William Roscoe

William Roscoe (1753-1831) was born at Mt. Pleasant, Liverpool, and became well known as a literary scholar and art historian. He also possessed a keen interest in botany, specializing in the study of one particular group of plants, the Scitamineae.  Regarding this species, he was “the first to bring order out of chaos”; as a result, a new order of plants was named after him—Roscoe. Roscoe published his researches in Monandrian Plants of the Order Scitamineae (1828). He was one of the founders of the Liverpool Botanic Gardens in 1802 and was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1804. Roscoe was also actively involved in the radical politics of the 1790s, maintaining an ardent opposition to the slave trade. He served one year as an M.P. for Liverpool in 1806. He was also one of the founders of the Athenaeum, the Library, and the Royal Institution at Liverpool. He died at Toxteth Park, Liverpool, in 1831. He and Carey corresponded about plants and other matters for a number of years. Their letters, written between 1820 and 1827, can be found in the Liverpool Public Library; copies can also be found in the S. Pearce Carey Collection at the Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. See H. Stanfield, Handbook and Guide to the Herbarium Collection in the Public Museums, Liverpool (Liverpool: The Museum, 1935) 59; Farrer, William Carey: Missionary and Botanist, 92.