‘The Dignity that May Clothe a Tradesman’s Life’: Joseph Mayer and Antiquarian Patronage in Nineteenth-Century England

Abstract

The nineteenth century saw an influx of men of trade into English antiquarian circles, a development that caused significant consternation among those who were accustomed to gathering in more rarefied spaces. However, devoting one’s life to scholarship was not inexpensive, and these self-made scholars were often left scrambling to find reliable sources of income on which to live. This essay reconsiders the intersection between class and scholarship especially among Anglo-Saxonists, by examining the life of Joseph Mayer (d. 1886), a Liverpool jeweller and silversmith, who is best known as a collector of antiquities and the co-founder of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (1848). This essay explores the sources of Mayer’s growing wealth, the objectives of his investment in antiquities and the extent of his involvement in antiquarian societies in Liverpool, London, and abroad. We conclude that his identity as a tradesman was never fully erased by either his fortune or his scholarly contributions. We contend that an overlooked part of Mayer’s legacy is his patronage of middle-class scholars such as Charles Roach Smith, Thomas Wright, Frederick Fairholt, Joseph Pulzsky and Eliza Meteyard, each of whom helped document his collections but also counted upon his largesse. However, the dangers of relying on a private patron became apparent when Mayer’s interests changed later in life; the fact that so few other forms of support existed for scholars of modest background meant that many faced considerable challenges in finding financial stability in their final years.

Keywords:

• antiquarianism
• collecting
• museums
• patronage
• silversmiths
• and tradesmen

The Challenges of Being a Tradesman and Antiquarian

As antiquarian societies were founded across England in the mid-nineteenth century, a quiet revolution was occurring in their midst, namely the influx of men of trade into once exclusive scholarly circles.¹ Populist interest in England’s ancient and medieval past made it increasingly difficult to maintain firm boundaries of who might join these institutions.² Even the rarified spaces occupied by the Society of Antiquaries, an organisation that up till then had been fairly exclusive, now included less privileged individuals, causing discomfiture to those wishing to mingle only with their own kind.

Members of this new class of devotees to England’s past were not always possessed of higher degrees nor did they have access to substantial wealth. The antiquary-turned-archaeologist, Charles Roach Smith, faced unsuccessful efforts by his well-heeled colleagues in London to prevent him, based on his background as a chemist, from joining the Society of Antiquaries. Despite being one of the most original minds of his generation, neither he nor Thomas Wright, the son of a bookseller, were born into vast wealth.³ Even if they earned a university degree, scholars in their circumstances who wanted to change vocations faced the practical challenge of finding steady financial resources to compensate for their lack of substantial inheritances or income-generating properties. Antiquaries and archaeologists of modest background were constantly on the hustle, whether seeking subscribers for their publications, flattering wealthy patrons, or petitioning the government for pensions to dedicate themselves fully to their chosen calling without falling into penury.⁴

During the Industrial Revolution, the fault lines of class typically overshadowed disagreements among the interpreters of the human remains found in unmarked cemeteries across England, most of which were attributed to Anglo-Saxon ancestors. As has been shown by Howard Williams, some antiquaries, typically of more established means such as John Mitchell Kemble and William Wylie, were strong proponents of the racialised, Teutonic origins of the Anglo-Saxons.⁵ As noted by Rosemary Sweet, however, the mid-nineteenth century saw the transformation of Anglo-Saxons from uncivilised barbarians (as they had been understood in the eighteenth century) to the urban, Christianised ancestors of the English. Roach Smith and Wright thus focused on demonstrating the Anglo-Saxons’ industriousness and peaceable continuity with the Roman period.⁶ It was class of the scholars involved rather than interpretations of the material remains of their claimed forefathers, that proved the main source of friction amongst contemporaries.

Given our changing views of these developments, the silversmith and jeweller Joseph Mayer (1803–1886), who became a key financial pillar in Roach Smith’s and Wright’s informal support network, deserves our attention. It has been several decades since Margaret Gibson (d. 1994), the distinguished medieval historian, wrote of Mayer’s ivory collection and co-edited the volume dedicated to the many facets of his life and collections.⁷ Moving to Liverpool in 1821, Mayer built a fortune in the 1840s and 1850s after inheriting properties from his father in 1839. He invested his profits in promoting educational opportunities for tradesmen, amassing a large antiquities collection and undertaking and sponsoring antiquarian research. Mayer was committed to the study of antiquities but also understood the prime importance of a social safety net. He extended friendship, financial assistance and private archives to individuals such as Eliza Meteyard, biographer of Josiah Wedgwood, a subject in which he had a vested interest since his family was of Staffordshire and had an important role in the Potteries.⁸ As Mayer’s own education was limited to grammar school, he was inspired by the career and writings of William Roscoe, the self-taught Nonconformist, abolitionist, poet and attorney, who had contributed substantially to Liverpool’s cultural scene in the late eighteenth century.⁹ Mayer extended, in turn, learning opportunities to tradesmen, and supported antiquaries working on subjects related to his collection, a mission that reflected his great admiration for Roscoe’s success at fostering the intersection between commerce and culture.¹⁰

Learning a Craft and Starting a Business in Liverpool

Arriving in Liverpool at the age of 18 to seek his fortune, Joseph Mayer’s initial prospects were far from certain despite coming from a prosperous family. The fifth child of eleven, he left his birthplace in Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire in 1821 to take up an informal apprenticeship with his brother-in-law, the silversmith and jeweller James Wordley (d.1858), who had married his older sister Eliza the previous year. However, although Joseph’s father Samuel soon conveyed his deep disappointment that Wordley’s agreement was not executed as anticipated,¹¹ he reluctantly allowed Joseph to remain in Liverpool.¹² From the late eighteenth century, having a representative in the Liverpool port was a boon to Staffordshire tradesmen who needed to secure an outlet for the distribution and sale of the region’s pottery.¹³

No later than 1828, Mayer completed his training with Wordley and found plentiful opportunities in the rapidly growing town. Between 1801 and 1841, Liverpool’s population expanded from 77,653 to 286,656.¹⁴ Despite his sister Eliza’s tragic death in childbirth on 28 June 1831,¹⁵ and the disruption to the town’s activities caused by a cholera epidemic in Liverpool in the summer of 1832,¹⁶ Mayer’s career slowed little. Gore’s Directory revealed that by 1834, Mayer and his brother-in-law Wordley had entered into a partnership first at 62 and then 56 Lord Street.¹⁷ By 1836, the electoral register indicated that Mayer owned his home and shop on Lord Street.¹⁸

In 1838, Joseph’s life changed significantly with the passing of his father Samuel, born in 1767. The elder Mayer, an influential burgess who supplied leather straps to the Staffordshire Potteries,¹⁹ had been elected as the first Nonconformist mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1833²⁰ (Figure 1). He formed part of the ‘aristocracy’ of the villages of the Potteries, though his wealth paled in comparison to that of the Liverpool merchants who profited from the port’s trade.²¹ Samuel’s own fortune derived from his father’s property, which he had inherited in 1823, and his holdings were supplemented by his wife Margaret Pepper Mayer’s inheritance of £300 from her father’s estate.²²

Figure 1. William Daniels’ portrait of Joseph Mayer in his study at Clarence Terrace on Everton Road. He is seated with his father Samuel Mayer to his right. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

At the time of his death, Samuel left a sizeable estate of £12,000. Although Joseph’s inheritance was more limited than that of his mother or older brothers, Samuel (Jr) and Thomas, who remained in Staffordshire, the bequest was still substantial. From his father, Joseph received freehold messuage on Marsh Street, Fogg Street, Wilmot’s Row, Gorse Street, and Pepper Street in Newcastle-under-Lyme, all of which were occupied and presumably generated income.²³ However, no extant evidence suggests that Joseph retained these properties: his name is absent from Staffordshire tithe records, contrasting with his brothers’ land interests in the area.²⁴

From the patchy evidence that survives,²⁵ it seems likely that Joseph sold the inherited properties in Newcastle-under-Lyme to increase his liquidity in the early 1840s. Thereafter, he did not generate much income as an absentee landlord with a single exception: poll records in Staffordshire from 1841 note that he owned ‘freehold lands and tenements on Fletcher Street, in the occupation of John Levy’ in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which were not part of his father’s bequest.²⁶ In 1843, Joseph cut costs further by giving up his stylish quarters in Liverpool at Clarence Terrace and moved over his shop on Lord Street²⁷ (Figure 2). By 1844, Mayer had accumulated sufficient resources to dissolve his partnership with Wordley, and set up his own business at 68 (and later 68–70) Lord Street.²⁸ The dissolution of the partnership suggests that Mayer had the motivation and funds to establish an independent business and ensure greater control over his future.²⁹ In the mid-nineteenth century, Nonconformist affiliation was not sufficiently problematic, as it had been in Roscoe’s time, to attract much attention.³⁰

Figure 2. Joseph Mayer’s Clarence Terrace home on Everton Road. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

With these accumulated funds, Joseph expanded not only his business ventures but also his passion for collecting antiquities, a practice which dated back to his childhood. Like many men of his status, Mayer profited from new opportunities created by industrialisation and the broad social reforms of the 1830s and 1840s.³¹ In the 1840s, transport times improved with the advent of steam travel on land and across the Channel. Mayer ventured repeatedly to the continent during this period to purchase art and antiquities; from his poetry, paintings, speeches, and correspondence, we know that Mayer regularly spent time in France and Italy.³² He also travelled to Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Spain, and the German states, engaging in both the business and pleasure of antique hunting and collecting. Although he sometimes went alone, some of his travels were accompanied by friends such as the Liverpool artist and engraver William Clements.³³

Mayer as a Prominent Liverpool Tradesman and Socialite

While most studies of Mayer have rightfully focused on his extensive antiquities collection, Margaret Gibson also sought to shed light on how Mayer made the fortune that supported his acquisitions.³⁴ Beyond his sense of aesthetics that guided his business, Mayer understood the shopping experience desired by his clients. Welcoming customers to his shop’s frescoed interior from the mid-1840s, Mayer became known for lavish displays of silver, gold, plated goods, cameos, intaglios, mosaics and enamels for sale³⁵ (Figure 3). Besides his inventory of multiple styles of silver electro-plate spoons, forks, coffee and tea services, tureens, and wine coolers, Mayer sold bronzes, watches, and clocks furnished by his recent trips to the continent.³⁶ Mayer also provided an array of services, including jewellery repair, goldsmithing, the sale and hire of second-hand plates and cutlery, and lockbox-keeping for his clientele of merchants and tradesmen.

Figure 3. Advertisement for Joseph Mayer’s shop. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528.8. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Because his business ledgers do not survive, we lack essential details as to how Mayer financed his antiquities purchases, and whether the funds came primarily from the sale of the properties from his inheritance, the proceeds of his shop, or successful investments elsewhere. Notably, he was able to do so amidst the Great Famine (1844–1851), when the proportion of impoverished Irish-born inhabitants swelled from 17.3% to 22.3% of Liverpool’s population between 1841 and 1851.³⁷ Mayer’s clientele, the many merchants and bankers who had grown rich from the slave trade before its abolition in 1807, seem not to have been deeply affected by these developments.³⁸ Although anti-slavery agitation in Liverpool in the late 1820s and early 1830s challenged the harvesting and processing of crops that relied on slave labour,³⁹ it did not prevent Liverpool’s merchants from continuing to generate sufficient wealth to purchase stately homes and luxuries. By the time of Mayer’s rise to prominence, Liverpool’s affluent shipping magnates were successfully trading in cotton, sugar, salt and palm oil and were somewhat insulated from local events. They valued presentation ware that highlighted their achievements such as the inscribed silver-plate trophies, tea, coffee, and dinner services designed by Mayer.⁴⁰ The shop prospered despite the 1849 cholera epidemic, during which 5,231 residents of Liverpool died.⁴¹

Mayer borrowed many of the decorative flourishes for the pieces he created from ancient motifs, the inspiration for which may have derived from his collecting. For instance, he embellished the ceremonial trowel employed in the opening of Birkenhead Docks in October 1844 with personifications of Neptune and Liverpool (Figure 4). In 1845, Mayer borrowed from classical motifs to design the Royal Mersey Yacht Club Grand Challenge Cup.⁴² Mayer formulated insignia for medals, bookplates, plates, trowels and organisational logos such as that of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, which he co-founded in 1848, and to celebrate the centenary of the life of William Roscoe (1853) and the opening of St George’s Hall, Liverpool (1854).⁴³

Figure 4. Joseph Mayer’s design for a ceremonial trowel for the start of construction on the Birkenhead dock. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

An example of the use of classical inspiration for decorative motifs may be found in Mayer’s 1857 silver trowel, created to commemorate the setting of the foundation stone of the Free Public Library and Museum in Liverpool which had been accomplished with the financial backing of William Brown, MP for South Lancashire.⁴⁴ Not only was the trowel engraved with medallions of Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare, but it flattered Brown by depicting him in senatorial dress and crowned with a laurel wreath as he presented the new library to the Genius of Liverpool⁴⁵ (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Joseph Mayer’s preparatory drawing commemorating William Brown’s financing of the construction of the Liverpool Free Library and Museum. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

As Gibson was unaware of the inheritance Mayer received from his father, she posited that at least part of his success stemmed from his early embrace and promotion of electroplating technology for the manufacture of Victorian presentation silver used to honour notable events. However, commissions of this sort probably generated more publicity than income. While Mayer’s classically-inspired designs were acclaimed in elite Liverpool circles, much of the actual profit of electroplating went to Birmingham, the home of Elkington, Mason & Company.⁴⁶ Despite backing Thomas Spencer’s effort to declare himself the inventor of electro-metallurgy in the late 1830s and early 1840s,⁴⁷ Mayer could not dislodge Elkington’s from its dominant position with this new technology. Rather than competing with the well-established business, he commissioned Elkington’s and the Sheffield firm of Edward Barnard & Sons, under license to the former, to manufacture his commissions.⁴⁸ In 1851, the latter manufactured the silver waiter that Mayer displayed as his creation at the Great Exhibition in London.⁴⁹

Despite his chief residence remaining in Liverpool and later the Wirral throughout his adulthood, Joseph Mayer remained in regular contact with his parents and siblings in Staffordshire. His older brother Thomas worked first on his own, marketing wares from Cliff Bank Works in Stoke from 1826 to 1838 (Figure 6). Together with his younger brothers John and Jos, they became acclaimed manufacturers at Dale Hall Pottery, Longport, Stoke-on-Trent, a site formerly owned by Joseph Stubbs (d. 1836). From 1842 to 1855, they traded with the North American market under the mark of T. J. & J. Mayer.⁵⁰ Many of their productions shared design parallels with pieces in silver created by Joseph, just as the tradition of drawing decorative motifs from classical mythology and ancient cameos formed an essential part of the oeuvre of Josiah Wedgwood.⁵¹ Joseph, however, seems to have limited practical knowledge of the technology and science of ceramics. His brother Jos’ feedback in a letter dated 28 May 1842, indicated that he was sending an assortment of ceramic biscuit specimens in lieu of the original shapes proposed by Joseph, as the pieces were impossible to create on the wheel or fire⁵² (Figure 7). Since both Cornish China clay used in Staffordshire industries and goods produced in Staffordshire destined for the North American market passed through Liverpool, we can surmise that Joseph’s contributions were linked to his local connections and as a minor seller of their products.⁵³

Figure 6. M4486, Earthenware table, polychrome printed, Thomas Mayer, Longport, 1840. From the collection of Joseph Mayer. ©National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery.

Figure 7. Letter of Jos Mayer to Joseph Mayer dated 28 May 1842, discussing the design and firing process of ceramics vessels. LRO 920 MAY, Jos Mayer. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Helen Nicholson and Margaret Warhurst observed Mayer’s successful accumulation of wealth in the census of 1851, which documented his employment of twenty-two men, in addition to his cook Jane Brown, housemaid Mary Hughes, porter Joseph Rimmer and servant Richard Williams, at his residence and business at 68–70 Lord Street.⁵⁴ By 1859, Mayer’s financial position enabled him to become active in the Liverpool Volunteer Borough Guard, a self-supporting corps of tradesmen established for the nation’s defense. The organisation was one of twenty-six separate units created in Merseyside in response to Britain’s perceived ill-preparedness for the threat posed by Napoleon III.⁵⁵ The investment paid off as it helped raise Mayer’s profile amongst fellow tradesmen. In 1860, he rose to further prominence as captain.⁵⁶

Mayer’s visibility in the Liverpool social scene was a product of his confident mastery of self-promotion, often made possible through offers of presentation ware commemorating individuals and events; he appeared at least once annually in the Liverpool Mercury between 1848 and 1859. A report on Queen Victoria’s 1851 visit to Liverpool credited Mayer with furnishing the monarch’s rooms with custom bronze sculptures and increased his public profile by referencing his shop at Lord Street.⁵⁷ These connections boosted Mayer’s business and attracted further commissions. Ironically, while Mayer’s business acumen made his shop profitable, those above his station in Liverpool probably viewed such activities by a tradesman as a social liability.

Mayer’s Scholarship and Patronage of Antiquarians

Although descended from a hereditary burgess, currier and the mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Joseph found that this respectable background did not carry the same weight among the merchants in Liverpool as it did in Staffordshire. In industrializing Lancashire, he remained a tradesman despite his growing wealth; in public circumstances, one’s ability to rise in status had firm upper boundaries.⁵⁸ In his eulogy for Mayer, Sir James Picton, an architect and chairman of Liverpool’s library and museum board, observed: ‘his long life is a conspicuous illustration of the dignity that may clothe a tradesman’s life when the tradesman is inspired both by love of knowledge and love of man’.⁵⁹ In the socially stratified, commercial mecca of Liverpool, Mayer’s standing remained visibly fixed at a lower level than that of the powerful merchants who controlled the Corporation and municipal offices.⁶⁰

As has been documented by John and Sheryllynne Haggerty, Liverpool social clubs were a crucial component of business networking for merchants in eighteenth-century Liverpool.⁶¹ Wealthy merchants and gentlemen joined convivial organisations such as the Ugly Face Club (1743) and the Mock Corporation of Sefton (1753). From 1758, Liverpool had a subscription library linked to a conversation club that cost 5 shillings annually; as membership grew, it moved in 1803 to the Lyceum on Bold Street, which by 1850 had over 36,000 volumes.⁶² In 1797, the Athenaeum was founded as a gentlemen’s library by invitation and subscription. With a limit of just 500 proprietors, it cost a prohibitive ten guineas for admission and two guineas per annum thereafter. As proprietors, members of the Athenaeum received shares in the institution which were sold at auction if the subscription was not paid, with the profits going back into the coffers of the institution.⁶³ There is no extant evidence to suggest Joseph Mayer joined this organisation, and neither his correspondence nor his publications include reference to it.

In Liverpool, men excluded from the Lyceum and Athenaeum by their birth and connections found alternative venues in which to express civic pride and engage with artistic, literary and historical subjects.⁶⁴ In 1774, William Roscoe helped organise an Exhibition of Works of Art.⁶⁵ Although he and his circle had been reviled leading up to the 1807 ban on the slave trade, their fortunes subsequently changed. From 1817 to 1831, Roscoe served as the president of the newly founded Literary and Philosophical Society, which was open to the middle class and helped improve the city’s reputation.⁶⁶ In 1817, he also helped create the Royal Institution on Colquitt Street, which raised funds through shares and was meant to imitate its namesake in London⁶⁷ (Figure 8). The organisation, which disavowed both religious and political affiliation, built a library, art gallery, and lecture theatre, and served as the base of operation for many of Liverpool’s learned societies. Middle class members received a friendlier welcome than they had in Liverpool’s pre-existing cultural institutions.⁶⁸

Figure 8. The Royal Institution building on Colquitt Street, Liverpool, as it survives today (authors’ photograph).

Although Mayer availed himself of some of the resources made available by the Royal Institution,⁶⁹ he opted not to give them his collection in 1852.⁷⁰ Behind this reluctance was no doubt the Royal Institution’s dispute with the Liverpool Council over ownership and maintenance of the current collections, and its decision to suspend public lectures.⁷¹ Moreover, the majority of its membership was comprised of lawyers who were generally derisive of the historical aspects of the society. For these reasons, despite his admiration for Roscoe, Mayer’s papers leave little trace of his interactions with the Royal Institution aside from his consultation for a valuation of medals and the appearance of his name on the proprietor list.⁷² In May 1850, Mayer successfully petitioned William Rathbone to expand the Royal Institution’s opening hours so that working men in Liverpool could visit the museum and picture gallery as was the case at the British Museum.⁷³ Although the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire met at the premises of the Royal Institution on Colquitt Street from 1848,⁷⁴ Mayer appears to have been unwilling to play an active role in the Royal Institution, whose benefits were largely limited to those of the middle class and above.⁷⁵

Mayer instead invested his energies in the teaching of the trades. From as early as 1828, he contributed to the activities of the Liverpool Mechanics Institution, devoted to the betterment of the artisan class and which would not receive support from the Liverpool Corporation until 1835.⁷⁶ Mayer commissioned the students of the Mechanics Institution to make a Gothic-style chair from a beam taken from Roscoe’s birthplace when it was demolished. As shown in Figure 1, William Daniel portrayed Mayer seated in that same chair in his home on Everton Road, and it later moved to the Mayer Museum.⁷⁷ Rather than becoming deeply involved with the Royal Institution or joining the Athenaeum, Mayer lent pieces in his collection for an exhibition at the Mechanics Institution (1840), which would eventually open a library and lecture halls. In 1842, he was elected an honorary member of their board and given life membership.⁷⁸

From the eighteenth century, expertise in local historical documents and monuments had created opportunities for mixing with individuals of higher education and rank in England.⁷⁹ In the mid-Victorian period, men of more modest means became involved in British archaeology. Even if they were not embraced as equals, material remains allowed them to tell a story of the past.⁸⁰ The raw data of artefacts and monuments could fill in the gaps of the written sources,⁸¹ and most learned societies aside from those that were ecclesiological in focus, were open to non-Anglicans.⁸² In Liverpool, Rev. Abraham Hume, the artist Henry Clark Pidgeon, and Mayer were drawn together by mutual interest in the archaeological site of Meols on the Wirral Coast. In 1848, they founded the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (HSLC)⁸³ (Figure 9). Within a year, 250 members paid the annual fees of a guinea for residents and a half-guinea for non-residents.⁸⁴ As the town rapidly industrialised, the HSLC’s largely middle-class membership focused on collecting and preserving historical documents and antiquities of the region.⁸⁵ In 1867, Mayer noted:

Figure 9. The founders of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (1848): Joseph Mayer, the artist Henry Clark Pidgeon and Rev. Abraham Hume. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528.8. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

If the true story of our island is ever to be recovered, no time should be lost in undertaking the work. New material is indeed daily unearthed and given to the world, but so also old material is daily destroyed or lost without use.⁸⁶

The HSLC’s Transactions documented Liverpool’s commercial and industrial history, thus raising the region’s profile.⁸⁷

Membership also conferred status on those who were nominated to belong to such scholarly associations.⁸⁸ Learned societies represented effective vehicles for demonstrating moral and intellectual standing through cultivated attention to history and monuments.⁸⁹ Mayer’s central involvement in the HSLC conferred a position of intellectual authority that matched both his longstanding interest in antiquities and his growing wealth. In the Transactions, he periodically published short pieces on objects in his possession or places he had recently visited.⁹⁰ He reprinted these privately and distributed them to prominent Liverpool figures.⁹¹ With Mayer as its honorary curator, the HSLC also created its own collection which was later housed in the Liverpool Free Library and Museum.⁹²

Once a member of this antiquarian circle, Mayer not only gained a deeper appreciation for the artefacts he had collected but he also learned to value the work of the society’s scholarly members. President of the HSLC from 1867 to 1869, Mayer praised archaeology as ‘the noblest study that can be undertaken outside of those sciences which directly advance man’s material good’.⁹³ The organisation also allowed him to mingle with antiquarians of higher social status, even if these interactions were limited in scope.

The HSLC was opened just five years after the London antiquaries Charles Roach Smith and Thomas Wright had founded the British Archaeological Association (BAA) in 1843; they modelled it after Arcisse de Caumont’s Société française d’archéologie (SFA) in France (1833).⁹⁴ Like the SFA and the HSLC, the BAA sought to reach a different audience than the elite, London-focused Society of Antiquaries.⁹⁵ It concerned itself foremost with the destruction of ancient remains caused by the expansion of the railways and industrialization.⁹⁶ Although it suffered a schism in 1845 which resulted in some members leaving to create the Archaeological Institute,⁹⁷ the BAA continued to organise annual conferences. When organisers requested help for planning local events for its Chester conference in 1849, Mayer responded with assistance by personally sponsoring a reception for over 15,000 guests in Liverpool’s Town Hall.⁹⁸ Although Roach Smith resigned as secretary of the BAA shortly thereafter, his gratitude toward Mayer did not wane.⁹⁹ Mayer thereafter entered into Roach Smith’s orbit, and that of the BAA, as a sympathetic and wealthy patron of antiquarian endeavours.

In London, Roach Smith’s modest origins as a chemist meant that his relationship with the influential Society of Antiquaries, even after he was elected a fellow, was not always amicable.¹⁰⁰ Nonetheless, following Mayer’s beneficial intervention in the Chester conference, Roach Smith supported Mayer’s entrance into the Society of Antiquaries¹⁰¹ (Figure 10). Mayer, in turn, continued to offer financial support to the endeavours of Roach Smith, who had previously relied upon subscriptions to pay for his excavations and publications.¹⁰² The Presbyterian minister and antiquarian John Collingwood Bruce praised not only Mayer’s antiquities collection, but also his sponsorship of Roach Smith’s research and publications: ‘Placed under obligations to you as I am in common with all whose hearts beat in sympathy for those who for centuries have ceased to be affected by mortal joys and sorrows, I seem to be doubly attached to you for your adherence in sunshine and storm to that worthy man C. Roach Smith’.¹⁰³

Figure 10. Charles Roach Smith, FSA, in a relief portrait by Giovanni Fontana commissioned by Joseph Mayer. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528.8. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Mayer’s bond with Roach Smith, and his recognition as a fellow, meant, in turn, that he received invitations to join a variety of continental learned associations such as the Northern Antiquaries of Denmark.¹⁰⁴ Such continental connections were facilitated by the growing ease of travel with the expansion of the rail network, and by the 1850s, one could reach Europe for research and antiquarian conferences in two to three days.¹⁰⁵ Mayer increasingly linked his business travels to the antiquarian societies located in Abbeville, Caen, and Saint-Omer in Normandy, as well as in Hanover, Zürich, and Luxemburg.¹⁰⁶ He enjoyed displaying the antiquities he shipped home for his private collection and business. On 8 June 1854, Mayer exhibited the art he had found in Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, Saxony, and Prussia to the HSLC.¹⁰⁷

As a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Mayer became close friends with, among others, Joseph Clarke, a Cambridge graduate and antiquarian. Keeper of the Saffron Walden Museum in Essex, Clarke was interested in natural history and gardening. In 1871, Clarke praised Mayer as a dear colleague and friend despite their disparate backgrounds and circumstances:

There is not much difference in age and we both incline to the same pursuits in endeavouring to instruct and benefit mankind and instil proper feelings in the rising generation; our sympathies and believings are not far different and there is nothing that I can imagine that could ever produce a clash. We are both bachelors. I most unwilling so, for it has always been a grievous disappointment to me that I am so; we are both reputed amiable, but your universal benevolence of mind and pocket, makes a total eclipse of my feebler light… I have always circulated your name and fame in every direction and considered myself worthily employed in making your noble generosity and good wishes known. Our difference between us is, that your mercantile education has sharpened your naturally keen wits up, while I have not a drop of tradesman’s blood in me and being naturally unsuspicious as any one when made so.¹⁰⁸

Despite reiterating the differences in their birth and training, Clarke enjoyed Mayer’s hospitality and close friendship, and regularly stayed in Mayer’s home after he moved to Bebington on the Wirral in 1864.

Another of Mayer’s colleagues was the abovementioned Wright, who had earned a BA and MA from Trinity College, Cambridge. The son of a bookseller, he became well known for his research on medieval literature, which earned him fellowship in the Society of Antiquaries in 1837. Wright was also a member of the Société des antiquaires de France and received a prestigious nomination as a correspondent of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in Paris. His work was in high demand after his publication of The Celt, The Roman, and the Saxon: A History of the Earliest Inhabitants of Britain (1852), which reflected the Victorian period’s embrace of the Anglo-Saxons as the racialised ancestors of the English.¹⁰⁹ In celebration of his purchase of the famed Faussett collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities, Mayer invited Wright to speak at the Liverpool Philharmonic in May 1854¹¹⁰ (Figure 11). Because Wright did not earn much from well-placed articles,¹¹¹ he became increasingly reliant on Mayer’s commissions.¹¹² Although Mayer financed engravings for and printing of some of Wright’s publications, Mayer failed to secure stable employment for his friend in his later years.¹¹³

Figure 11. Thomas Wright lecturing at the Liverpool Philharmonic in May 1854. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528.8. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Antiquities Collecting as Social Capital

From at least 1828, Mayer devoted time and resources to his collecting activities. His interest in ceramics reflected his family’s expertise and connections in Staffordshire, and he acquired important specimens and archives of Wedgwood productions.¹¹⁴ Ceramics formed part of Mayer’s donation to Liverpool in 1867, and Eliza Meteyard encouraged him to offer duplicates to the Burslem Wedgewood Institute.¹¹⁵ Meteyard was a periodic houseguest of Mayer, and received access to his papers and collections, in addition to essential monetary support for her research¹¹⁶ (Figure 12).

Figure 12. Eliza Meteyard in a relief portrait by Giovanni Fontana commissioned by Joseph Mayer. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528.8. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Mayer’s collecting activities were broad in remit, including objects dating from antiquity to his own time, and from Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. Unlike the trustees of the British Museum, Mayer was not opposed to collecting remains linked to the national history of the English,¹¹⁷ and his interests also extended to arms and armour.¹¹⁸

As Mayer’s collection expanded, he contributed ancient and medieval art to a temporary exhibit of the Society of Arts in London in 1850.¹¹⁹ Inspired by the British Museum’s collection, Mayer opened what he called his Egyptian Museum at 8 Colquitt Street in Liverpool in May 1852¹²⁰ (Figure 13). This property offered advantageous proximity to the Royal Institution, the meeting place of the HSLC and its patrons. His museum contained Egyptian steles, mummies and jewellery, among other artefacts, acquired by purchasing the collections of George Annesley, Viscount Valentia (d. 1844), Henry Salt, Annesley’s secretary and later the British Consul-General in Egypt (d. 1827), the bookseller and antiquities dealer Joseph Sams (d. 1860) and Reverend Henry Stobart (d. 1895)¹²¹ (Figure 14). In the museum’s catalogue, Mayer outlined his objectives:

Figure 13. Poster advertising Joseph Mayer’s Egyptian Museum. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Figure 14. Depiction of the “mummy room” in Joseph Mayer’s Egyptian Museum. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

And it is with a view to add his mite to the gratification of those who have not an opportunity of visiting the great collection of antiquity in the British Museum, where so many of the marvellous works of antiquity are assembled together, that the proprietor of this museum has placed within the reach of the student and the antiquary, the opportunity of examining its contents, which he hopes may serve as a ground-work for those who are desirous of seeing the high state of civilization which the Egyptians had attained near four thousand years ago, and probably be a string by which some of our townsmen may be led to a study of the same.¹²²

Developed to educate Liverpool’s public, Mayer’s collection also included Etruscan, Samian and Punic artefacts, in addition to Saxon, Burmese, Algerian, Chinese and West African pieces, armour from Persia, Japan, and the Sandwich Islands and early modern European majolica.¹²³

Louise Tythacott has described Mayer’s approach as inspired by the collections of curiosities that had been so popular among eighteenth-century gentry.¹²⁴ Two decades before Mayer’s arrival in Liverpool, the city housed one such museum established by the silversmith and jeweler William Bullock at 24 Lord Street (1801–1805), and then at the corner of Church Street and Whitechapel (1805–1809). Bullock exhibited specimens of natural history, armour, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, wax figurines and ethnographic artefacts from the expeditions of James Cook before he moved his collection to London in 1809.¹²⁵ His approach differed substantially from Roach Smith’s, whose Museum of London was filled with ancient remains he had salvaged from excavations of the city’s sewer system.¹²⁶

Mayer was a firm believer in the ways in which antiquarianism and collecting contributed to self-improvement and well-rounded citizens. He naturally hoped, ‘that Liverpool would, ere long, build a museum worthy of her great name, and show, by her liberal encouragement of art, science, and antiquity, that her sons fully appreciate the highest branches of cultivation the human mind is capable of, - the history of mankind’.¹²⁷ To make his museum more accessible to those of lesser means, he set fees for adult visitors at a shilling and children at sixpence.¹²⁸ As early as 1854, he offered to donate his collection to the Liverpool Corporation since he hoped that it would reach a broader public. However, he waited for an affirmative response from town officials for more than a decade.¹²⁹ Mayer’s activities earned him popular acclaim not just as an astute tradesman, but as a knowledgeable collector and generous benefactor.¹³⁰

In 1854, when the British Museum’s trustees turned down the eighteenth-century Faussett collection of antiquities dated to the Anglo-Saxon period in Kent, they justified their rejection with attention to the artefacts’ allegedly poor aesthetics. The controversial decision led the antiquarian William Wylie to withdraw the proposed donation of his collection to London, and he redirected it to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.¹³¹ Roach Smith noted that ‘foreigners’ decried the British Museum for ‘the neglect with which we treated the valuable remains of ancient art illustrative of our own history’, and he condemned the shortsightedness of the trustees who believed these antiquities to be too ‘rude’ to be contained within the imperial institution.¹³² However, this neglect created an opening for Mayer, who, at the urging of Roach Smith, purchased the collection and saved it from dispersal.¹³³ In 1857, Mayer supplemented it with the early medieval collections of W. H. Rolfe of Sandwich and John Yonge Akerman.¹³⁴

Whereas antiquarian interest in prehistoric barrows was at an all-time high in this period,¹³⁵ early medieval remains were tied more explicitly to Victorian understanding of the Saxon past in English history.¹³⁶ Following his purchase of Faussett collection, Mayer paid Roach Smith handsomely to edit Faussett’s unpublished Inventorium Sepulchrale (1856), and employed Frederick W. Fairholt, to illustrate the lavish work. Fairholt thanked Mayer for acquiring this English collection for Liverpool:

That very extraordinary gathering of Anglo-Saxon relics was always to me, one of the most interesting features that Kent possessed; and I looked forward with great interest to the possibility of their being visible in our (falsely called) British Museum. That opportunity is gone, and I really cease to take that interest in the Great Russell Street building that I used to. I consider that they have been culpably neglectful in this matter. I now sincerely hope that the chance lost in London, may be recovered in Liverpool and a good museum of native Antiquities be founded there. For this would give that town a character of a peculiar kind and one worth obtaining, it is a chance not to be lost. It would be a noble thing to begin, and one which would redound to the honest fame of any one who started it. I should urge it strongly, and be equally strong in hoping that the grand nucleus you possess in the Faussett collection be never allowed to leave the city of Liverpool now it has once reached it.¹³⁷

Mayer now possessed what many considered the most complete collection of Saxon remains in England.¹³⁸ Augustus Franks, curator at the British Museum, lamented that the magnificence of Roach Smith’s Inventorium was, ‘the only thing which in any measure reconciles me to the loss of the collection to the national Museum’.¹³⁹

After the British Museum turned down the important Fejérváry collection of more than sixty classical and medieval ivory pieces (along with prehistoric metalwork and a priceless pre-Columbian deerskin Mayan codex) offered for sale by Joseph (Ferenc) Pulzsky, Mayer purchased it in 1855. Pulzsky was Fejérváry’s nephew, who had fled from Hungary in 1848 and was then living in London.¹⁴⁰ In addition to his involvement in Hungarian political affairs, he became a vocal advocate of British-style imperial collecting following the 1851 Exhibition.¹⁴¹ Mayer’s acquisition of these ivories in a competitive market was a coup,¹⁴² and his success may have been linked to an agreement to recompense Pulzsky, who later became the director of the Hungarian National Museum and founder of the Hungarian National Gallery, for creating a catalogue. This documentation contributed to the collection’s historical significance.¹⁴³ By contrast, Mayer’s joint bid with a consortium of Liverpool collectors for the Bram Hertz gem and cameo collection collapsed and forced Mayer to auction many pieces in 1857 and 1859. This was the effective end of his major acquisitions.¹⁴⁴

As Mayer’s collection attracted national and international interest, he employed a curator, Moody Harrison, from no later than 1857.¹⁴⁵ That same year, the antiquarian John Mitchell Kemble convinced Mayer to loan a selection of artefacts to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition comprising both middle class and aristocratic collectors. Kemble praised Mayer as having one of the finest assemblages of ‘culture-fossils’ in the country, one that would allow the Exhibition to: ‘teach the world that archaeological pursuits are not laborious trifling, as some people call them; but inquiries into the steps by which the world, and especially this England of ours, has become what it is’.¹⁴⁶ Charles Gatty, later curator of the collection, echoed this sentiment: ‘Works of art, like other works of man, are shaped in accordance with man’s condition, and their character is determined by religion, education, government, wealth, country, and climate’.¹⁴⁷ Mayer and his contemporaries grasped that Anglo-Saxon antiquities had something essential to say about the early history of England and its modern inhabitants, something that also fed into the promotion of English nativism and imperial ambitions.¹⁴⁸

Mayer’s acquisition of Anglo-Saxon antiquities, and his sponsorship of scholars like Roach Smith, Wright, Fairholt, and Pulzsky, hastened the speed of mid-century scholarship.¹⁴⁹ Moreover, his historically significant collection and the sponsored publications that celebrated it, created cultural capital that enabled Mayer to mingle, in certain circumstances, in elite circles.¹⁵⁰ When Roach Smith wrote up the Faussett collection, Mayer asked him to underline ‘the philanthropic nature’ of his contribution and included an engraved portrait of himself in every volume despite Roach Smith’s aversion to this approach¹⁵¹ (Figure 15). Collecting and scholarly patronage allowed Mayer to overcome some of the social barriers to tradesmen.

Figure 15. Joseph Mayer’s frontispiece for a book that was never published (1875), with his self-portrait at the top centre, and his shop, his coat of arms, Pennant house. LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528. Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives.

Because Mayer neither married nor fathered children of which we are aware, there was no pressing need to pass down a fortune to his close relations.¹⁵² From the 1850s, he intended to make the artefacts he had gathered permanently accessible to the public, something that was praised by Wright in a prescient letter to Mayer dated 14 April 1856: ‘I think you ought to be immortalised if it were only for your most municipal gift to the town of Liverpool, and one which is of a character so especially calculated to benefit in all their intellectual character the future generations of its inhabitants. I hope to see the time when they will raise a statue to you’.¹⁵³ In 1867, when Mayer’s longstanding offer of his collection to the Corporation of Liverpool was finally accepted, he gave Liverpool’s art students plentiful examples of past artistic traditions, ones that included more than just the finest specimens of artistry.¹⁵⁴

The Liverpool Free Library and Museum, which was built in the late 1850s with an appropriately imposing neo-classical entrance lined with Corinthian columns, conveyed Liverpool’s ambitions for cultural recognition.¹⁵⁵ From 1860, it housed the natural history collection of the 13^th Earl of Derby.¹⁵⁶ From 1867, the ‘Mayer Museum’ occupied the large central court or atrium in the recently constructed west wing.¹⁵⁷ Its opening attracted approximately 15,680 attendees,¹⁵⁸ and raised the donor’s reputation considerably. A brief guide to its collection (1868),¹⁵⁹ preceded the cataloguing of the roughly 15,000 poorly documented pieces that formed the ‘Mayer Museum’. Although Wright repeatedly asked between 1871 and 1873 to be considered for the job, since he desperately needed a steady income in his later years,¹⁶⁰ the monumental task was given first to Ecroyd Smith and then Charles T. Gatty,¹⁶¹ the latter of whom resigned in May 1884.¹⁶²

While Mayer’s collecting may have stemmed from his genuine interest in antiquities, he also recognised its value in enhancing his credentials as a man of taste and a sponsor of scholarly activities.¹⁶³ His 1843 commission of his first oil portrait by William Daniels showed him accompanied by his most notable antiquities including a Peruvian pottery vessel, a Wedgwood vase and a Sèvres porcelain group.¹⁶⁴ Similarly, a ‘full-length, life-size portrait of the princely donor of the museum, Mr. Joseph Mayer, F. S.A., which hangs there a fit, and proper, and proud memorial of his liberality and his patriotism’ graced the upper gallery of the Mayer Museum.¹⁶⁵

In 1867, when city officials were considering honouring Mayer with a larger-than-lifesize marble statue, the merchant and former Liverpool mayor, William Rathbone, wrote to Mayer to see if he favoured the proposal. He reassured him: ‘No one would see the munificent gift without being reminded of the bounteous benefactor in a way that is not common, but I venture to think would at once be recognised as a graceful and most appropriate record of the gratitude of the town’.¹⁶⁶ In 1869, Giovanni Fontana’s likeness of Mayer was unveiled in Liverpool St George’s Hall at the same time as a statue commemorating the 13^th Earl of Derby¹⁶⁷ (Figure 16). Mayer’s magnanimity earned the trader and collector a coveted place in the neo-classical pantheon of worthies.¹⁶⁸

Figure 16. Giovanni Fontana, ‘Joseph Mayer’, St George’s Hall (National Museums Liverpool, authors’ photograph).

In 1880, Picton praised Mayer’s generosity to Liverpool and his fellow citizens effusively:

When I look at the treasures amassed in the Mayer Museum, many of them unique and priceless, I feel amazed at the taste and research manifested in lifelong devotion, to the public service. Your name to all future time will be honourably distinguished in the history of Liverpool and will give a stimulus to others to follow your example. That anyone will arise in the future to occupy the same position I do not expect.¹⁶⁹

Sir William Brown wrote to Mayer: ‘I can only regret that I have not that taste or time that is necessary to investigate subjects that are so useful to the arts & of such great benefit to a civilised people. It is well for us that we have such gentlemen as you, who contribute so large a share of time & talent for the public good’.¹⁷⁰

However, while Mayer’s display of leadership, taste and philanthropy drew him closer to entry into otherwise inaccessible social circles, they never fully erased his roots. In 1873, Picton praised Mayer’s continuing generosity as a benefactor:

I need not say that your name will live as long as the noble Mayer Collection and the memorial statue [in St. George’s Hall] remain to witness to future generations that England as well as Italy can furnish specimens of the union of high business talents and a devotion to art, combined with a public spirit and disinterestedness not surpassed by the Medicis and the Colonnas of the medieval times.¹⁷¹

Although Mayer does not appear to have recorded his sentiments about how his contemporaries viewed him, the merchant class of Liverpool never let him forget his identity as a tradesman.

Country Life and Retirement in the Wirral

In 1854, Mayer opted to move across the River Mersey to the Wirral and settle in Dacre Park, Rock Ferry. Life in the Wirral had improved with access to nearby urban amenities following the laying of track from Birkenhead to Chester in 1840. Regular ferryboat service allowed Mayer to commute to work until his retirement in 1873.¹⁷² While we do not know what propelled his departure from the centre of Liverpool, it was likely a combination of his desire to live in the countryside, his losses from the failed consortium of buyers of the Hertz collection and the economic crisis that rocked the British banking industry in 1857 and 1858. The last led locally to the closure of the Borough Bank of Liverpool, and likewise badly affected the textile trade and Liverpool’s shipbuilders in 1857 and 1858.¹⁷³ Wright sympathised with his patron’s circumstances:

I am sorry to hear that you have been so great a loser by the money crisis – it is hard to be obliged to lose one’s money when one has done nothing to incur the risk. With people who live by speculation, it is of course part of their business to lose every now and then. I have often thought of you, when I saw how heavy the pressure was falling upon Liverpool, and I hoped that you would escape without any hurt.¹⁷⁴

This financial hit nonetheless did not prevent Mayer from settling comfortably in 1860 with his sister Jane and niece Mary Wordley in Pennant House in the village of Bebington. Although his talk of marriage in 1863 did not bear fruit,¹⁷⁵ Mayer designed himself a coat of arms with a three-masted ship with sails furled, a knight in a suit of armor and the motto ‘Tyranny’s Foe’.¹⁷⁶

In the 1860s, Mayer’s philanthropy benefitted the inhabitants of his adopted village. He founded the Free Library and Museum in Bebington and filled it with 20,000 volumes.¹⁷⁷ Mayer raised funds for a village hospital, sponsored public gardens and a horticultural society, and introduced reliable gas and water.¹⁷⁸ To encourage the creation of a local voluntary force, Mayer sponsored, clothed and directed a company of the 4^th Cheshire Rifles from August 1864, eliminating any need for the men to purchase uniforms and weapons.¹⁷⁹ His collecting continued modestly: he focused on prints, drawings and autograph letters for what he hoped would be a magnum opus on a history of the arts that never came to fruition. These pieces were shown in his art gallery (1878), which was dispersed following his death in 1886.¹⁸⁰

Epilogue

Unlike their patron, the antiquarians of middling status whom Mayer had once supported found themselves in precarious circumstances as they embarked on old age. Few held secure pensions, and their plight was captured in their correspondence, or that of their friends who observed their penurious circumstances once poor health affected their ability to travel to collections, participate in scholarly activities and compose new essays and monographs. In July 1875, Roach Smith reported that he had just hosted a shockingly infirm Wright and his wife, who was nearly blind. By Roach Smith’s estimation, Wright’s writing had brought in no income in recent years, leaving the elderly couple destitute. To help them, the BAA created a subscription campaign to raise funds on behalf of their co-founder, who died in 1877.¹⁸¹

By contrast, Meteyard’s final years were mercifully more secure due to her successful petitioning of the state. In 1874, Meteyard celebrated her receipt of a long-sought pension, a reward for having written the first comprehensive biography of Josiah Wedgwood. She wrote to Mayer: ‘I am sure you will hear with pleasure that Mr Disraeli has increased my Civil List Pension and it is now £100 per annum. This – with the produce of my pen – frees me from all dependence and mental anxiety as to means to live, for the rest of my days…’.¹⁸² In the years leading up to her death in 1879, she resided in the relative comfort of a home offered to her by the dean and chapter of Westminster with the added support of the Royal Pension fund.¹⁸³

Roach Smith was likely the last survivor of the circle of friends and role models whom Mayer commemorated in a series of marble busts and medallions by Fontana. Never fully at home with either the Society of Antiquaries or the BAA, Roach Smith had entrusted the vast majority of his correspondence and archaeological diaries to Mayer, whom he hoped would use his resources to conserve them intact for future generations. He came to regret this choice as Mayer, at this time in his eighties, neither fulfilled his ambition to write a history of the arts in Britain nor created a lasting repository for Roach Smith’s carefully assembled papers. Before his death in 1890, Roach Smith saw his life’s work, along with the papers of Fairholt (d. 1866) for whom he had served as executor, auctioned privately and scattered when Mayer’s estate was liquidated after 1886. Few of Roach Smith’s unpublished writings accompanied Mayer’s correspondence into the Liverpool Records Office, and more than half remain missing, a significant loss for historians of nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism and late Roman and early medieval archaeology.¹⁸⁴

Despite Mayer’s innumerable acts of philanthropy, the wealthy tradesman was never fully embraced by the upper echelons of Liverpool society. Liverpool’s notables kept themselves at arm’s length from Mayer, praising his generous gifts to the city, offering him the honour of a place in St George’s Hall, but distancing themselves socially. Unlike so many of his antiquarian colleagues who were not from the highest levels of society, however, Mayer thankfully enjoyed sufficient resources to live out his days in comfort. In December 1886, Mayer died at Pennant House, the last of all of his siblings but Jane. He had managed to give away most of his assets. His will left an estate valued at £9,762, from which he bequeathed modest incomes to his sister, nephews, housekeeper and servants. The village of Bebington received the park and the Free Library, Lecture and Picture Hall. The remainder of his possessions, including Roach Smith’s papers, were sold to raise funds for his bequests.¹⁸⁵

Acknowledgement

For their support in conducting research and writing this essay during the less than auspicious circumstances of the covid-19 pandemic, I am grateful to the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for a research grant in 2021 in order to travel to London and visit the archives that contained additional traces of Joseph Mayer’s life. I also wish to acknowledge the University Research Scheme at the University of Liverpool for creating in 2020 the opportunity to collaborate remotely but productively on this research with Hannah Schofield-Lea, at the time a second-year history honours student. Hannah conducted much of the genealogical, register and newspaper research that fleshed out our understanding of Mayer’s business, finances and social connections. Sincere thanks also to Ashley Cooke and Nicola Scott of National Museums Liverpool for their generous encouragement of, enthusiasm for, and knowledge of Joseph Mayer’s role in Liverpool’s history and collections. We also offer our gratitude to Isabel Moreira, Laura Sandy and Gervase Phillips, who offered helpful feedback on this essay at critical junctures.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886 (Cambridge 1986), pp. 21–22.

2 Clare A. Simmons, Popular Medievalism in Romantic-Era Britain (New York, 2011), pp. 58–67.

3 Michael Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith, 1806–1890’, vol. 1, (University of London doctoral thesis, 1992) pp. 92–94, p. 177.

4 Levine, The Amateur and the Professional, pp. 8–9.

5 Howard Williams, ‘Heathen Graves and Victorian Anglo-Saxonism: Assessing the Archaeology of John Mitchell Kemble’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 13 (2005), pp. 1–18; Williams, ‘Digging Saxon Graves in Victorian Britain’, in R. Pearson (ed.), The Victorians and the Ancient World: Archaeology and Classicism in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 61–80; Williams, ‘“Burnt Germans”, Alemannic Graves and the Origins of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology’, in Stefan Burmeister, Heidrun Derks, and Jasper von Richthofen (eds.), Zweiundvierzig: Festschrift für Michael Gebühr zum 65. Geburtstag (Internationale Archäologie: Studia Honoraria 25), (Leidorf, 2007), pp. 229–238; Williams ‘Anglo-Saxonism and Victorian archaeology: William Wylie’s Fairford Graves’, Early Medieval Europe 16.1 (2008), pp. 49–88.

6 Rosemary Sweet, ‘The recovery of the Anglo-Saxon past, c. 1770–1850’, English Historical Review 136.579 (2021), pp. 304–339.

7 Margaret Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, in Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright (eds), Joseph Mayer of Liverpool, 1803–1886 (London, 1988), pp. 1–27. Gibson was foremost an expert on Lanfranc and the transmission of the works of Boethius in the Middle Ages, but devoted significant time and effort to documenting the life of Joseph Mayer, whose activities she studied while a member of the Department of History at the University of Liverpool. Just before her untimely death, she bequeathed her papers and notes to the University of Liverpool’s Special Collections, where they remain today. Her published works and notes offered important support to the current study.

8 Jacqueline Yallop, Magpies, Squirrels & Thieves: How the Victorians Collected the World (London, 2011), p. 243.

9 Arline Margaret Wilson, ‘Culture and Commerce: Liverpool's merchant elite c. 1790–1850’ (unpublished doctoral thesis in history, University of Liverpool, 1996), pp. 43–78.

10 Joseph Mayer, Roscoe, and the Influence of his Writings on the Fine Arts (Liverpool, 1853), p. 4; Joseph Mayer, Early Exhibitions of Art in Liverpool with Some Notes for a Memoir of George Stubbs, R.A. (Liverpool, 1876), p. 7.

11 Walker Art Gallery, Decorative Arts (WAG, DA), National Museums Liverpool 7.6.83.51: Letter from Samuel Mayer to Joseph Mayer dated 12 October 1821.

12 Nicola Scott, ‘Joseph Mayer (1803–1886): Portrait of a Victorian Collector’, Northern Ceramic Society 37 (2021), pp. 45–78.

13 John Thomas, The Rise of the Staffordshire Potteries (Bath, 1971), pp. 17–19.

14 Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914 (Manchester, 1988), pp. 1–8.

15 University of Liverpool Special Collections (UoLSC) D.643/82: Margaret Gibson’s Papers on Joseph Mayer.

16 James A. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool, Historical and Topographical 1, second edition (Liverpool, 1903), pp. 443–4; Sean Burrell and Geoffrey Gill, ‘The Liverpool Cholera Epidemic of 1832 and Anatomical Dissection – Medical Mistrust and Civil Unrest’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 60.4, (2005), pp. 478–98.

17 UoLSC D.643/79: Margaret Gibson’s Papers on Joseph Mayer.

18 Liverpool Records Office (LRO), Liverpool Central Library: Electoral Register 1836.

19 Eliza Meteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood 1 (London, 1865), p. 178, n.2.

20 Susan Nicholson and Margaret Warhurst, ‘Joseph Mayer, 1803–1886’, Merseyside County Museum Occasional Papers 2 (1983), pp. 1–3.

21 Meteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood 1, pp. 177–178.

22 Will of John Mayer, Staffordshire, Dioceses of Lichfield and Coventry, Wills and Probate, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1823. Will of John Pepper, Staffordshire, Dioceses of Lichfield and Coventry, Wills and Probate, Newcastle-und-Lyme, 1815.

23 Will of Samuel Mayer, Staffordshire, Dioceses of Lichfield and Coventry, Wills and Probate, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1839.

24 The tithe books do mention a corporation of Newcastle, and it is possible that further investigation of this subject is needed.

25 Current whereabouts of the Mayer Papers (genealogical and otherwise) once held in Bebington are unknown. Pers. comm. Anne-Marie McLoughlin, Strategic Librarian (South Area), Bebington Central Library. Copies of some of their contents were preserved by Margaret Gibson, whose archives are deposited in UoLSC.

26 SRO Poll Book, Pirehill South 1841.

27 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 2.

28 The Liverpool Mercury and Lancashire General Advertiser (LMLGA) 12 July and 23 August 1844.

29 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 1–5; Margaret Gibson, ‘Preface’, in Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright (eds), Joseph Mayer of Liverpool, 1803–1886 (London, 1988), p. ix.

30 Ian Sellers, ‘Nonconformist Attitudes in Later Nineteenth-Century Liverpool’, THSLC 114 (1962), pp. 215–239. Wilson, ‘Culture and Commerce’, pp. 15–16; 242.

31 Dianne Sachko Macleod, Arts and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of the Cultural Identity (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 20–24.

32 John Rylands Library, Manchester (JRL) Eng Ms. 1119, f. 59: Joseph Mayer, Verses (1820s and 1830s); WAG Liverpool 1978, Merseyside Painters, People & Places, Catalogue of Oil Paintings – Plates, Merseyside County Council (Liverpool, 1978), p. 126; Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 2.

33 Nicholson and Warhurst, ‘Joseph Mayer, 1803–1886’, pp. 1–3.

34 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, pp. 5–6.

35 LMLGA 25 October 1844.

36 LMLGA 13 August, 20 December 1850 and 10 October 1851.

37 L. Kelly, ‘Irish Migration to Liverpool and Lancashire in the Nineteenth Century’, 2014.https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/outreach/migration/backgroundreading/migration/ [consulted 16 November 2021].

38 J. Longmore, ‘Civic Liverpool: 1680–1800’, in John Belchem (ed.), Liverpool 800: Culture, Character & History (Liverpool, 2006), pp. 132–137. Olivette Otele, ‘Liverpool dans la traité transatlantique: impératifs et pratiques des pères de la citeé’, in É Saunier (ed.), Villes portuaires, du commerce triangulaire à l’abolition de l’esclavage (Le Havre, 2009), pp. 57–70.

39 Picton, Memorials of Liverpool 1, pp. 411, 444–6; Martin Lynn, ‘Liverpool and Africa in the Nineteenth Century: The Continuing Connection’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (THSLC) 147 (1998), pp. 27–54; Graeme J. Milne, Trade and Traders in Mid-Victorian Liverpool: Mercantile Business and the Making of a World Port (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 46–54; Bronwen Everill, Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition (Cambridge, MA, 2020).

40 John Culme, Nineteenth-Century Silver (London, 1977), pp. 99–107.

41 Picton, Memorials of Liverpool 1, p. 509.

42 A. Berenbaum, ‘Silver Ceremonial Trowels’, The Silver Society Journal 31 (2014), pp. 106–7.

43 LRO 920 MAY James Elmes: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 21 September 1854; Nicholson and Warhurst, ‘Joseph Mayer, 1803–1886’, p. 3.

44 Picton, Memorials of Liverpool 2, pp. 300–1.

45 ‘New Free Library and Museum at Liverpool’, London Illustrated News (2 May 1857).

46 M. E. Gleason, ‘From Vulgarity to the Current of Fashion: The Impact of Electroplating on Victorian Industry, Marketing, and Design’, (unpublished master’s thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001), pp. 13–23.

47 LRO 920 MAY Thomas Spencer: Correspondence regarding patent.

48 S. Bury, Victorian Electroplate (London, 1971), p. 35; Lionel Burman, ‘Joseph Mayer and the Progress of “The Art of Pottery”’, in P Starkey (ed.), Riches into Art: Liverpool Collectors, 1770–1880, (Liverpool, 1993), p. 35.

49 Culme, Nineteenth-Century Silver, p. 119.

50 Joseph Mayer, ‘On Liverpool Pottery’, THSLC 7 (1856), p. 210; Scott, ‘Joseph Mayer (1803–1886)’, pp. 52–6. Although the forename Jos may have been an abbreviated form of Josiah, and perhaps reflected the Mayer family’s effort to honour the esteemed Josiah Wedgwood, the archival record consistently refers to him by the shorter forename so that is what we have used here.

51 Charles T. Gatty, Catalogue of a Loan Collection of the Works of Josiah Wedgwood exhibited at the Liverpool Art Club, February 1879 (Liverpool, 1879).

52 LRO 920 MAY Jos Mayer: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 28 May 1842.

53 LRO 920 MAY Jos Mayer: Letters to Joseph Mayer dated 28 December 1839 and 28 May 1842.

54 Public Records Office, Kew, Surrey, 1851 Census, 2180, Enumeration District 3.3., Folio 421, District St George; Nicholson and Warhurst ‘Joseph Mayer, 1803–1886’, p. 2.

55 I. F. W. Beckett, Britain’s Part-Time Soldiers: The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558–1945, reprint edition (Barnsley, 2011), pp. 164–74.

56 Joseph Mayer, The Liverpool Volunteer Borough Guard, (Liverpool, 1859).

57 ‘The Queen’s Visit’, The Liverpool Mercury (LM) 10 October 1851.

58 Andrew Popp, ‘“But to cover her shame”: Respectability, Social Mobility, and the Middling Sort in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, Cultural and Social History 18.4 (2021), pp. 501–16.

59 Picton, Memorials of Liverpool 2, pp. 511–512.

60 John Belchem, ‘“The Church, the Throne and the People: Ships, Colonies and Commerce”: Popular Toryism in Early Victorian Liverpool’, THSLC 143 (1993), pp. 35–55; Belchem, ‘Liverpool in 1848: Image, Identity and Issues’, THSLC 147 (1998), pp. 1–26.

61 John Haggerty and Sheryllynne Haggerty, ‘The Life Cycle of a Metropolitan Business Network: Liverpool 1750–1810’, Explorations in Economic History 48 (2011), pp. 189–206.

62 G. Chandler, Liverpool (London, 1957), p. 455.

63 Neville Carrick, and Edward L. Ashton, The Athenaeum Liverpool, 1797–1997 (Liverpool 1997), pp. 3–6; David Brazendale and Mark Towsey, The First Minute Book of the Liverpool Athenaeum, 1797–1809 (Liverpool, 2020), pp. 163, 247.

64 Macleod, Arts and the Victorian Middle Class, pp. 95–8.

65 Mayer, Early Exhibitions of Art in Liverpool, pp. 1–6.

66 Arline Wilson, ‘The Cultural Identity of Liverpool, 1790–1850: The Early Learned Societies’, THSLC 147 (1998), pp. 55–80.

67 Michael Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organisation: The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (Ithaca, NY, 1978).

68 Picton, Memorials of Liverpool 1, pp. 319–20; Pat Starkey, ‘Preface’, in P Starkey (ed.), Riches into Art Liverpool Collectors, 1770–1880, (Liverpool, 1993), pp. 2–3; John Belchem, ‘Celebrating Liverpool’, in John Belchem (ed.), Liverpool 800: Culture, Character & History (Liverpool 2006), pp. 15–17.

69 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 2.

70 H. A. Ormerod, The Liverpool Royal Institution: A Record and a Retrospect (Liverpool, 1953), pp. 40–57.

71 Ormerod, The Liverpool Royal Institution, p. 49.

72 UoLSC LRI/1/1/5: 1879 Proprietor List; UoLSC LRI/1/3/4: Incoming Letters List.

73 LRO 920 MAY, Box 3, Acc. 2528: Letter from Joseph Mayer to William Rathbone dated 7 May 1850.

74 Ormerod, The Liverpool Royal Institution, p. 57.

75 The HSLC met at the Royal Institution on Colquitt Street from 1848, but there is little to no mention of Joseph Mayer in the latter organisation’s correspondence or donor lists.

76 William B. Hodgson, Speech Delivered at the First Annual Dinner of the Teachers and Officers of the Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution, on Saturday, the 2^nd of January, 1841; (Liverpool, 1841); Wilson, ‘Culture and Commerce’, pp. 114–119.

77 Llewellynn F. W. Jewitt, ‘The Museums of England with Special Reference to Objects of Art and Antiquity’, The Art Journal 57–60 (1870), p. 120; Cecil H. Clough, ‘William Roscoe and his Lorenzo de’ Medici’, in Stella Fletcher (ed.), Roscoe and Italy: The Reception of Italian Renaissance History and Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 2012), p. 118.

78 LRO 920 MAY Prof. William Ballantyne Hodgson: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 6 September 1842; T. Hogg, Abstract of a Paper on the Present Prospects of Education, Read at the Fortnightly Meeting of the Teachers of the Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution on 16^th November 1844 (Liverpool, 1845); Scott, ‘Joseph Mayer (1803–1886)’, pp. 51–52.

79 Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 2004), pp. 57–64.

80 Arthur MacGregor, ‘Collectors, Connoisseurs and Curators in the Victorian Age’, in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds.), A. W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum (London, 1997), pp. 6–33; MacGregor, ‘Antiquity Inventoried: Museums and “National Antiquities” in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, in The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age (Oxford, 1998), pp. 125–137; S. Scott, ‘“Gratefully dedicated to the subscribers”: The Archaeological Publishing Projects and Achievements of Charles Roach Smith’, Internet Archaeology 45 (2017): https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.45.6

81 Sweet, Antiquaries, pp. 13–18.

82 David Wetherall, ‘The Growth of Antiquarian Societies’, in The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age (Oxford, 1998), pp. 21–34.

83 David Griffiths and Robert A. Philpott, ‘The Discovery of Meols’, in David Griffiths, Robert A. Philpott and Geoffrey Egan (eds.), Meols: The Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast. Discoveries and observations in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, with a catalogue of collections (Oxford, 2007), pp. 5–10.

84 Abraham Hume, ‘Closing Address’, THSLC 1 (1848), pp. 155–157; Levine, The Amateur and the Professional, pp. 57–8.

85 Burman, ‘Joseph Mayer and the Progress of “The Art of Pottery”’, p. 29.

86 Joseph Mayer, Address to the members of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (Liverpool, 1867), p. 14.

87 M. E. Rose, ‘Clio, Culture and the City: Historical Societies in their Nineteenth-Century Urban Context’, THSLC 147 (1997), pp. 139–152.

88 Levine, The Amateur and the Professional, pp. 2–46; Sweet, Antiquaries, 81–4; Bonnie Effros, Uncovering the Germanic Past: Merovingian Archaeology in France, 1830–1914 (Oxford, 2012).

89 A. Kidd. ‘“Local History” and the Culture of the Middle Classes in North-West England’, THSLC 147 (1997), pp. 115–138.

90 Joseph Mayer, ‘An Anglo-Roman Fibula or Brooch’, THSLC 1 (1848), pp. 28–29; Mayer, ‘On Ancient Shoes, as Used in This and Other Parts of the Country’, THSLC 1 (1848), pp. 117–121; ‘Eighth Meeting, Collegiate Institution, 8 June 1854’, THSLC 6 (1855), pp. 131–134.

91 LRO MAY 920 Sir William Brown: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 17 September (year unknown).

92 Henry C. Pidgeon, ‘On the Best Mode of Carrying Out the Objectives of the Society’, THSLC 1 (1848), pp. 43–54; Jewitt, ‘The Museums of England’, p. 117; Bertram B. B. Benas, ‘Centenary of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire’, THSLC 100 suppl (1948), pp. 1–27.

93 Mayer, Address to the members of the Historic Society, p. 4; Nicholson and Warhurst ‘Joseph Mayer, 1803–1886’, p. 4.

94 Michael Rhodes, ‘Faussett Rediscovered: Charles Roach Smith, Joseph Mayer, and the Publication of Inventorium Sepulchrale’, in E Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal (Stroud, 1990), pp. 32–33.

95 Dafydd Kidd, ‘Charles Roach Smith and his Museum of London Antiquities’, The British Museum Yearbook 2 (1977), p. 124; Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, p. 184.

96 Thomas Wright, ‘Meeting of the British Archaeological Association at Canterbury’, in his Archaeological Album; or Museum of National Antiquities (London, 1845), p. 1.

97 Charles Roach Smith, ‘The Chester Congress’, in his Retrospections, Social and Archaeological 1 (London, 1883), pp. 66–76; Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, pp. 193–197.

98 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 6.

99 Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, pp. 202–203.

100 Kidd, ‘Charles Roach Smith and his Museum of London Antiquities’, pp. 131–2; Kidd, ‘Charles Roach Smith and the Abbé Cochet’, in Centenaire de l’abbé Cochet 1975. Actes du colloque international d’archéologie, Rouen, 3–4–5 juillet 1975 (Rouen, 1978), pp. 64–6; Rhodes, ‘Faussett Rediscovered’, pp. 28–9; M. Robbins, ‘The Gadfly: A Necessary Pest?’, Antiquaries Journal, 74 (1994), pp. 314–15.

101 Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, pp. 242–244.

102 Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, pp. 213–214.

103 LRO 920 MAY Dr John Collingwood Bruce: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 7 July 1856.

104 LM ‘Honour Conferred Upon a Townsman’, 11 February 1856; Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, pp. 6–7. Rhodes, ‘Faussett Rediscovered’, pp. 35–6.

105 Charles Roach Smith, ‘Notes on Some of the Antiquities of Treves, Mayence, and other places on the Moselle and Rhine’, in his Collectanea antiqua, etchings and notices of ancient remains, illustrative of the habits, customs, and history of past ages (Collectanea antiqua) 2 (London, 1852), p. 65.

106 UoLSC D.643/79: Margaret Gibson’s Papers on Joseph Mayer.

107 ‘Eighth Meeting, Collegiate Institution, 8 June 1854’, pp. 131–134.

108 LRO 920 MAY Joseph Clarke: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 25 April 1871.

109 Williams, “Burnt Germans”, Alemannic Graves and the Origins of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology’, pp. 229–238.

110 British Library (BL) Add Ms 33346, 9: Letter from Thomas Wright to Joseph Mayer dated 19 April 1854.

111 Charles Roach Smith, ‘Biographical notices,’ in his Collectanea antiqua, 7 (London 1878–80), pp. 244–262.

112 Thomas Wright, A Library of National Antiquities, a Series of Volumes Illustrating the General Archaeology and History of our Country. Published under the Direction and at the Expense of Joseph Mayer, Esq., F.S.A., 1 (London, 1857), preface; Roach Smith, ‘The Chester Congress’, pp. 69–74.

113 BL Add Ms 33346, 219: Letter from Thomas Wright to Joseph Mayer dated 20 February 1858; BL Add Ms 33346, 192–250: Multiple letters from Thomas Wright to Joseph Mayer dated between 23 December 1871 and 15 August 1873.

114 The archives are now in the Wedgwood Museum Trust. Burman, ‘Joseph Mayer and the Progress of “The Art of Pottery”’, pp. 27–31; John A. Walthall, Queensware Direct from the Potteries: U. S. Importers of Staffordshire Ceramics in Antebellum America 1820–1860, Studies in Archaeological Material Culture No. 1 (Springfield, 2013), p. 57. Scott, ‘Joseph Mayer (1803–1886)’, pp. 52–56.

115 LRO 920 MAY George Melly: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 19 October 1868.

116 Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Holborn Library, London (CLSAC) H920, M11351: Letters from Eliza Meteyard to Joseph Mayer and Charles Roach Smith; Meteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood 1, x–xiv; Yallop, Magpies, Squirrels & Thieves, p. 243.

117 David Gaimster, ‘Rescuing the Past’, in Making History: Antiquaries in Britain, 1707–2007 (London, 2007), pp. 201–213.

118 C. R. Beard, ‘The Joseph Mayer Collections Part I’, The Connoisseur 95.404 (1935), pp. 135–138; Beard, ‘The Joseph Mayer Collections Part II’, The Connoisseur 95.404 (1935), pp. 201–204.

119 LRO 920 MAY Edward Hawkins: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 11 February 1850 with a printed notice signed by Augustus W. Franks, honorary secretary of the Committee for the Exhibition of Works of Ancient and Mediaeval Art.

120 LRO Liverpool Electoral registers, Burgess rolls and Voter Lists, Hq324.241LIV, 1856–7.

121 W. R. Dawson and E. P. Uphill, Who Was Who in Egyptology, 2^nd rev. ed. (London, 1972), 10, pp. 258–9, 282; UoLSC D643/83: Margaret Gibson’s Papers on Joseph Mayer.

122 Joseph Mayer, Egyptian Museum, No. VIII, Colquitt-Street (Liverpool, 1862), p. 2.

123 ‘The Egyptian Museum, Liverpool’, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, new series, 455 (18 September 1852), pp. 184–7; Mayer, Egyptian Museum, pp. 3–47.

124 Louise Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display (Oxford, 2011), pp. 128–130.

125 A Companion to the Liverpool Museum, containing a brief description of upwards of four thousand of its natural & foreign curiosities, antiquities & productions of the fine arts open for public inspection in five apartments, built and fitted up for the purpose at the house of William Bullock Church Street, 6^th edition (Hull, 1808); Edward P. Alexander, ‘William Bullock: Little-Remembered Museologist and Showman’, Curator, 28.2 (1985), pp. 117–47.

126 Martin Henig and Penny Coombe, ‘Roach Smith and the Antiquities of London: The Sculptures’, in Hildegard Wiegel and Michael Vickers (eds.), Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor (Oxford, 2013), pp. 127–132.

127 Mayer, Egyptian Museum, p. 2.

128 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 8.

129 LRO 920 MAY Box 3 Ac 2528: Drafted letter from Joseph Mayer to the Mayor of Liverpool dated Easter Monday, 1854.

130 ‘The Late Joseph Mayer, F.S.A., etc’, The Reliquary 27 (1886), pp. 225–229; Picton, Memorials of Liverpool 2, pp. 511–512.

131 Rhodes, ‘Faussett Rediscovered’, pp. 37–44.

132 Charles Roach Smith ‘The Faussett Collection of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities’, in Collectanea antiqua, 3 (London, 1854), pp. 179–192.

133 Thomas Wright, A Lecture on the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of the Ages of Paganism, Illustrative of the Faussett Collection of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities, now in the possession of Joseph Mayer, FSA, FES, FRAS (Liverpool, 1854), pp. 23–24.

134 Roger H. White, ‘Mayer and British Archaeology’, in Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright (eds), Joseph Mayer of Liverpool, 1803–1886 (London, 1988), pp. 118–122; Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, ‘Bryan Faussett and the Faussett Collection: An Assessment’, in E Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal (Stroud, 1990), pp. 1–24.

135 Julien Parsons, ‘The Rage to Rake in Dust and Ashes: A Socio-Economic Context for the Excavation of Prehistoric Barrows in the Nineteenth Century’, The Archaeological Journal 163.1 (2006), pp. 233–263. It is important to recall, however, that Bronze age barrows were often linked to Anglo-Saxon studies, since many of the ancient sites were repurposed in the early Middle Ages.

136 Howard Williams, ‘Saxon Obsequies: The Early Medieval Archaeology of Richard Cornwallis Neville’, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 23.1 (2013), pp. 1–19; Sue Content and Howard Williams, ‘Creating the Pagan English: From the Tudors to the Present Day’, in Alex Sanmark and Sarah Semple (eds.), Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited (Oxford, 2010), pp. 189–194.

137 LRO 920 MAY Frederick W Fairholt: Letter to Joseph Mayer likely dated to 1854 or 1855. The emphases are original to the document.

138 Thomas Wright, The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon: A History of the Early Inhabitants of Roman Britain down to the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, third revised ed. (London, 1875), p. 465.

139 LRO 920 MAY Augustus W. Franks: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 11 March 1854.

140 Susan Nicholson, Catalogue of the Prehistoric Metalwork in Merseyside County Museums (Liverpool, 1980); Margaret Gibson, The Liverpool Ivories: Late Antique and Medieval Ivory and Bone Carving in the Liverpool Museum and the Walker Art Gallery (London, 1993), pp. ix–xi.

141 David M. Wilson, ‘A Hungarian in London: Pulszky’s 1851 lecture’, Journal of the History of Collections 22.2 (2010), pp. 271–278.

142 Naomi Speakman, ‘“A Great Harvest”: The Acquisition of William Maskell’s Ivory Collection by the British Museum’, in C. Yvard (ed.), Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context (London, 2017), pp. 111–124.

143 White, ‘Mayer and British Archaeology’, p. 120.

144 Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects, pp. 106–134.

145 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, pp. 8–12.

146 LRO 920 MAY J. Mitchell Kemble: Undated letter of late 1856 or January 1857 to Joseph Mayer. Emphases are original to the document.

147 Charles T. Gatty, Catalogue of Mediaeval and Later Antiquities contained in the Mayer Museum (Liverpool, 1883), p. 1.

148 Billie Melman, ‘Claiming the Nation’s Past: The Invention of an Anglo-Saxon Tradition’, Journal of Contemporary History 26.3–4 (1991), pp. 575–595; Catherine E. Karkov, Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Heterotopia, Dystopia (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 209–213.

149 Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, pp. 253–256.

150 Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects, p. 113.

151 Rhodes, ‘Faussett Rediscovered’, pp. 44–48.

152 Peter Mandler, ‘Contexts for Collecting: Inheritance, Purchase, Sale, Tax and Bequest’, in Pippa Shirley and Dora Thornton (eds.), A Rothschild Renaissance: A New Look at the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, (London, 2017), pp. 22–29.

153 BL Add. Ms 33346, p. 62: Letter from Thomas Wright to Joseph Mayer dated 14 April 1856.

154 Gatty, Catalogue of Mediaeval and Later Antiquities, pp. iii–iv.

155 Picton, Memorials of Liverpool, 2, pp. 300–1; Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects, pp. 136–7.

156 C. Fisher and C. E. Jackson, ‘The 13^th Earl of Derby as a Scientist’, in C. Fisher (ed.), A Passion for Natural History: The Life and Legacy of the 13^th Early of Derby (Liverpool, 2002), pp. 45–51.

157 Jewitt, ‘The Museums of England’.

158 LRO 920 MAY Thomas J Moore: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 7 October (1867?).

159 A Descriptive Guide to the Liverpool Free Public Museum, including the Derby Collection of Natural History and the Mayer Collection of Antiquities and Art (Liverpool, 1868).

160 BL Add. Ms 33346, pp. 192–250: Multiple letters from Thomas Wright to Joseph Mayer dated between 23 December 1871 and 15 August 1873.

161 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 20; Gibson, The Liverpool Ivories, p. xi; Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects, pp. 140–1.

162 WAG, Decorative Arts Collection 50.131.2: Letter from Charles Gatty to Joseph Mayer dated 7 May 1884.

163 Contra Burman, ‘Joseph Mayer and the Progress of “The Art of Pottery”’, p. 29.

164 WAG 1978, #7355, 127; Susan Nicholson and Margaret Warhurst, ‘The Mayer Collection’, in The Museum Archaeologist 8 (1982), p. 12; Yallop, Magpies, Squirrels & Thieves, pp. 189–93.

165 Jewitt, ‘The Museums of England’, p. 120.

166 LRO 920 MAY William Rathbone V: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 28 November 1867.

167 LRO 920 MAY Dover, Mayor of Liverpool: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 21 September 1869.

168 ‘Death of Mr Joseph Mayer’, The Liverpool Daily Post (20 January 1887).

169 LRO 920 MAY Sir James A. Picton: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 25 December 1880.

170 LRO 920 MAY Sir William Brown: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 17 September (year unknown).

171 LRO 920 MAY Sir James A. Picton: Letter to Joseph Mayer dated 3 July 1873.

172 R. Foster, ‘Philanthropy and Patronage’, in Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright (eds), Joseph Mayer of Liverpool, 1803–1886 (London, 1988), p. 28; Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, p. 12.

173 J. R. T. Hughes, ‘The Commerical Crisis of 1857’, Oxford Economic Papers, new series 8.2 (1956), pp. 194–222

174 BL Add Ms 33346, 216: Letter from Thomas Wright to Joseph Mayer dated 30 January 1858.

175 Yallop, Magpies, Squirrels & Thieves, pp. 240–2.

176 UoLSC D.643/79: Margaret Gibson’s Papers on Joseph Mayer; Thomas Adam, Buying Respectability: Philanthropy and Urban Society in a Transnational Perspective, 1840s to 1930s (Bloomington, IN, 2009), p. 93.

177 On Public Libraries: Their Use and National Profit (Liverpool, 1867); ‘Free Library, Bebington, Cheshire’, LM 18 January 1870; Mayer Free Library, Bebington, Reference Department (Liverpool, 1877).

178 Foster, ‘Philanthropy and Patronage’, pp. 28–32.

179 B. Rose, ‘The Volunteers of 1859’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 37.15 (1959), pp. 97–110; Nicholson and Warhurst, ‘Joseph Mayer, 1803–1886’, p. 8.

180 Gibson, ‘Joseph Mayer’, pp. 12, 20.

181 BL Add Ms 33347, 258: Letter from Charles Roach Smith to Joseph Mayer dated 9 July 1875.

182 CLSAC H920, M11351: Letter dated 20 June 1874 from Eliza Meteyard to Joseph Mayer.

183 A brief obituary of Meteyard was printed in the LM 7 April 1879.

184 Rhodes, ‘Some Aspects of the Contribution to Archaeology of Charles Roach Smith’, 1, pp. 3–38.

185 Will of Joseph Mayer, England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (1858–1995), 1886; Hanover Gallery, Liverpool, Catalogue of the Local Portion of the Valuable Collection of Objects of Local Art and Interest, (Liverpool, 1887).