Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Jones, Thomas Rupert
JONES, THOMAS RUPERT (1819–1911), geologist and palaeontologist, born in Wood Street, Cheapside, London, on 1 Oct. 1819, was the son of John Jones, silk merchant and throwster (a descendant of the old Powys family of North Wales), by his wife Rhoda Burberry of Coventry. Jones was educated at private schools, first at Taunton, where his father conducted a part of his business, and afterwards at Ilminster, where he began to take interest in geology, collecting ammonites and other fossils from the stone-beds of the Upper and Middle Lias, then largely quarried in the neighbourhood. In 1835 he was apprenticed to Hugh Norris, surgeon, at Taunton, but owing to Norris's death his apprenticeship was completed with Dr. Joseph Bunny at Newbury, Berkshire, in 1842. There he carried on geological researches, results of which were published in papers on the geological history of Newbury (1854), and the geology of the Kennet Valley (1871). During the years 1842-50 he was engaged as a medical assistant, chiefly in London, and continuing his natural history studies, he gave special attention with the aid of the microscope to the foraminifera and entomostraca, both recent and fossil. As a result of these early researches his 'Monograph on the Cretaceous Entomostraca of England' was published in 1849, and in course of time he became the leading authority in Britain on the entomostracan orders of phyllopoda and ostracoda, as well as on the foraminifera.
In 1851 Jones was appointed assistant secretary of the Geological Society, then at Somerset House, where his most important duty was the editing of the society's 'Quarterly Journal,' work which he carried out with the utmost zeal and precision. As an editor, and in the knowledge he acquired of geological bibliography, he excelled. After the death of Gideon Algernon Mantell [q. v.] he edited the 3rd edition of that author's 'Geological Excursions round the Isle of Wight' (1854), the 2nd edition of the 'Medals of Creation' (1854), and the 7th edition of the 'Wonders of Geology' (2 vols. 1857-8).
In 1858 he became lecturer on geology, and in 1862 professor, at the Royal Military College, and afterwards at the Staff College, Sandhurst, resigning his post at the Geological Society in 1862, when he took up residence at Farnborough. He retired in 1880 on the abandonment by the military authorities of the teaching of geology.
During his residence in Hampshire, and, after his retirement, in London he continued his researches on microzoa, contributing many papers, some in conjunction with H. B. Brady, H. B. Holl, J. W. Kirkby, and W. K. Parker, to the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' the 'Reports of the British Association,' and the 'Geological Magazine.' He edited the 'Reliquise Aquitanicae' of E. Lartet and H. Christy (1875), and, with much addition and revision, the 2nd edition of F. Dixon's 'Geology of Sussex' (1878). He utilised his extensive knowledge by publishing useful summaries of information with original observations on quartz, flint, &c. (1876), on the antiquity of man (1877), on peat and peat bogs (1880), on chalk and flint (1885), on the history of the sarsens (1886, 1901), on the plateau implements of Kent (1894); articles contributed to the 'Proceedings of the Geological Association' and to local scientific societies and field clubs. In South African geology he was keenly interested; he mastered the literature, wrote many articles and reviews on the subject, and rendered much help to A. G. Bain and other pioneers in that country. Ever ready to give assistance to others, he counted as recreations the editing of friends' papers and correcting proofs.
Jones was elected F.R.S. in 1872, and in 1890 the Lyell medal was awarded to him by the council of the Geological Society. He was president of the Geologists' Association 1879-81, and president of the geological section of the British Association at Cardiff in 1891, when he gave an address on coal.
Sturdy in build, but below the average height, he was cheery in disposition and full of humour, and as a lecturer clear and fluent. During the later years of his life he resided at Chesham Bois, where he died on 13 April 1911, and was buried.
He married twice: (1) Mary, daughter of William Harris of Charing, Kent, who had a fine collection of chalk fossils; they had issue, two sons and three daughters; the eldest son, William Rupert, became assistant librarian to the Geological Society; (2) Charlotte Ashburnham, daughter of Archibald Archer (an instructor in portrait-painting in the Royal Academy schools), by whom he had two sons and three daughters. His widow was granted a civil list pension of 50l. in 1912.
His published works include the following monographs issued by the Palseontographical Society : on 'Cretaceous Entomostraca' (1849; supp. with Dr. G. J. Hinde, 1890); 'Tertiary Entomostraca' (1856; supp. with C. D. Sherborn, 1889); 'Fossil Estheriæ' (1862); 'Foraminifera of the Crag' (1866 and 1895-7); 'Carboniferous Bivalved Entomostraca,' with Dr. G. S. Brady (1874); and 'Palaeozoic Phyllopoda,' with Dr. Henry Woodward (1888).
[Biography (with portrait) in Geol. Mag., Jan. 1893; Supp. notice, with portrait, on 90th birthday, ibid. Nov. 1909; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; obit. by H. B. W. Nature, 27 April 1911. The best published portrait is in Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Prestmch, 1899, p. 376.]