John Thomas Cockerell (November 1819 – 25 September 1907) was an English collector of specimens for zoölogists, active in Australia sometime between 1865 and 1891.
[2] Cockerell was baptised as John Thomas Atkinson in July 1820 in London, with his mother using the alias Stella.
[3] In reviewing an outlying record of Purpureicephalus spurius (red-capped parrot) at Port Essington, repeated by John Gould and other ornithologists, Birds of Australia gave this caution on Cockerell's specimens.
I have repeatedly indicated the falsity of the Cockerell localities, as had been pointed out by Sharpe previously, and consequently this record is apparently just as false.
[4]The Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive 'Key to Scientific Names' notes possible biographical details, placing him in Hong Kong 1847 in a government position, commissariat storekeeper, also a soldier of fortune, seafarer and naturalist, who settled in Queensland about 1860.