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John Hellins Entomologist

John Hellins ca1829-1887 was an entomologist and clerk in holy orders, well known in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for his work on the early stages (eggs, larvae and pupae) of the butterflies and moths of Great Britain. He was the grandson of John Hellins (17||| - 1827) the astronomer.

Life

Hellins was born in Bow, Devon in 1829 or 1830, the son of William Brock Hellins, a prison chaplain and his wife Elizabeth. He attended the University of Oxford by holding the post of a bible scholar at All Souls College (ca 1851), becoming an ordained Church of England priest, and taking up the post of Chaplain to Exeter Prison (Devon) around 1860. He married Eleanor Gard in 1857; they had two daughter and a son. He left the service of the prison after around twenty years, and took up a post as "clergyman without care of souls" at Exeter Cathedral. He died in Exeter in 1877.

Entomological work