The Zoological Club, connected with ZSL, was founded in 1866 by HW Bates, WH Flower, TH Huxley, PL Sclater, and others. The Club met to dine at various restaurants, including the Cafe Royal, before basing itself at London Zoo from 1914.
George Soper Cansdale was born in Brentwood, Essex and attended Brentwood School before studying for a degree in forestry at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He then joined the Colonial Service, and in 1934 was appointed as Forestry Officer for the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where he started collecting animals for a friend who worked at Paignton Zoo. He used local children to help him collect specimens, and as a result discovered several new species. He began supplying animals for several zoos, including London Zoo.
In 1947 he was recruited by the Zoological Society of London as their Superintendent, a post which he held until 1953. During that period he began to broadcast for the BBC, on early wildlife programmes such as 'Heads, Tails and Feet', 'Looking at Animals' and 'All About Animals', the latter two of which won the Royal Television Society's silver medal in 1952. He also made regular appearances on Children's Hour on BBC radio. From the 1960s onwards he was a regular guest on Blue Peter.
In the 1960s Cansdale became Director of Marine Land in Morecambe, Chessington Zoo and Natureland in Skegness. He also developed, with his son, a method of obtaining clean seawater by filtering it through beach sand, and set up a company, SWF Filtration Ltd, which won the international IBM Award for Sustainable Development in 1990.
His books included 'Animals in West Africa' (1946), 'Animals and Man' (1952), 'George Cansdale's Zoo Book' (1953), 'Belinda and the Bushbaby' (written with his wife, 1953), 'Reptiles of West Africa' (1955), 'The Ladybird Book of British Wild Animals' (1958), 'West African Snakes' (1961), 'Behind the Scenes at a Zoo (1965) and 'Animals of Bible Lands' (1965).
Vigors was born at Old Leighlin, County Carlow, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford. He served in the army during the Peninsular War from 1809-1811. He then returned to Oxford, graduating in 1815. He practiced as a barrister and became a Doctor of Civil Law in 1832.
He was co-founder of the Zoological Society of London in 1826, and its first Secretary until 1833. In 1833 he founded what became the Royal Entomological Society of London. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society. He was the author of 40 papers, mostly on ornithology. He described 110 species of birds. He provided the text for John Gould's 'A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains' (1830-1832). One bird that he described was Sabine's Snipe. Vigors lent a skin for later editions of Thomas Bewick's 'History of British Birds'.
Vigors succeeded to his father's estate in 1828. He was MP for the borough of Carlow from 1832 until 1835. He briefly represented the constituency of County Carlow in 1835. Vigors won a by-election in 1837 and retained the seat until his death.
Bennett was an English Zoologist and writer. He was the elder brother of the botanist John Joseph Bennett. He was born at Hackney and practiced as a surgeon, but his chief pursuit was always zoology. In 1822 he attempted to establish an entomological society, which later became a zoological society in connection with the Linnean Society. This in turn became the starting point of the Zoological Society of London, of which Bennett was Secretary from 1831-1836.
His works included 'The Tower Menagerie' (1829) and 'The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society (1831). He also wrote, in conjunction with G. T. Lay, the section of Fishes in the 'Zoology of Beechey's Voyage' (1839). In 1835 he described a new species of African crocodile, Mecistops leptorhynchus, the validity of which was confirmed in 2018.