Thomas Slapp Leacock, was a British entomologist and businessman, descendant of John Leacock, who arrived in Madeira in 1741, at the age of 15 to join “Catanach and Murdoch”, wine traders. Later, he became a partner of George Spence (1758) and Michael Nowlan (1759), assuming a leading position in the upbringing of the trade in the sequence of a severe crisis caused by two vineyard diseases: Mangra (Oidium tuckeri) in 1851, and Filoxera (Phylloxera vastatrix) in 1872.
In his vineyard in Alto do Pico de São João, he developed a thorough scientific research to find a treatment for phylloxera, synthesizing a method that proved to be very effective in eradicating the louse from the vine leaf (at the time a worldwide problem). This treatment not only saved his production, but also the entire Madeira wine industry. He sent his research results to the University of Cambridge.
Credits: Madeira Photography Museum - Atelier Vicente’s Photographia Vicente.
Photographia Vicente
12 x 9 cm | Simple negative, glass | Gelatin-silver print VIC / 21486