Burne, became the first woman President of the Folk-Lore Society. Richard’s maternal grandmother was a daughter of Dr Henry Ford, Professor of Arabic at Oxford and Principal of Magdalen Hall. Dr Ford’s wife was a niece of Dr John Butler, Bishop of Oxford, later of Hereford.