Frederick James Quick
Frederick James Quick (22 October 1836 — 21 December 1902) was a wholesale dealer in tea and coffee in the City of London, chairman of the firm Quick, Reed, and Smith.
He left most of his fortune to the University of Cambridge to promote the interests of biology and botany, which led to the establishment in 1906 of the Quick Professorship of Biology.
Early life
Quick was born in London in 1836, the second son of James Carthew Quick, a wholesale coffee dealer. He was educated at Harrow School, from 1851 to 1855, and then at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he arrived in October 1855 and graduated Bachelor of Arts on 29 January 1859. He then studied for the Bar at the Inns of Court, but never practised as a barrister. Finally, he learned farming at St Andrews, and his father bought land for him at Woodmancote, West Sussex.[1][2]
Career
Quick was briefly a partner in a wholesale tea business. In 1869, he was made a partner in the firm of Quick, Reed, and Smith, which had been founded by his father. Becoming the head of the business, he remained in office until his death in 1902.[1] In his business affairs, Quick was far-seeing and shrewd and a good judge of character.[1]
Private life, death, and bequests
Quick never married. He suffered from a horror of being buried alive, and not long before his death he asked one of the Executors of his will, J. W. Williams, to arrange for a surgeon to probe his heart and make sure he was dead. He also left instructions for his remains to be cremated, and these wishes were carried out, with his ashes being buried at the Broadwood Cemetery.[1]
Quick left an estate valued at £70,453,[3] equivalent to £9,555,999 in 2023. He had been greatly interested in biology and botany, and this led him to decide to use his wealth to endow the Frederick James Quick Fund, as "a permanent fund for the promotion of Study and Research in the Sciences of Vegetable and Animal Biology" in the University of Cambridge.[4] This fund was used to establish a new Quick Professorship of Biology, with a focus on the field of protozoology and with George Nuttall being appointed as the first professor in 1906. The full benefit of the bequest was delayed until some life-interests had expired, and at first Nuttall found temporary rooms in the new Cambridge Medical School building, where he established a Quick Laboratory. Later, a purpose-built laboratory was provided.[1]
Notes
- ^ a b c d e George Nuttall, "Frederick James QUICK (1836–1902), a Biographical Note, with portrait" in Parasitology (1922), p. 100
- ^ "QUICK, Frederick James" in John Archibald Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part II, vol. 5 (Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 227
- ^ Wills and Administrations, England and Wales (1903), p. 243
- ^ "The Frederick James Quick Fund" in Joseph Robson Tanner, Historical Register of the University of Cambridge ... to the Year 1910 (University of Cambridge, 1917) p. 285