William Monad Crawford

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William Monad Crawford ( 18721941) was an Irish colonial civil servant in India and entomologist.

Plate from Edmund Reitter's Die Käfer des Deutschen Reiches a work owned by Crawford
Plate from Edmund Reitter's Die Käfer des Deutschen Reiches a work owned by Crawford

William Monad Crawford's father was a wealthy linen manufacturer. He was born in Paris, living there until he was sixteen when the family returned to Ireland. He served in the Indian Civil Service from 1895 to 1919,in which year he returned to Ireland in 1919 to live in Belfast. After 1919 he undertook various contracts for the Dunlop Tyre Company mainly in Burma. During his years in India and Burma Crawford collected Lepidoptera.

Between 1921 and his death, Crawford was a prolific author of notes on Irish insects. His main interests were Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. Many of his notes concerned migrant moths and butterflies and he documented the occurrences of several rare hawkmoths including the only N. Ireland record of the Silver-striped Hawkmoth. He discovered the Small Eggar in Fermanagh in 1928. He also amassed a large collection of Irish Coleoptera. He specialised in the Dytiscidae

His extensive collection of butterflies from the Indian sub-continent is in the Ulster Museum, Belfast. His beetle collection, merged with that of William Frederick Johnson is in the same repository.

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