Joseph Whitaker (ornithologist)


Joseph Isaac Spadafora Whitaker was a Sicilian-English ornithologist, archaeologist and sportsman. He is mainly known for his work on the birds of Tunisia, and for being involved in the foundation of the Sicilian football club US Città di Palermo.

Biography

Whitaker's family came from Huddersfield in west Yorkshire. His forebears were wealthy 19th-century business tycoons who had developed the fortified wine industry in Marsala, Sicily. During 1806, members of the Whitaker family had moved to Sicily permanently.

Inheritance of the Vineyard Empire

He inherited vast vineyards and his great grandfather Ingham's banking empire. Choosing Palermo over the more provincial Marsala, he built the Villa Malfitano, an Italian Art Nouveau mansion near Zisa Castle on the Via Dante after his marriage to Tina Scalia. Tina was the daughter of General Alfonso Scalia who landed in Sicily with Giuseppe Garibaldi during the years leading up to the Risorgimento. They had two daughters; the elder of which married General Antonio Di Giorgio an Italian Minister of War. Thus the family was firmly established in the upper echelons of Italian Society.
In these years, the Belle Époque age, the house was the venue for lavish parties attended by British and Italian royalty and celebrated European society. Tina Whitaker knew Richard Wagner, Benito Mussolini, the Kaiser and Edward VII, Empress Eugenie and Queen Mary. Attracted by homosexual company, she unwittingly found herself in a circle involved in the Irish Crown Jewels scandal.
Whitaker himself was founder and president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at Palermo, and also he was a major figure in the foundation of US Città di Palermo in the later 1880s, becoming the first president of the football club.

Birds

In 1891 already a very keen ornithologist Whitaker joined the British Ornithologists' Union.
Collecting expeditions to Tunisia followed. These extended over a period of ten years. Notebooks kept at the time contain information on the natural history of the birds as well as other fauna and also the flora of Tunisia.
The Tunisian bird and bird nest and egg collection was housed in a villa in the grounds of his home "Malfitano" alongside a very complete collection of Sicilian birds and collections made on his behalf by Edward Dobson in Morocco. To these were added specimens of birds from the Mediterranean littoral.
Some of Whitaker's collection of Tunisian birds are in the Natural History Museum, London. The Sicilian birds are divided between the Royal Scottish Museum and the Ulster Museum.

Gallery of Birds in the Whitaker Collection

Archaeology

Whitaker devoted the last years of his life to archaeology, purchasing the island of Motya near Trapani the site of a Phoenician town founded in the eighth century BC. He wrote a book on his excavations in 1921. The site may be explored using the Motya link.

Works