De la Beche, Henry Thomas (1796–1855), geologist, illustrator, and founder of the geological survey of Great Britain and Ireland, was born 10 February 1796 at 21 Wimpole St., London, the only son of Thomas De la Beche, lieutenant-colonel in the Norfolk fencible cavalry regiment, and his wife Elizabeth. His father claimed descent from one of the knights of William the Conqueror. In 1800 his father took the family to Jamaica to visit the estate he had inherited, but died there the following year. Henry returned to England and, after an early education at a number of schools, entered the Royal Military College in Marlow (1809), where his later skills in geology and sketching were initiated by a curriculum which included topography, surveying, geography, and perspective landscape drawing. Two years later (1811) his formal education ended as he was expelled from the college for insubordination. He returned to Lyme Regis, where he made the acquaintance of the Anning family, who made their living collecting and selling fossils from the area. Mary Anning was reputedly the subject of the ditty ‘She sells sea shells on the sea shore’.
For the next few years he devoted himself to his personal scientific interests. Supported by the income from Jamaica he toured England, Scotland, and the Continent as a gentleman scientist, making observations and detailed sketches on geological and other phenomena, and making contact with European scientists. He submitted his observations to the Geological Society and was elected FGS (1817) and FRS (1819).
In 1823 he sailed again to Jamaica to visit his estate during disturbances in the colony, which threatened his financial security. Slavery had been outlawed in England and many of his friends regarded it unfavourably. However, he was financially dependent on such a system, but tried to improve the lot of his slaves, abolishing the use of the whip in the fields and procuring the services of missionaries for their education. His paper Remarks on the geology of Jamaica (1827) was the first modern account of the geology of the island, and he became the accepted authority on Jamaican scientific data. From 1827 to 1829 he again travelled in Europe, touring France, Italy, and Switzerland, and in 1831 he coordinated his lifetime's observations in a Manual of geology, his most successful work, which went to three English editions, as well as French, German, and American. That same year (1831) a rebellion among Jamaican slaves and changing trade patterns reduced his income and made him look to new sources to finance his geological interests.
In 1832 he received the support of the ordnance survey to complete a geological map of Devon. Thus began an association with that body which culminated in his appointment as head and sole geologist of a new geological survey of England and Wales in 1835, under the aegis of the ordnance survey directed by Col. Thomas F. Colby (qv). In 1838 he served with others on a commission to find the most suitable stone for building new houses of parliament (the old buildings having been destroyed by fire in 1834). When built, they were roofed with slate from Valencia Island, Co. Kerry. He also established and became director (1841) of the Museum of Economic Geology, London, and in 1842 received a knighthood for his part in completing twenty one-inch geological sheets in England and Wales.
By 1843 Colby was keen to expand the geological survey into an island-wide operation with Capt. Henry James as local director of a new military-controlled geological survey in Ireland, and with De la Beche as the director of the new geological survey of the United Kingdom, which would, however, remain under the control of the ordnance survey. De la Beche had other ambitions: he wanted to remain initially within the ordnance survey, but to gain control over the new Irish geological survey and to have his own man, John Phillips (qv), in charge. If that happened, he hoped then to secure the position as head of a geological survey of the British Isles, independent of the ordnance survey. The situation became complicated by the entry of Richard Griffith (qv) into the fray. He had published the first quarter-inch geological map of Ireland (1839), and said that he could undertake an Irish geological survey at a relatively low cost. However, Griffith lived in Dublin and had few friends in influential positions in London. Of the three contenders De la Beche stood best, having a strong ally and friend in the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel (qv). In the end De la Beche won, gaining control of both Irish and British geological surveys as director general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland (1 April 1845), but with Henry James as the Irish local director, a possible sop to Colby. John Phillips, who was misled (and, some say, misused) by De la Beche, was left with no part to play. The survey was independent of the ordnance authorities but was ultimately controlled by the office of her majesty's woods and forests.
De la Beche estimated that a complete geological survey of Ireland, with maps on a scale of six inches to one mile (1:10,560), would take ten years to complete, and he was given an annual grant of £1,500 for this. As general director he divided his time between the British and Irish surveys, with Andrew Crombie Ramsay replacing him as local director in England and Wales. An Irish equivalent of the London Museum of Economic Geology, the Dublin Museum of Economic Geology, was set up with the chemist Robert Kane (qv) as its director. De la Beche is said to have taken his Irish responsibilities seriously, returning regularly to Ireland and personally taking part in field mapping. James resigned his position the following year, being replaced by Thomas Oldham (qv) and then Joseph Beete Jukes (qv).
Outside his official duties De la Beche was an active member of the Geological Society, where he served as secretary, vice-president, and president (1847–9) and was awarded the Wollaston medal (1855). He was also an elected member of the Geological Society of France (1831). As well as portraying his scientific observations he used his sketches and caricatures for humorous comment and destructive criticism on the ideas and theories of his colleagues and of scientists of the time. An ambitious man, who had persuaded the British government of the importance of setting up a national geological survey, he was seen by some as totally motivated by self-interest, and he has been referred to as a wheeler-dealer and an artful dodger. His successor, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, described him as ‘a dirty dog, there is plain English and there is no mincing the matter. I knew him to be a thorough jobber and great intriguer . . . ’ (Davies (1995), 13). His wife (m. 1818), Letitia, daughter of Capt. Charles Whyte of Loughbrickland, Co. Down, requested a legal separation in 1825 on the grounds of his impossible treatment of her. They had one daughter. In 1853 his health began to fail as he became partially paralysed. On the last of his many visits to Ireland in 1854 Ramsay noted that De la Beche's mind was ‘far far gone’ (ibid., 153). He died 13 April 1855 after a stroke at the age of 59. His illegitimate daughter, Rosalie Torre, born when he worked in Devon, was later buried alongside him at Kensal Green, London. He had spent ten years as director-general of the geological survey, the same time he had estimated for the geological mapping of Ireland. However, the mapping was far from complete and it was not until 1890 that the final sheet was published, forty-five years after its initiation. His papers are held in the National Museum of Wales.