Charles Thomas Bingham

Charles Thomas Bingham (16 April 1848, Ireland – 18 October 1908 West Kensington, London) was an Irish military officer and entomologist.

Bingham’s military career began in India where he was a soldier in the Bombay Staff Corps and later with the Bengal Staff Corps. At first interested in ornithology he took up entomology from 1877 following a posting to Burma where he was also Conservator of Forests.

On his retirement in 1894 he settled with his wife and two sons, (his three daughters married in India), in London. Here he worked, unpaid, in the “Insect Room” of the Natural History Museum, organising and cataloguing the world collection of Aculeate Hymenoptera. He took over from William Thomas Blanford the editorship of two of the Hymenoptera volumes of The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma series and two of the butterfly volumes.

He was elected a Fellow of the Entomological Society of London in 1895 and was a member of its council 1903-1906. In the same year he became a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.

He collaborated with other naturalists across India to produce his works on the Indian lepidoptera and hymenoptera.

From Sikkim my friend Mr. Fritz Möller has sent me large collections in the most perfect condition. Many of the forms in these were procured at high altitudes, and are most interesting and rare. To Col. E. R. Johnson, late of the Indian Medical Service, I owe the gift of a small but very valuable collection from Simla and from Shillong in Assam. To Col. Swinhoe I am indebted, not only for the gift of many specimens, but for the privilege of examining at leisure the fine series of Indo-Malayan forms contained in his collection. Mr. Gilbert Rogers, of the Imperial Forest Service of India, in the most lavish way, employed native collectors in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and has generously placed the material collected at my disposal. Messrs. Allan and Craddock, of the Burma Forest Department, have sent me small but very useful collections from Pegu and the Southern Shan States; and to Mr. E. E. Green and to the Hon. F. Mackwood I owe many specimens from Ceylon. Major E. Stokes-Roberts, R.E., sent me several collections made in the Anaimalai and Nilgiri Hills in Southern India. These were particularly valuable to me for comparison with the northern Indian forms.

...
Wikipedia