Charles Moore (geologist)

Charles Moore (1815–1881), geologist, the second son, but third child, of John Moore, by his wife Sophia (née Eames), was born at Ilminster, Somerset, on 8 June 1815. He attended the commercial school of that town from an early age till 1827, when he was removed to the free grammar school for one year. He then assisted his father in carrying on the business of printer and bookseller, and his uncle, Samuel Moore, who conducted a like business at Castle Cary.

About 1837 Moore appears to have first gone to Bath, where he was connected with Mr. Meyler, bookseller, in the Abbey churchyard, adjoining the Grand Pump Room. On the death of his father in 1844 he returned to Ilminster, and continued the business, with his eldest sister for a partner, till 1853, when he went back to Bath, and relinquishing business, devoted himself to his favourite pursuit, geology, and to municipal affairs. He was elected a councillor for the Syncombe and Widcombe ward on 1 Sept. 1868, and alderman on 11 Nov. 1874. He died at Bath on 8 Dec. 1881. His wife Eliza, whom he married in 1853, was only daughter of Mr. Deare of Widcombe.

Moore's attention was first directed to geology by the accidental discovery, when a boy, of a fossil fish in a nodule; from that time he became an ardent collector, and before his second removal to Bath had laid the foundation of the collection which, arranged by his own hands, now forms the ‘Geological Museum’ of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. He was elected a fellow of the Geological Society in 1854. In 1864 he announced at the meeting of the British Association in Bath his important discovery of the existence in England of the Rhætic Beds, which had previously been overlooked. From these beds Moore obtained at the same time twenty-nine teeth of one of the oldest known mammals (Microlestes Moorei, Owen).

Moore was the author of some thirty papers on geological subjects contributed to the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, the Geological Magazine, the Reports of the British Association, the Transactions of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Association, &c.

Sources

Charles Moore, by the Rev. H. H. Winwood, in Proceedings of the Bath Natural History Society (1892) vii. 232–269; information kindly supplied by the same authority; Geol. Mag. 1882, p. 94.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

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Name	Moore, Charles
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Date of birth	1815
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Date of death	1881
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