Ethel Frances Chawner

Ethel Frances Chawner (1866-1953) was an English entomologist with an interest mainly in sawflies and Hymenoptera. She was a lifelong member of the Entomological Society of London, and was employed by John Spedan Lewis from 1927 to her death in 1953 as the curator of his collections.^[1]

From the death of her father in 1888 up until the death of her mother and her hiring by John Spedan Lewis in 1927, she lived in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, and many of her works focused on the New Forest.^[1][2] In 1894, John William Yerbury visited her and her brother, Laurence Chaloner Chawner, and looked at their insect collections. He noted that they each had good collections, but both were unlabelled. She was skilled at rearing sawfly larvae. At the time, she was 28 and her brother was 16. He again visited twice in April 1896, leaving Ethel with a box of Hymenoptera specimens.^[1]

In 1901, Francis David Morice exhibited specimens of Hedychrum rutilans and Salius propinquus collected by Chawner, both new introductions to the British list at the time.^[3] She recorded multiple species of beetles in her birth county of Surrey.^[4]

Ethel Frances Chawner was born in Surrey, England in 1866. Her father, Charles Fox Chawner, was rector of St. Mary's Bletchingly, and after his death in 1888 the family moved to Lyndhurst.^[1] Chawner's brother.^[1] and uncle^[5] had both taken interest in entomology, her brother in diptera, and her uncle, Edward Chawner, reportedly in lepidoptera. She believed her uncle may have been Captain Chawner, a British Crimean War figure^[5]