G. Kenneth Whitehead, 1913-2004

George Kenneth Whitehead, who used the name Kenneth Whitehead, was born on 16 May 1913, the son of Percy Kay Whitehead and Dorothy Myrtle Whitehead. He was educated at Uppingham School and as a boy was an enthusiastic naturalist, keeping a variety of pets in the house. It was his uncle who in 1930 introduced him to what became a lifelong passion, the study and stalking of deer. He was an accomplished footballer and tennis player and played in goal at amateur level for England on several occasions. Kenneth Whitehead was commissioned in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War, reaching the rank of major and serving in light anti-aircraft batteries in Britain and Ghana. In the late 1940s he began collecting information on the deer stalking season. He produced an annual series of articles for Shooting Times which only ended with his death in 2004. The correspondence and survey forms generated by this project form an important part of his papers. He published some 14 books and innumerable articles on deer and also wrote on goats, wild cattle and sheep. His major works included The Whitehead encyclopedia of deer, The deer of Great Britain and Ireland, Deer of the world and Half a century of Scottish deer stalking . His last work From stags to stamps or Deer in philately remains unpublished.

The collection holds a wide range of working papers for these publications as well as files of letters to The Field, Country Life, Sporting Times and other publications. Widely acknowledged as a world authority on cervidae he worked to ban the use of shotguns in hunting deer, a practice that he considered inflicted unnecessary suffering and which was made illegal with the passage of the 1963 Deer Act. He was active in advising many conservation organisations, was a founder member of the British Deer Society and made several films about deer in Great Britain and New Zealand. Whitehead was a dedicated but discriminating hunter and shot game throughout the world, including Morocco, Ghana, the United States, Canada, Germany, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. Many of these trips are recorded in his diaries and correspondence. He was a conscientious letter writer and his correspondence files reflect this communication with his many friends in the world of hunting and conservation. He served as a judge of deer antlers for the Boone and Crockett Club and the St. Hubert Club of Great Britain and also sat on the hunting trophy commission of the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation. He was a member of the IUCN/SSC Deer Specialist Group and served as adviser to the Dukes of Bedford on the culling of the rare deer species at Woburn Abbey.

In 1947 Kenneth Whitehead became manager of the Wiggins Teape paper mill at Withnell Fold near Bolton in Lancashire and acquired the manager's house there after the mill closed in the late 1960s. He lived at Withnell Fold until his death. He married Nancy Constance Bagot, widow of Caryl Ernest Bagot, Lord Bagot of Bagot's Bromley in 1965. There were no children of this marriage which was dissolved in 1972. On retirement he worked for the Forestry Commission as a deer stalker and was also active in other deer control organisations in Lancashire and Cumbria. Throughout his life he collected heads and skeletons of all species of deer as well as a huge range of material bearing representations of deer; these included porcelain, treen, china, bone and horn items, pipes, pottery figurines, prints, paintings, and stamps. Described in his obituary in The Times as a private man with a wicked sense of humour and a consummate deer stalker and crack shot, Kenneth Whitehead died on 9 June 2004.

From the guide to the Whitehead Collection, predominantly 20th century, (Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections)