| Administrative History | The drowning of Dr Lewis Moysey, Captain RAMC, who went down with the hospital ship 'Glenart Castle', torpedoed in the Bristol Channel on February 26th, 1918, was a painful shock to us. In any circumstance of War, our sorrow for friends lost is aggravated by a sense of avoidable calamity, but in this case there was the added bitterness that the lives were taken in defiance of humane conventions. Dr Moysey was born in 1869, educated at Repton School, and graduated at Caius College, Cambridge. Qualifying in medicine, he was for many years in practice at Nottingham. On the outbreak of War he was called to the National Service, and was allotted regimental work in this country until last year, when he was, detailed for duty in the East. He met his doom at the be beginning of the voyage. During his busy years in Nottingham Dr Moysey's inherent interest in palaeontology became centred upon the fossils of the Coal Measures, and whatever time he could spare was spent in searching for them and in preparing, them for his cabinet. His general scientific knowledge led him to appreciate accurately the relative importance of the specimens, so that anything rare or unusual was at once recognized as such, and was brought to the notice of the proper specialist. Consequently Carboniferous palaeontology owes much to him, not only by reason of his own contributions to the literature, but also by the material which he made available for other workers. Many rarities were obtained by an ingenious method (described by Moysey in the 'Geological Magazine,' Dec. 5, vol. v, 1908, p 220) by which the refractory nodules containing the fossils were heated, soaked, and then alternately frozen and thawed until they cracked readily. One of his palaeontological papers was published in our Quarterly Journal for 1910, and others appeared in the 'Geological Magazine.' He also contributed a comprehensive appendix on the fossils from the Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Coalfield to the Geological Survey Memoir on the district (1913). He joined our Society in 1907, and in 1915 a portion of the Lyell Fund was awarded to him in recognition of the value of his work. Shortly before his death, he presented the whole of his collection of fossil plants to the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge, and the animal remains to the Museum of Practical Geology at Jermyn Street, London. Temperamentally unobtrusive, his amiability and quiet self-abnegation gained for him the affection of all who had the privilege of his personal acquaintance. [obit, PROCEEDINGS, QJGS, vol 75 (1919), lii-liii] |