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Joseph Whitaker (ornithologist)

Whitaker in 1880.

Joseph Isaac Spadafora Whitaker (19 March 1850 in Palermo – 3 November 1936 in Rome) was a Sicilian-English ornithologist, archaeologist and sportsman. He was a member of the Whitaker family. He is mainly known for his work on the birds of Tunisia, and for being involved in the foundation of the Sicilian football club US Città di Palermo. He was married to the author and hostess Tina Scalia Whitaker.

Biography

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Whitaker's family came from Huddersfield in west Yorkshire.[1] He inherited the Ingham Marsala wine business through his paternal grandmother, Mary Ingham, whose brother Benjamin (1784-1861) went into business in Palermo. The Inghams were from Ossett in Yorkshire - there is an Ossett website which gives a detailed biography of the Ingham Marsala Wine co. He and his brother William Ingham Whitaker (Pylewell Park) inherited vast vineyards and his great grandfather Ingham's banking empire. Their story is told in Raleigh Trevelyan's 1972 Princes Under the Volcano: Two Hundred Years of a British Dynasty in Sicily.

Marriage and children

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Joseph Whitaker married Tina Scalia. She was the daughter of General Alfonso Scalia, who landed in Sicily with Giuseppe Garibaldi during the years leading up to the Risorgimento. Choosing to settle in Palermo over the more provincial Marsala, the couple built as their family home the Villa Malfitano, an Art Nouveau mansion near Zisa Castle on the Via Dante. In these years, the Belle Époque age, the house was the venue for lavish parties attended by British and Italian royalty and celebrated European society. Tina Whitaker knew Richard Wagner, Benito Mussolini, the Kaiser and Edward VII, Empress Eugenie and Queen Mary. She unwittingly found herself in a circle involved in the Irish Crown Jewels scandal. In 1907 she published Sicily & England: Political and Social Reminiscences 1848-1870.

The couple had two daughters; the elder of whom married General Antonio Di Giorgio(1868-1932), a Minister of War who fought in the 1st and 2nd wars in Abyssinia. Thus the family was firmly established in the upper echelons of Italian Society.

Adult life

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Whitaker himself was founder and president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at Palermo, and also he was a major figure in the foundation of US Città di Palermo in the later 1880s, becoming the first president of the football club.

Birds

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In 1891 already a very keen ornithologist Whitaker joined the British Ornithologists' Union. Collecting expeditions to Tunisia followed. These extended over a period of ten years (1894–1904). Notebooks kept at the time contain information on the natural history of the birds as well as other fauna and also the flora of Tunisia.

The Tunisian bird and bird nest and egg collection was housed in a villa in the grounds of his home "Malfitano" alongside a very complete collection of Sicilian birds and collections made on his behalf by Edward Dobson in Morocco. To these were added specimens of birds from the Mediterranean littoral.

Some of Whitaker's collection of Tunisian birds are in the Natural History Museum, London. The Sicilian birds are divided between the Royal Scottish Museum (bird skins) and the Ulster Museum (bird mounts, eggs and nests).

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Archaeology

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Whitaker devoted the last years of his life to archaeology, purchasing the island of Motya near Trapani the site of a Phoenician town founded in the eighth century BC. He wrote a book on his excavations in 1921. The site may be explored (online) using the Motya link and is open to visitors.

Works

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References

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  1. ^ Whitaker Family
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