Blissett, Henry Frederick

Commissary Henry Frederick Blissett was a well-known British Army colonial officer. In the 1870s, his family lived in Westbourne, a village near Emsworth on the Sussex-Hampshire border. This was also when his military career in West Africa reached its height. Blissett worked as a Deputy Commissary in the British Army Service Corps and managed important supplies and transport on the Gold Coast, now Ghana, under Commander John Hawley Glover. His successful work during the Ashanti operations earned him the title of Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1874 Birthday Honours. While stationed in West Africa in the 1870s and 1880s, Blissett also collected natural history specimens. His name lives on in science, as the Red-cheeked Wattle-eye, a bird from the West African rainforest, is named Platysteira blissetti (or Dyaphorophyia blissetti) in his honour.