AN EXHIBITION in Japan has prompted a retired schoolteacher to produce a book about the son of the founder of the D&S Times.

As a teenager, Miss Mary Lowes was a keen visitor to the Bowes museum in Barnard Castle. She especially enjoyed viewing the exhibits in the George Brown room, Mr Brown being a native of the town as well as a renowned missionary, ardent explorer and learned scientist. His father, also George, founded the D&S Times in 1847 and was its first editor.

George Brown jnr was born in December 1835, later working as an assistant in the surgery of local doctor, Isaac Cust, at the time when Asiatic cholera was raging in the town. Mr Brown became a victim, narrowly escaping death.

Determined to go to sea, he had a spell in Canada before returning home. But, too adventurous to settle in Barnard Castle, he decided to go to New Zealand simply because it was the furthest place from England.

Also on board were three members of the clergy. Mr Brown joined their Bible class and began to learn the Maori language. When in New Zealand he made his home with his uncle and aunt, the Rev and Mrs Thomas Buddle. The influence of their Christian home converted him and he became a local preacher.

His early life of hard work and adventure fitted him well for his later missionary work and exploration in Samoa, New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Cannibalism was an accepted part of life among the natives of some of the places he visited. A coconut palm in New Ireland had 76 notches on one side, one for each person killed and eaten there. Sometimes bodies were sold for food.

The skills he learned at sea stood him in good stead in his years of travelling between the many islands of the South Pacific. His wife, Lydia, the daughter of a New Zealand missionary, shared fully in his work.

Mr Brown was an avid collector, bringing back something from everywhere he is known to have visited. It is these artefacts that so enchanted Miss Lowes when they were on display at the Bowes museum.

But in the 60s, when she took pupils from Corporation Road infants' school in Darlington to the museum, she was disappointed to find that the George Brown collection was no longer there, having been sold to Newcastle university for £2,000 in the 50s when the museum was in a serious situation financially.

In 1984 the university decided to part with it and, despite much effort, the collection was sold to the Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, for £600,000.

That seemed to be the end of the story as far as Barnard Castle was concerned, but when Miss Lowes moved back to the town from upper Teesdale two years ago, she saw a memorial plaque to Mr Brown in the Methodist church.

Around the same time Ms Helen Gardner, an Australian studying for a PhD on Brown's life and influence in the South Pacific, visited the Bowes museum.

She had been to a prestigious exhibition in Osaka called The Cultural Heritage of the South Pacific, the George Brown Collection.

She brought a poster, which forms the cover of Miss Lowes' book, and photographs, and encouraged her to continue her research.

Miss Lowes' book, George Brown DD FRCS is the result. It is on sale, priced £3.50, at the tourist information centres in Barnard Castle and Middleton in Teesdale and Curlews Bookshop in Barnard Castle