Francis Day

Francis Day CIE (2 March 1829 – 10 July 1889) was an army surgeon and naturalist in the Madras Presidency who later became the Inspector-General of Fisheries in India and Burma. A pioneer ichthyologist, he described more than three hundred fishes in the two volume work on The Fishes of India. He also wrote the fish volumes of the Fauna of British India series. He was also responsible for the introduction of trout into the Nilgiri hills, for which he received a medal from the French Societe d'Acclimatation. Many of his fish specimens are distributed across museums with only a small fraction deposited in the British Museum (Natural History Museum, London), an anomaly caused by a prolonged conflict with Albert Günther, the keeper of zoology there.

Life

Day was born in Maresfield, East Sussex, the third son of William and Ann Day. The family estate included two thousand acres with forty tenant farmers during his childhood. William Day was interest in geology, an interest he had inherited from his father, also a William Day who was draper in London who later took to studying and painting minerals and rocks. One of Francis' older brothers took an interest in geology and worked along with Adam Sedgwick. Francis studied at Shrewsbury School under a Dr Kennedy. Taking an interest in medicine, he joined St. George's Hospital in 1849 where he studied under Henry Day, with Francis Trevelyan Buckland as a classmate. He received the MRCS in 1851 and joined as Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Army, British East India Company, in 1852.

Francis Day (artist)

James Francis Day (1863–1942), generally known as Francis Day, was an American artist, whose paintings may be found in many private and public collections, largely in the United States.

He was born in LeRoy, New York and studied at New York's Art Students League and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Ernest Herbert and Luc-Oliver Merson.. He specialized in painting family scenes.

He was a member of the Salmagundi Club, the Society of American Artists, and an associate of the National Academy of Design. He married Mary Evelyn Smith in 1887 then moved to New York City. They moved to Nutley, New Jersey in 1890 and returned to New York by 1905. About 1912 they moved to Massachusetts.

A number of his paintings have been offered for sale by auction in recent years, including Light of Love (Butterfields 1999), Woman with a Harp (Phillips of New York, 2000), and The Critic (Sotheby's of New York, 2004), the last named being a well-known painting, whose 'critic' is in fact a small girl listening to her mother playing the piano.

Francis Day (Madras)

Francis Day (1605–1673) was an English colonial administrator, associated with the East India Company. He served as a factor of the Company's factory at Masulipatnam from 1632 to 1639. In 1639, he negotiated the purchase of a strip of land south of the Dutch factory at Pulicat from the Raja of Chandragiri, where the town of Madras was built. He served as the second Agent of Madras from 1643 to 1644. Along with Andrew Cogan, he is regarded as the founder of Madras.

Early life

Francis Day was born to William Day of Bray and his wife Helen Wentworth, the daughter of a member of the House of Commons. He is believed to be the grandson of William Day, who was appointed Bishop of Winchester in 1595. Francis completed his education from Eton College and joined the services of the East India Company in 1632.

Purchase of Madras

In 1637, Francis Day, then a member of the Masulipatnam Council and Chief of the Armagon Factory, undertook a voyage of exploration down the Coromandel Coast, as far as Pondicherry. At that time, the Coromandel Coast was ruled by the Raja of Chandragiri through a local chief or Nayak, Damarla Venkatappa Nayak, who ruled the coast from Pulicat up to Santhome. He had his seat at Wandiwash and his brother, Ayyappa Nayak resided at Poonamallee.