Ray Hewson

Ray Hewson’s is a remarkable story of someone who came into mainstream science later in life with no particular academic qualifications, but with the essentials for a naturalist; an enquiring mind and an insatiable desire to investigate the natural world.

‘I think I must have been a nasty, snivelling little schoolboy, tending to being solitary and taking to the woods and fields whenever I could. Yorkshire at that time had lots more wildlife than it does now, the agriculture being virtually organic. Birds were my first interest; however, when I was in the Royal Marines during the Second World War I was stationed for a time in Orkney. I published my first paper on Orkney voles in the Northwest Naturalist in 1948. After the war I met Alfred Hazelwood of Bolton Museum and he taught me to skin mammals.

Having tried his hand as a farm labourer, Ray applied for a job in the Customs and Excise and after training in several breweries in the north of England, was sent on a series of short-term postings all over the country with the advice ‘Now lad, thee stay out of breweries, you know nought about them!’
While inspecting ships’ cargoes in the Port of London he spotted lots of dead brown hares being sold at Smithfield Market and, as inquisitive as ever, he began to study their moult patterns – the pattern of black or grey markings on the skins of mammals which indicates the areas where they are about to shed their fur.