Theresa Clay

Theresa Rachel "Tess" Clay (7 February 1911 – 17 March 1995) was an English entomologist. She was introduced to zoology by her older relative, the ornithologist and adventurer Richard Meinertzhagen, with whom she had an unusually close relationship. She became the world's expert on Mallophaga, or chewing lice; however, her work is cast into question by her suspected role in Meinertzhagen's many scientific frauds. During and immediately after World War II, she worked with Victor Rothschild at MI5. Early life and family Clay was born on 7 February 1911, to Sir George Felix Neville Clay, 5th Baronet, one of the Clay Baronets, and Rachel Hobhouse Clay. Clay had four siblings, older sisters Margaret and Janet, older brother Henry, and younger brother Anthony. Clay's family lived at No. 18 Kensington Park Gardens, Notting Hill, London, and she attended at St Paul's Girls' School. Relationship with Richard Meinertzhagen When Clay was eleven years old, her first cousin once-removed, or "uncle", Richard Meinertzhagen, came to live in the house beside her family's, No. 17 Kensington Park Gardens. Meinertzhagen was a prominent ornithologist and a genuinely distinguished soldier, but he was also a "colossal fraud", who stole bird specimens and described spurious species from them, and invented and embellished military exploits. He kept typed loose-leaf diaries, a system which allowed him to rewrite his diaries and pass off his retrospective diary entries as authentic. Later he was to write in his diaries, contradictorily, that he didn't notice Clay and her sisters until they were older; that he felt a mystical bond with her when he first saw her; and that he dreamt of her when she was born.