However, he abandoned the order in his mid-thirties to return to secular life, going on to work on the editorial staff of Messrs. Cassell & Co. in London for two decades.

In the mid-1890s he moved, with his wife Anna, into a three-storey terraced house (9, Cavendish Road) in the newly built South Harringay estate in north London, living there for the rest of his life.

It began:[9] "ALTHOUGH the Society did not come into existence till 1826, for some years previous various influences were at work that rendered the establishment of such a body not only desirable but necessary.

Activity in exploration had increased the sum of human knowledge with respect to the animal kingdom; collections of living beasts, birds and reptiles, skins and fossils, were yearly brought to our shores, and a growing desire for information with regard to them was manifested by educated people generally.

"Scherren's history of the ZSL was criticised as inaccurate by John Bastin:[10] There is so much confusion about the origins of the Zoological Society of London...