Peter Chalmers Mitchell
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Early life
Peter Chalmers Mitchell was the son of the Rev. Alexander Mitchell, a Presbyterian minister in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Marion Chalmers. Mitchell gained an MA at the University of Aberdeen, and moved to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read for natural science, specialising in zoology. After success in the honours examination of 1888, he was appointed University Demonstrator in Zoology.
In 1896, he was the anonymous author of an article in the Saturday Review entitled "A Biological View of English Foreign Policy" which proposed the inevitability of a final battle between Britain and Germany, in which one would have to be destroyed. (Having acknowledged his authorship during World War I, he still declared himself "unrepentant" about it in a letter to The Times in May 1939, describing the article as "prophetic").
In April 1916, now an army Captain, he was responsible for setting up a specialist department MI7(B)4 to oversee the production of military propaganda to be dropped from the air over enemy lines.
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Zoo
Despite a tenure of 32 years, Mitchell was not the longest-serving Secretary of the Zoological Society. His predecessor, Philip Lutley Sclater, had been in office over forty years, from 1860 to 1902. Mitchell was succeeded by Julian Huxley.
Mitchell's brainchild, Whipsnade Park, was opened in 1931 on the Dunstable Downs, in the heart of Bedfordshire. Whipsnade is an open air zoo in the countryside, where animals occupy large enclosures rather than cages. The park is involved in a variety of conservation activities.
In 1933 he was one of eleven people involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), an organisation for the study of birds in the British Isles.
Lectures
In 1911, Mitchell delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Childhood of Animals.
In February 1915, Mitchell gave three lectures on the subject of evolution and foreign policy at the Royal Institution that expanded upon his 1896 article. These were combined and published in the form of a book entitled Evolution and the War in May 1915.
Málaga
On retiring from the zoo, Mitchell moved to Málaga, staying there during the first six months or so of the Spanish Civil War, until the city was taken on behalf of the rebels by Italian troops. An account of his last days in Málaga, including his arrest along with Arthur Koestler, is included in Koestler's book Spanish Testament and in Mitchell's own memoir, My House in Málaga, published in 1938.
Politics
Mitchell stood as an independent candidate at the 1938 Combined Scottish Universities by-election, but took last position, with 13.5% of the votes cast.
Death
Mitchell died on 2 July 1945, aged 80, after being injured in an accident on 29 June outside the London Zoo. After stepping off a bus, he was struck by a taxicab. A jury ruled the death accidental.
Legacy
A species of South American worm lizard, Amphisbaena mitchelli, is named in his honour. He also proved, in a now classic treatise, namely, “On the Intestinal Tract of Mammals,” that the caecum of Mammals is directly homologous with the paired caeca of Birds; that is to say, a pair being the original state.