Primarily known as a Hymenopterist but also worked on Coleoptera. Probably born in London of Yorkshire parents and established a reputation as a steel engraver reproducing pictures by several well known artists.  His youngest son Edgar Albert Smith (1847-1916) was a well known conchologist who worked in the BM, and his eldest son an artist.

Through his work as a steel engraver he became known to John Curtis and carried out illustrations for the later (1830s) volumes of his British Entomology.  Smith's obituary in EMM,15, 1879, 263-64, records that he was curator for a short time of the newly established Ent. Soc. of London, but after the death of Edward Doubleday in 1850, he was appointed an assistant in the Zoological Department of the BM. His work there focussed mainly on the Hymenoptera of which he wrote several Catalogues of the collections and published numerous papers. But it also involved writing two volumes listing Coleoptera. These small, blue, paperback books were published under the general title List of the Coleopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum.  Smith's contributions were: Part I Cucujidae (1851, pp.25) and Part VI Passalidae (1852, pp.23 +plate). J.E.Gray, in his introduction to the first, explained Smith's method of working: he compared the specimens in the Museum with those in M. Chevrolet's cabinet which included many types, then carefully collated the synonyms and described the species which appeared to be new.  Apart from these volumes, the writer of his EMM  obituary recorded that  'His knowledge of the Coleoptera (especially Curculionidae) was [also] extensive,' and a paper in the Zoologist, 1843, 265,  titled Rhinobatus planus makes clear that he had studied this group since at least as early as 1839. Andrew Duff has pointed out to me a paper by Smith 'Capture of Dinarda dentata at Weybridge' in Entomologist's Weekly Intelligencer, 1860-61, 10, which mentions specimens given to him by Crotch and and others taken by himself. E.C.Rye in Entomologists Annual, 1866, 65, notes that Smith and his son took the first British examples of Myrmedonia plicata in the nests of T. erratica in a sandy place at Bournemouth in 1865.

Several commentators noted that 'although Smith suffered from want of a general and a special education' he gave meticulous attention to detail' and was 'regular and methodical in his habits, patient and perservering, laborious and industrious - like his favorite ants and bees - he plodded on piling fact upon fact...'.

Gilbert, 1977, lists 10 further obituaries. (MD 10.21)