John Romer (1920-1981): A List of Publications from before and during his life in Hong Kong on reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fleas and bird strikes

I have written several times (here and here) on John Dudley Romer (1920-1981) the doyen of herpetology in Hong Kong. Romer’s full-time job was head of pest control for the Hong Kong government. After his death his papers were deposited in the library of the Zoological Society of London. The last time I was there I did not have time to see what that Romer archive held. Then Jack Greatrex of the Department of History in the University of Hong Kong contacted me. As part of his research on the history of pest control he was going to be in London and offered to send me his gleanings from the ZSL library. I of course accepted gratefully and Jack, now at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, sent me copies of a wealth of material, including a curriculum vitae from around 1979, the time of Romer’s retirement from Hong Kong, and his earlier notebook which included a list of his popular and scientific publications. The list of publications in his CV specifically excludes popular publications. I have used these two sources as the basis of a complete list of John Romer’s publications across all spheres of his activities from 1938 until a posthumous new edition in 1983. A few more publications came to light in searches online but it is possible that further popular publications in newspapers and magazines remain to be found. Some of the detail, like page numbers, is incomplete. A further visit to the ZSL library is needed in order to fill in nearly all of that missing information (marked in red below) but if anybody can help in the meantime I would be most grateful. I do appreciate that not many people are likely to have the Indian Army Ordnance Corps Gazette on their bookshelf.

The List can be downloaded as a pdf on the DOWNLOADS page.