Dowlish Wake home of the family of John Hanning Speke who took part in three expeditions to Central Africa from 1854-1862, the last two in search of the source of the Nile. He discovered Lake Victoria and maintained that it was the source of the White Nile. On his third expedition, Speke identified Ripon Falls, the outlet of Lake Victoria, as the source of the Nile; this was confirmed by Henry Morton Stanley in a later expedition. Speke was killed in Neston Park in Wiltshire by his own gun while hunting with his cousin on 18 September 1864; Dr David Livingstone and
Hamites races were too broad to have stemmed from a single common ancestor, but were instead consistent with separate racial origins. In his "Crania Aegyptiaca" (1844), Morton analyzed over a hundred intact crania gathered from the Nile Valley, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were racially akin to Europeans. His conclusions would establish the foundation for the American School of anthropology, and would also influence proponents of polygenism. In the second half of the 19th century, the British explorer John Hanning Speke would further popularize the ancient Hamitic peregrinations in his publications on his search for the source of the Nile