ENGLAND: THE OTHER WITHIN

Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum

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