Hall qualification in 1823, it was not till twenty years later that he became a member of the College of Surgeons. In 1862 he graduated M.D. at St. Andrew's. He early settled at Shelton, Hanley, in Staffordshire, and led a simple life as a medical practitioner till his death on 19 May 1881.
For many years Davis devoted himself to craniology, and gradually collected a museum of skulls and skeletons of various races, nearly all with carefully recorded histories, larger than all the collections in British public museums put together. He spared no time, labour, or money in achieving this object, and was unwearied in his correspondence with travellers, collectors, and residents in foreign lands. In 1856 he commenced, in conjunction with Dr. John Thurnam, the publication of ‘Crania Britannica,’ or delineations and descriptions of the skulls of the early inhabitants of the British Islands, the text in quarto, with many first-rate folio plates in an accompanying atlas. The work was completed in 1865. In 1867 he published a catalogue called ‘Thesaurus Craniorum,’ describing and figuring many specimens, and giving twenty-five thousand careful measurements, with copious bibliographical references. In 1875 his collection had increased so far that a supplement to the ‘Thesaurus’ was published. In 1880 the Royal College of Surgeons purchased the entire collection, which is now available for all students of anthropology.
Among Davis's numerous brief papers, of which a list will be found in the Royal Society's ‘Catalogue of Scientific Papers,’ the most important, perhaps, is his ‘ Contributions towards Determining the Weight of the Brain in Different Races of Man’ (Phil. Trans. 1868, clviii. 505–28). He was elected F.R.S. in 1868. For some years from 1870 he was one of the editors of the ‘Journal of Anthropology,’ and of ‘Anthropologia.’ In 1836 he published a useful ‘Popular Manual of the Art of Preserving Health.’
[Nature, 26 May 1881, obituary notice by Professor Flower.]
DAVIS, LOCKYER (1719–1791), bookseller, was born in 1719, and succeeded to the business of his uncle, Charles Davis (d. 1755) [q. v.], in Holborn, opposite Gray's Inn Gate. He sold by auction like his uncle, and in partnership with Charles Reymers dispersed many libraries between 1757 and 1768; between 1770 and 1790 he sold by himself. Among the legacies of William Bowyer the younger, printer [q. v.], in 1777, was one of 100l. to Davis. He was a member of the ‘congeries,’ or club of booksellers dining monthly at the Shakespeare Tavern, who produced Johnson's ‘Lives of the Poets’ and other books. He was bookseller to the Royal Society, and nominally their printer, and was also a nominal printer of the votes of the House of Commons. Reymers was associated with him in holding the latter office. Davis was a master of the Stationers' Company and an honorary registrar of the Literary Fund, founded in 1790. Nichols speaks of his great knowledge of books and amiable manners. He carried on an extensive business as auctioneer, bookseller, and publisher, and had an excellent commercial reputation (Literary Anecdotes, vi. 436–7). He made some occasional contributions of a light description to the newspapers, particularly the ‘St. James's Chronicle,’ but the only book of which he acknowledged the authorship was ‘a new edition, revised and improved,’ of the ‘Maxims and Moral Reflections, by the Duke de la Rochefoucault,’ a translation first issued in 1749. It was published in 1775, and again in 1781, in 12mo, with a dedication to David Garrick, signed Lockyer Davis. He died suddenly at his house in Holborn 23 April 1791, in his seventy-third year. His wife, Mary, died 9 Nov. 1769, in her forty-eighth year. A tablet to the memory of husband and wife was placed under the organ loft of the church of St. Bartholomew the Great.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 297, iii. 207, 281, 625, 636–40, 646, 759, v. 325, vi. 436–7, ix. 276; Gent. Mag. lxi. pt i. (1791), 390; Timperley's Encyclopædia, pp. 746, 771.]
DAVIS or DAVIES, MARY (fl. 1663–1669), actress, was one of the four leading women whom Sir William D'Avenant [q. v.], in virtue of the patent granted him by Charles II, 21 Aug. 1660, included in his theatrical company and boarded in his own house. Pepys says, 14 Jan. 1667–8: ‘It seems she is a bastard of Colonell Howard, my Lord Berkshire, and that he hath got her for the king.’ Downes [q. v.], speaking of a performance of D'Avenant's play the ‘Rivals’ (probably some five or six years before 1668), says: ‘All the women's parts admirably acted, chiefly Celia [should be Celania], a shepherdess, being mad for love, especially in singing several wild and mad songs, “My Lodgings it (sic) is on the Cold Ground,” &c. She performed that so charmingly that not long after it raised her from her bed on the cold ground to a bed royal’ (Roscius Anglicanus, 23–4). She also played Violinda in the ‘Stepmother’ of Sir Robert Stapylton, 1663; Anne of Burgundy in ‘Henry V,’ by the Earl of Orrery, 13 Aug. 1664; Aurelia in the
