Herbert Edwin Bradley

Bradley was a big-game hunter and took his family onto Carl Ethan Akeley's American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Belgian Congo in 1921.^[1] Some contemporaries described his decision to take his wife and child on the expedition as "madness".^[5] The expedition searched for gorillas, which had been little studied up to that time.^[5] As well as trailing and photographing the animals, the expedition shot and killed five for recovery and preservation as museum exhibits.^[5][6][7]

Some of the gorilla meat was eaten by members of the expedition.^[7] Akeley recalled that when Bradley shot one large and placid male that "it took all one's scientific ardour to keep from feeling like a murderer" and Mary, discussing the same event, noted she would "never forget the humanness of that black, upturned face".^[6] She later campaigned for gorillas to be protected from game hunters and for protective reservations to be established.^[7] During the expedition Bradley and Alice became ill, and a series of blood transfusions from Mary were required to save their lives.^[4] The expedition returned to the United States in 1922, and Bradley spent the following two years in convalescence.^[1][4] Mary wrote On the Gorilla Trail in 1922 about the expedition.^[1]

Bradley and his family undertook a second expedition to the Congo in 1924, which was the first to move through the country west of Lake Edward; Mary published Caravans and Cannibals in 1926 about this trip. A third expedition of 1930–31 studied the African Pygmies and Mangbetu people. Bradley traveled along in 1935 to Sumatra and Indochina to hunt tigers.^[1]

Bradley was involved with Chicago's Brookfield Zoo and in 1933 became chair of their animal committee, tasked with gathering animals for the collection.^[8] He later became a vice president of the zoo, though he resigned in 1951 to embark upon an animal-collecting expedition to Africa.^[9] Bradley had aimed to bring okapis to the zoo since 1939 and achieved his aim in 1955.^[10] He died in Chicago on April 22, 1961.^[11]