James Aspinall Turner (1797 – 28 September 1867) was a British businessman, entomologist and Whig politician.
He was the son of John Turner of Mayfield, near Bolton, and his wife, Elizabeth Aspinall of Liverpool.Obituary, The Gentleman's Magazine, 28 September 1867. He was a descendant of John Turner who had fought against the Old Pretender in 1715.Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society 1867.
Turner was a prominent cotton manufacturer and merchant in Manchester and was elected to membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 29 April 1836Complete List of the Members & Officers of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society. From its institution on February 28th 1781 to April, 1896.
He made his home at Pendlebury Hall and was a magistrate and deputy lieutenant of Lancashire. In 1845, he formed the Manchester Commercial Association. The association, of which he was president, was a protectionist body that broke away from the pro-free trade Manchester Chamber of Commerce.John Skinner, The Liberal Nomination Controversy in Manchester, 1847, in Historical Research, Vol.55, Issue 132, 2007.
In the mid-nineteenth century the parliamentary borough of Manchester was represented by two Radical members of parliament, John Bright and Thomas Milner Gibson. In order to unseat them the Conservative Party stood aside at the 1857 general election and Turner and John Potter were elected as "Palmerstonian Whigs".George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright, London, 1913 In 1858 he was appointed a member of the royal commission on army clothing. He stood down from parliament at the 1865 general election.
Apart from his business and political activities, Turner was a renowned entomologist. He founded the Manchester Field Naturalist Club, and was a member of the Royal Entomological Society. He was chairman of the committee of Manchester New College (now Harris Manchester College, Oxford) from 1840 to 1852.Barbara Smith (ed.), Truth, Liberty, Religion: Essays celebrating Two Hundred Years of Manchester College (Oxford, 1986), p. 316
J A Turner died in London in September 1867, aged 70.
Legacy Turner is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of African gecko, Chondrodactylus turneri.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Turner, J.A.", p. 269).
Wrote "Remarks on the Linnaean Order of Insects" in 1827. See Canadian Entomologist, 1926, Vol. 58 #12, pg. 287 for review of book by Weiss.
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