Bingham, Charles Thomas (1848-1908)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Charles Thomas Bingham (April 16, 1848 Ireland – October 18, 1908 West Kensington, London) was an Irish military officer and entomologist.

Bingham’s military career began in India where he was a soldier in the Bombay Staff Corps and later with the Bengal Staff Corps. At first interested in ornithology he took up entomology from 1877 following a posting to Burma where he was also Conservator of Forests.

On his retirement in 1894 he settled with his wife and two sons, (his three daughters married in India), in London. Here he worked, unpaid, in the “Insect Room” of the Natural History Museum, organising and cataloguing the world collection of Aculeate Hymenoptera. He took over from William Thomas Blanford the editorship of two of the Hymenoptera volumes of the Fauna of British India series and two of the butterfly volumes.

He was elected a Fellow of the Entomological Society of London in 1895 and was a member of its council 1903-1906. In the same year he became a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.

PUBLICATIONS

 * Bingham, C. T. 1903. The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Hymenoptera, Vol. II. Ants and Cuckoo-wasps. London: Taylor and Francis, 506 pp.