British doctor of medicine, naturalist and colonial officer. Stanger was the first Surveyor-General of the British colony of Natal and participated in the British Niger Expedition of 1841. The cycad Stangeria T.Moore is named for him.
William Stanger was born at Tydd St. Mary, just outside Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He qualified in medicine in Edinburgh and married Sarah Hursthouse in Lowestoft in 1842, with whom he would have four children. After his degree, Stanger visited Australia before setting up a medical practice in London. It was not long after this that he was recruited to the ill-fated Niger Expedition by virtue of his reputation as a natural historian. Although he was one of the few in the party who did not succumb to a fatal fever while exploring the Niger river, on his return he was wracked with tropical diseases, and disappointed with the poor scientific harvest from the costly journey.
Interestingly, Stanger was happy to travel back to Africa, accepting the position of Surveyor-General of the new British colony of Natal in 1847. As well as performing diligently in this role, he managed to make observations on the flora and fauna and gather natural history collections. Among the plants he amassed was the unusual cycad now named Stangeria, first described in the 1830s by Kunze from a sterile specimen, and misidentified as a fern. Stanger sent a live plant to England, which produced cones in 1851, revealing its true identity. Thomas Moore subsequently named it Stangeria paradoxa (Baillard later resurrected Kunze's specific name eriopus). The Stangeriaceae family was coined for Stangeria, which has been joined in the family by the Australian genus Bowenia (though it is also suggested this genus should have its own family).
After several years' service in South Africa, Stanger died in Durban, aged 45. The New York Times described the event thus: "Dr. Stanger ... seems to have fallen victim to an ill-judged application of the so-called hydropathic treatment. He had travelled from Maritzburg to Port Natal on horseback, and in order to relieve the fatigue he felt, was induced to submit to the application of the "wetsheet". The next day inflammation of the lungs took place, which carried him off in one week." His body was returned to England and he was buried close to his birthplace in Lincolnshire.
The town Stanger on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal was named after Stanger in 1873. Famous for being the place of Shaka Zulu's assassination, the town now bears the Zulu name KwaDukuza. Some anthropological artefacts Stanger collected in South Africa and Madagascar are in the collection of Wisbech Museum in Cambridgeshire.
Sources:
Anon., 1854, American Journal of Science, II, 20: 392-393.
