Stuart Oliver Ridley

Stuart Oliver Ridley (1853–1935) was an English cleric and zoologist. Early life He was born in 1853, the son of the Rev. Oliver Matthew Ridley and his first wife Laura Pole Stuart (died 1858), daughter of Sir William Stuart; Henry Nicholas Ridley was a younger brother. For the first years of his life his father was rector of West Harling in Norfolk, moving to Cobham, Kent in 1860. He was educated at Haileybury College. Ridley matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1872. He moved in 1873 to Exeter College, where he graduated B.A. in 1875 (1st class in Natural Sciences), M.A. in 1881. He also studied under Ernst Haeckel. He taught at Friars School, Bangor, and worked in 1878 at the British Museum as an assistant. Clerical career In 1887 Ridley was ordained deacon, and in 1888 priest at Carlisle. He was a curate at Maryport 1887 to 1890, then at Wareham, Dorset 1891 to 1895. He was curate at Milborne Port in Somerset 1895 to 1897, where he gave a magic lantern talk on the voyage of HMS Challenger; and was vicar of Staverton, Wiltshire from 1897 to 1905. At Milborne Port and Staverton, his parish work was supported by his sister Miss Ridley. He had two sisters, of his father's first marriage, one of whom was a deaconess of the Church of England. Miss Ridley, described as "sister of the well-known Singapore botanist" (i.e. Henry Nicholas Ridley), was a botanist, and resided for a time in the Peppard ward of Reading, Berkshire, where she was in 1910.