Naturalist
p. 33 · Read in the full issue
Death of Fiji Naturalist Mrs. H. B. R. Parham
Prom Our Own Correspondent
Suva, Dec. 28.
1%/fRS. H. B. R. PARHAM, who died in 1?1 Suva on December 17, at the age of 85 was a writer, naturalist, tra veller and late-Victorian gentlewoman with a pioneering spirit.
Helena Beatrice Richenda Parham, widow of Charles John Parham, was born in London of Devonshire parents. In her early thirties, at a time when women
were only begin ning to break down the barriers or prejudice against their entry into the commercial and professional worlds, she had not only published several novels, but had established an office in Fleet Street for running a magazine called “Ideas.” She wrote under the pseudonym o f Haine Whyte.
She met her husband, a Can adian mining and electrical en
gineer, while on her way to South Africa on a journalistic commission. They were married at Bloemfontein, in 1897.
Ten years later the family moved to New Zealand and. in the next 14 years, Mrs. Parham found time to continue her literary and botanical work as well as to act as secretary to various mining in terests. (In South Africa Mr. and Mrs.
Parham had been associated with the early development of the Witwatersrand goldfields.) By 1921 the family had moved to Fiji, where they established a plantation at Rukuruku Bay, in Bau Province, Vanua Levu. Mr. Parham died in 1926, and his widow moved to Suva, where she has lived ever since.
Mrs. Parham’s studies of plant-life, particularly in Fiji, were of exceptional value. Her botanical collections went mainly to Kew and Harvard, and in 1939 her work was recognised by the naming of a Fijian orchid jn her honour.
In 1943, when over 80 years of age, she contributed a paper on Fijian plants to the Journal of the Polynesian Society.
She was a foundation member of the Fiji Society of Science and Industry. She was an occasional, valued contributor to the “Pacific Islands Monthly.”
Of five children, three Mr. B. E. V.
Parham and the Misses Beatrice and Helena Parham survive. All are resi dents of Suva.
Mrs. Parham.