Acquisition Events: Frequent Donors

Chris Wingfield
Researcher 'The Other Within' project

 

The focus on acquisition events, makes it easier to identify the sources of material who were involved in a large number of acquisition events. It is suggested that those who were involved in more acquisition events, can be shown to have a qualitatively different relationship with the museum, since the relationship existed for longer and was able to develop a history and with it possibly a sense of obligation. In addition frequent contact in the form of acquisition events might be seen as suggesting a more personally active role in the formation of the English collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

As a means of comparing the insights from considering total numbers of objects associated with an individual (Table 1 below) and numbers of acquisition events (Table 2 below) as two different approaches, it is possible to juxtapose two lists of names related to the English collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The first is ordered according to the number of objects donated. The second is ranked according to the number of acquisition events a source was involved in. Both lists include columns for the total number of objects as well as the number of acquisition events associated with the source and a ranking from the complete other list. The lists include the top 20 entries for each way of ranking the data.

There are 9 sources that appear in both top 20 lists, suggesting a certain amount of overlap between them. There is obviously a certain correlation between the number of acquisition events and the total number of objects donated, but this is by no means a clear and straightforward one.

Henry Balfour and Francis Knowles who top the list when ranked by acquisition events also appear in the top five when ranked by total collection size. However General Pitt Rivers who tops the list when ranked by collection size drops to around 100 when considered by the number of acquisition events.

This fits what can be established by archival research – that Pitt Rivers’ relationship with the museum was not particularly close or sustained after it had been established. Arguably Pitt Rivers did not have much of a relationship with the Pitt Rivers Museum, but instead had a relationship with the University of Oxford, out of which the Pitt Rivers Museum was generated.

 

Table 1 - Ranking by Collection Size

 

Top Twenty Sources of English Objects Ranked by Collection Size
Rank	Source	Number of Objects Donated	Number of Acquisition Events	Ranking by Acquisition Events
1	Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers	6,215	2	104
2	Henry Balfour	3,315	104	1
3	Archibald Colquhoun Bell	3,249	1	197
4	Francis Howe Seymour Knowles	2,172	36	2
5	Oxford University Museum of Natural History	1,510	12	11
6	J.H. Tucker	1,381	2	105
7	Eustace Fulcrand Bosanquet	1,282	5	37
8	T.J. Carter	1,146	13	8
9	Damian Webb	1000*	1	198
10	Anselm Cramer	1000*	1	201
11	Trustees George P. Elphick	828*	1	200
12	Catherine E. Parsons	828	1	201
13	Margaret F. Irvine	826	10	15
14	Estella Louisa Michaela Canziani	776	11	12
15	Alfred Schwartz Barnes	773	24	5
16	James Reid Moir	755	7	20
17	Ipswich Museum	672	2	106
18	Patricia M. Butler	672	2	107
19	Ellen Ettlinger	600	1	202
20	Beatrice Mary Blackwood	581	18	7
* These figures are estimates

Table 2 - Ranking by the Number of Acquisition Events

 

Top Twenty Sources of English Objects Ranked by Acquisition Events
Rank	Source	Number of Objects Donated	Number of Acquisition Events	Ranking by Objects Donated
1	Henry Balfour	3315	104	2
2	Francis Howe Seymour Knowles	2172	36	4
3	Alexander James Montgomerie Bell	114	27	53
4	Sydney Gerald Hewlett	375	20	25
5	Alfred Schwartz Barnes	773	24	15
6	Stevens Auction Rooms	545	23	21
7	Beatrice Mary Blackwood	581	18	20
8	T.J. Carter	1146	13	8
9	Kenneth Page Oakley	60	13	80
10	Edward Burnett Tylor	164	12	39
11	Oxford University Museum of Natural History	1510	12	5
12	Estella Louisa Michaela Canziani	776	11	14
13	George Fabian Lawrence	239	11	31
14	J. Bateman	59	11	82
15	Margaret F. Irvine	826	10	13
16	Edward Lovett	55	8	86
17	Cecil Vincent Goddard	20	8	137
18	Oliver H. Wild	18	8	147
19	Harold St. George Gray	15	8	168
20	James Reid Moir	755	7	16

Considering Frequent Donors Relationships with the Museum