James John Joicey was an amateur entomologist who assembled a massive collection of Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

 in a private museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 called the Hill Museum.

A wealthy man of leisure he first competed with Walter Rothschild

Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild

Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild FRS , a scion of the Rothschild family, was a British banker, politician, and zoologist.-Biography:...

, attempting to build the world's premier orchid collection. He went bankrupt for the then very large sum of 30,000 pounds. The judge made him promise to abandon collecting orchids. Instead Joicey switched to Lepidoptera, founding the Hill Museum at his home. He began by acquiring the Henley Grose-Smith

Henley Grose-Smith

Henley Grose-Smith was an English entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera.Grose-Smith described many new taxa of butterflies from his own collections and those of Walter Rothschild. His collections were sold to James John Joicey in 1910...

 collection in 1910. Three years later he purchased the Herbert Druce

Herbert Druce

Herbert Druce, FLS was a British entomologist.His collections were acquired by Frederick DuCane Godman and Osbert Salvin before being bequeathed to the Natural History Museum, London....

 collection. Between 1913 and 1921 Joicey bought further collections, those of Roland Trimen

Roland Trimen

Roland Trimen FRS was a British-South African entomologist, best-known for South African Butterflies , a collaborative work with Colonel James Henry Bowker....

, 1916, Robert Swinhoe

Robert Swinhoe

Robert Swinhoe FRS , was an English naturalist who worked as a Consul in Formosa. He discovered many Southeast Asian birds and several, such as Swinhoe's Pheasant, are named after him.-Biography:...

, 1916, Lt.-Col. C. G. Nurse, 1919, Hamilton Druce, 1919 and Dognin 1921. He added to these by sending special collectors to explore various regions on his behalf, for example, the Pratt brothers to South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 and New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, and T. A. Barns to Central Africa

Central Africa

Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....

. By 1930 the Hill Museum contained upwards of 380,000 specimens. Joicey employed curators, such as George Talbot

George Talbot (entomologist)

George Talbot was an English entomologist who specialised in butterflies.Talbot was first employed by the wealthy amateur butterfly collector Herbert Adams, then by the insect dealer W.F.M.Rosenberg and then as curator of Joicey's collection at the Hill Museum...

, who published on world Lepidoptera, concentrating on New Guinea, Hainan Island, and central and eastern Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. He published four volumes of the Bulletin of the Hill Museum, 1931-1932.

A Catalogue of the Type Specimens of Lepidoptera Rhopalocera in the Hill Museum was published by A. G. Gabriel in 1932.

Joicey went bankrupt again in the 1930s for over 300,000 pounds, and his collection was given to the Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

 in London. The Joicey, Oberthuer and Rothschild collections are the reason that the Natural History Museum enjoys such numerical superiority over other collections throughout the world.

Works

Partial list

with George Talbot

George Talbot (entomologist)

George Talbot was an English entomologist who specialised in butterflies.Talbot was first employed by the wealthy amateur butterfly collector Herbert Adams, then by the insect dealer W.F.M.Rosenberg and then as curator of Joicey's collection at the Hill Museum...

• New Lepidoptera from the Schouten Islands. Trans. Entomol. Soc. Lond. 64(1): 65-83 pls 3-6 (1916).
• New Heterocera from Dutch New Guinea. Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist (8)20: 50-87, pls 1-4 (1917).
• New Lepidoptera from Waigeu, Dutch New Guinea and Biak. Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (8)20: 216-229 (1917)
• New forms of Indo-Australian butterflies. Bull. Hill Mus. 1(3): 565-569 (1924)
• New forms of Lepidoptera Rhopalocera. Encycl. Entomol. (B III Lepidoptera)2: 1-14 (1926)
• New forms of Rhopalocera in the Hill Museum. Bull. Hill Mus. 2(1): 19-27 (1928)