Bryozoans and corsetry: the palaeontological work of George Robert Vine (1825–1893) of Sheffield

George Robert Vine was a Sheffield-based stay- (corset-) maker and amateur naturalist who also specialized in the study of bryozoans. He was born near Portsmouth into a poor family and received a limited school education. He was largely self-taught and spent a period in his youth engaged in various trades, as well as being active in the movement for social reform. In the 1850s he moved to Ireland to take up employment as a manager of a corset factory, married and had one daughter. He subsequently returned to Britain, where he had further children. He finally settled in Sheffield when he established a business as a stay-maker. His interest in fossils dated from his Irish sojourn and, in the late 1870s, he developed a fascination with Carboniferous foraminifera and bryozoans in particular. He published about 75 papers on bryozoans between 1877 and 1893. In particular, an ambitious series of British Association for the Advancement of Science reports on British fossil and Recent faunas are his most valuable contribution to bryozoological research, and he is principally remembered today as the author of the Order Cryptostomata. With his son, he sold micropalaeontological specimens from his home in order to augment his income. Vineʹs specimens are distinctive and many are now housed in several museums in the United Kingdom.