George Littledale

St. George Littledale
St. George Littledale in late middle age.
Born	(1851-12-08)8 December 1851 Liverpool, UK
Died	16 April 1931(1931-04-16) (aged 79)
Nationality	British
Fields	Zoology, Geography
Known for	Big game hunting, collecting for museums
Influences	Albert Gunther, Teresa Littledale, Thomas Littledale, Shrewbury School, Thomas Moore

Clement St. George Royds Littledale (1851–1931) and his wife Teresa Harris (Scott)(1839–1928) were known in their time as the greatest British Central Asia travellers of the nineteenth century. Littledale is also considered by many hunters to be one of the greatest big game hunters of all time. He hunted horned game, the sheep and goats, that lived in the mountains of the northern hemisphere, and he collected for the Natural History Museum in London.

St. George Littledale was born on 8 December 1851, in Liverpool to Thomas Littledale and Julia Royds. His father and grandfather were wealthy cotton brokers and mayors of Liverpool. His full name was Clement St. George Royds Littledale after his maternal grandfather and St George's Hall, a massive Greco-Roman structure in the heart of Liverpool. They called him St. George.

His father died, he attended Rugby School briefly, his mother remarried, and in 1866 he was enrolled at Shrewsbury School. He left after three years without finishing. At age 21 he came into his inheritance and in 1874 he began a trip around the world. Shooting his way through the West Indies and across the United States, he collected birds and mammals for the Liverpool Museum. He sailed to Japan, arriving in Yokohama in October. There he met Teresa Harris Scott, wife of William John Scott, a wealthy Scot. Mrs. Scott was 35 and had been married for 15 years. She was Canadian. Born into a pioneer family, she was the youngest of 12 children of John and Amelia Harris of Eldon House, London, Ontario. Littledale joined the Scotts, traveling with them for eight months including a rugged trip to Kashmir. In June 1875 Scott died of typhoid fever on their ship back to Liverpool. In February 1877 Littledale married Teresa Scott. They spent their honeymoon in Kashmir and Ladakh and were gone for well over a year.

For 30 years the Littledales mounted expeditions in North America and Asia, constantly collecting for museums. They began with the American Rockies, Yellowstone, and Alaska, where they gained experience and honed their skills. These trips were followed by expeditions in the late 1880s in the Caucasus, the Pamirs, and Russian Central Asia and Mongolia (Alai and Altai). In 1887 Thomas Moore, Director of the Liverpool Museum, introduced Littledale to Albert Gunther, Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum in London. From then on, Littledale was considered a professional collector. Both he and Teresa took it seriously. It validated their expeditions and gave purpose to their lives. Working as a team, they were willing to collect anything. In addition to mammals, they collected birds, insects, reptiles, fish, and long lists of plants for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.