Professor Tigay Seeks Help Tracing 19th-Century Doctor

BURTON MAIL (UNITED KINGDOM) -- An American university professor has reissued an appeal for help in finding information on a man from Burton. Chanan Tigay is a professor at San Francisco State University in the USA and is seeking information on Philip Brookes Mason who lived in the town from his birth in 1842 until his death in 1903. Philip Brookes Mason, a physician, worked out of Trent House in Bridge Street for 35 years and was the town's first magistrate, and was a three-times president of the Burton Natural History and Archaeological Society. He amassed such an enormous herbarium and collection of stuffed birds, among other things, that he opened his own personal museum out of Trent Terrace. That collection eventually went to the Burton Town Museum, and from there was dispersed through the U.K. “I’m doing a research on these prominent 19th-century Burtonians and am eager to speak with any of their living relatives and/or descendants as part of my work,” Tigay says.