Stanley Cramp (1913-1987)With the death of Stanley Cramp, a former President of the Union, British
ornithology has lost a major figure. His main and lasting monument will, of course,
be the seven-volume handbook The Birds of the Western Palearctic, of which he was
Chief Editor from its inception. Even without the achievement of that huge and
prestigious work, now widely known as B WP, the posthumous reputation of this
remarkable man would have been secure. During the last 30 or more of his 73 years,
through his work in what might be termed the politics of British ornithology-as an
executive officer in one capacity or another for all the major national societies and as
Senior Editor of the highly influential journal British Birds-his was an increasingly
familiar name to ornithologists, bird-watchers, and conservationists until he came
eventually to be looked upon by the majority of them as the country's leading
ornithologist.
Born on 24 September 1913 in Stockport, Cheshire, the eldest son of Thomas
and Edith Cramp, Stan (as he was then usually called) received his education in his
home town, eventually obtaining high marks in both the School and Higher School
Certificates. At the age of 16, he started work in the Borough Treasurer's department
at Manchester Town Hall while working at night-school for an external degree in
business studies from Manchester University, gaining a BA (Admin.) in 1934. In
October of the same year, having passed the demanding entrance examination, he
assumed his duties as an Officer of Customs and Excise in Manchester, remaining
there until he obtained a transfer to London-where he worked from April 1938
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until taking early retirement in February 1970 to devote himself to BWP. Stan’s
years in Stockport and Manchester were highly formative. He belonged to a circle of
Fabians in which, with his school friend and fellow bird-watcher Frank Rhodes, he
developed his interests in the arts, literature, philosophy, politics, and environmental
issues. It had been at Stan’s instigation, when they were both 14, that the two lads
had started bird-watching, entirely as loners at first. Later, however, when he was
working, Stan came under the local influence of A.W. Boyd and Reg Wagstaffe and,
indirectly, of E.M. Nicholson (whose books were an important stimulus to him) and
of T. H. Harrisson and P. A. D. Hollom (who had organized the national inquiry into
the status of the Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus in 1931). In the winter of
1932-1933, Stan (now living in the village of Bramhall) made a study of roosting
Starlings Sturnus vulguris, the subject of his first paper when he was 19 (North West
Nut: 1933). Two more studies involving simple bird counts followed, both written
with J.H. Ward 0. Anim. Ecol. 1934, 1936). There was then a distraction from
ornithology for a few years while Stan became involved in the affairs of the Mass-
Observation organization which Tom Harrisson and others were in the process of
founding. A brilliant mathematician, he was soon enrolled as statistician and adviser
and continued with this work in his spare time after moving to London in 1938.
It was not until June 1943 that Stan took up serious bird-watching again,
conducting a year-long study of the territorial behaviour and nesting of the Coot
Fulica atro in St James’s Park (BY. Birds 1947). Then from July 1944 until April 1946
he did his war-time military service in the Royal Air Force, at first in the UK then in
Canada where he was sent to train as a navigator. After demobilization, a brief wartime
marriage having failed, Stanley (as we must now call him) resumed his Civil
Service duties as a Customs and Excise Officer back in London, soon settling down
in a tiny flat (first no. 9, later no. 32) at Queen Court where he remained until shortly
before he died. Highly ambitious, he now threw himself single-mindedly into his
hobby of ornithology, determined to make his mark and reach the top. For many
years, he was active in the London Natural History Society, which he had joined in
1942, holding a number of senior offices and specializing in the study of urban birds
in the parks, waters, and squares of Inner London, often in partnership with his
friend and later obituarist W.G. Teagle (see London. Nut. 67: 179-182). He was also
one of the team involved in the survey of the flora and fauna of Buckingham Palace
Garden and served on the Official Committee on Bird Sanctuaries in the Royal
Parks, becoming its last Chairman.
During the late 1950s and early 19609, Stanley also became active in the British
Trust for Ornithology and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. For the
BTO, he served on its Council (three times) and committees-twice on the Scientific
Advisory Committee (chairman 1959-1961bas well as helping to formulate new
policies that led directly to the modern development of the Trust. He also played a
leading role in the BTO/RSPB campaign against the use of persistent chemicals in
agriculture, first at the BTO and then as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Toxic
Chemicals-for his work on which he was awarded the Tucker Medal of the BTO
(1963) and the Gold Medal of the RSPB (1966). For the RSPB, he also served in
various other capacities, including three stints on Council (once as Chairman),
devoting much time and thought to the business of the Society and helping the then
Director (Peter Conder) and Council initiate their programme of modernization. He
was also active on a number of other national conservation bodies and, over the years,
took every opportunity to promote bird protection through his writings, his most
distinguished contribution being the booklet Bird Conservation in Europe (HMSO
1977). For his services to this cause, Stanley was awarded the OBE in 1975.
The journal British Birds, in which he published a number of contributions over
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the years, was the third of our national ornithological institutions with which Stanley
was closely associated. He first joined the Editorial Board in 1960, rising to the
position of Senior Editor in 1963 and continuing to hold the reins, nominally at least,
until his death. During those years-drawing (as with the BTO and RSPB) on his
vast Civil Service experience of finance, business, and trade-union affairs-he twice
steered the journal successfully through crises which threatened its very existence,
He was also a member and officer of the Seabird Group, emerging as first author of
its book, The Seabirds of Britain and Ireland, giving the results of ‘Operation
Seafarer’, the famous inquiry initiated by the late James Fisher and W. R. P. Bourne
and organised by David Saunders. Stanley was less active in the BOU but served
three times on its Council, once as Vice President and then (1 979-1 983) as President,
after which he was awarded the Union Medal. He also belonged to the Zoological
Society of London, receiving its Stanford Raffles Medal in 1978.
During the last 17 years of his life, Stanley devoted himself full-time to BWP, his
greatest achievement, emerging as Chief Editor and (in effect) its business manager
after the project had been initiated by his earlier mentor and later obituarist E. M.
Nicholson (see BY. Birds 81: 10-13). These were exciting and busy if highly stressful
years, the task being much more difficult, demanding and costly than he and the rest
of us had ever realised, making progress always much slower than was financially
comfortable, and presenting Stanley with seemingly never-ending series of crises to
overcome. He rose to the task magnificently; a hard, unsentimental, even ruthless
realist, he provided the strong and persuasive hand needed and it is certainly true to
say that-although much of the actual planning, writing and editing was increasingly
done by others-his was the essential contribution without which there would have
been no BWP at all. Over the years, he saw four volumes through the press (the last
in 1985) and initiated a fifth. By then, however, he was a broken man and should have
relinquished the reins long before, his health having started seriously to fail early in
1983. He became increasingly debilitated but he struggled on, eventually dying on 20
August 1987 following a stroke and subsequent pneumonia.
Within the constraints of a short obituary like this, it is difficult to do full justice
to such a complex person as Stanley Cramp. An obsessively secretive person, he
remained to the end a mystery even to his intimate colleagues, having depths
undreamed of by most. He had his limitations and faults, of course, often promoting
himself at the expense of others-especially those essential alter-egos who actually
did most of the work for which he received the sole or major credit-and was at his
best developing ideas initiated by others; but of his status as a figure of great standing
in ornithology and bird-conservation, both nationally and internationally, there is in
my mind (as one who worked closely with him for some ten years) no doubt at all.
K. E. L. SIMMONS
Cronologia Ornitologica
by Alberto Masi