https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2634-9190
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ABSTRACT
Late-Victorian banker and private collector Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868–1937) dedicated his life to the study of zoology. He collected and studied huge quantities of zoological material, created a museum in which to house and display that material for the benefit of researchers and visiting publics, and started his own zoological journal for disseminating the research that he, his museum curators and other zoologists performed. Together, these activities constituted his ‘zoological enterprise’; the building of which depended on a constant stream of financial transactions. However, little consideration has been given to how money shaped its development. A focus on money and analysis of the surviving archival evidence of Rothschild’s financial transactions provides a novel methodology by which to explore his motives for the development of his zoological enterprise and the value he placed on its different parts. The argument is made that money is more than the merely pecuniary and that the approach of ‘following the money’ can therefore enhance our understanding of why museums, and enterprises like Rothschild’s, took the form and shape that they did.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the journal’s editorial team and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions. Special thanks go to Abigail Woods and Anne Secord for their valuable insights and suggestions on earlier drafts, and to the Library and Archives team at the Natural History Museum, London, for supporting access to the large amounts of source material needed to put this analysis together.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 ‘Society,’ Bow Bells, 10 November 1893, p. 468.
2 ‘Mr. Walter Rothschild’s Museum at Tring,’ The Times, 23 October 1893, p. 3.
3 M. Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies, and History (London: Hutchinson, 1983), p. 155.
4 See for example K. Rookmaaker and J. van Wyhe, ‘In Alfred Russel Wallace’s Shadow: His Forgotten Assistant, Charles Allen (1839–1892),’ JMBRAS 85 (2012), pp. 17–54; N. Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collecting, 1770–1830 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007).
5 N.A. Rupke, Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 11–12 & 66.
6 A. Desmond, ‘Robert E. Grant: The Social Predicament of a Pre-Darwinian Transmutationist,’ Journal of the History of Biology, 17 (1984), pp. 194 & 221; S.E. Parker, Robert Edmond Grant (1793–1874) and His Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, ed. Helen Chatterjee (London: Grant Museum of Zoology, 2006), pp. 25 & 38–39.
7 To the best of my knowledge there are no other examples where money is used to examine the histories of collections or museums.
8 ‘Current Accounts,’ I/2/24 to I/2/31, Rothschild Archive, London (hereafter RAL); ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s,’ TM3/1, NHM, London (hereafter NHM).
9 This data set is not an exhaustive record. The running of an enterprise of this scale is likely to have produced far more financial documentation than what has survived. Any indication of amounts here should thus be considered a conservative estimate.
10 N. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Banker 1849–1999, (New York: Penguin, 1998); R. W. Davis, The English Rothschilds (London: Collins, 1983).
11 J. Cooper, ‘Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild (1840–1915), the Last of the Shtadlanim,’ Jewish Historical Studies, 43 (2011), p. 127.
12 ‘“N. M. de Rothschild” 1881 England Census,’ https://ancestry.co.uk [accessed 5 April 2019]; T. Amsden, The Rothschilds and Tring (London: Ludo Press, 2017), p. 5. The family also had a London residence at 148 Piccadilly, London.
13 Virginia Cowles, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), pp. 171–3.
14 Cowles, pp. 190–1.
15 Rothschild, p. 1.
16 G. R. Evans, The University of Cambridge: A New History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), p. 248.
17 ‘A Cambridge Alumni Database 1200–1900: Record for Lionel Walter Rothschild.,’ http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/Documents/acad/2018/search-2018.html [accessed 18 April 2017]; Rothschild, p. 75.
18 Rothschild, p. 104.
19 A. E. Günther, A Century of Zoology at the British Museum through the Lives of Two Keepers, 1815–1914 (London: Dawsons, 1975), p. 420.
20 This estimate has been calculated using the case study year, 1895, to work out an average sum per transaction (£15), that sum multiplied by the number of transactions identified for that year (750) and then multiplied by the number of years (11). There are many variables and more extensive mining of the archive would improve its accuracy.
21 For example, Walter Buller received £692 for sales of live New Zealand birds and skins to Rothschild between 1894 and 1895. J.A. Bartle and A.J.D. Tennyson, ‘History of Walter Buller’s Collections of New Zealand Birds,’ Tuhinga, 20 (2009), p. 93.
22 S. Sheets-Pyenson, ‘Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century,’ History of Science, 25 (1987), p. 285.
23 ‘Current Accounts,’ I/2/29, RAL.
24 Ibid.
25 ‘Accounts Ledger for Emma, Lady Rothschild and the Tring Estate, Private Collection,’ 170.1997 and ‘Account Books Belonging to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. Waddesdon (Rothschild Family),’ 167.1997.1–7, The Waddesdon Archive at Windmill Hill.
26 Rothschild, p. 106.
27 ‘The Rothschild Museum at Tring,’ The Leeds Mercury, 3 September 1895.
28 ‘UK Inflation Calculator | Bank of England,’ https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator, [accessed 28 August 2023] was used to make this calculation.
29 ‘A Wonderful Museum,’ Dartmouth & South Hams Chronicle, 27 August 1909.
30 E. Larsson, ‘“Here They Are in Flesh and Feather”: Walter Rothschild's “Private Zoo” and the Preparation and Taxonomic Study of Cassowaries,’ Centaurus, 64.3 (2022), pp. 659–82.
31 G.W. Wheatley, 30 June 1896 and unknown, 1 Feb 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
32 ‘Rowland Ward to Tring Museum, Record of Account,’ 4 November 1904, TR1/1/26/579, NHM.
33 J Honour & Son, 4 July 1895 and J. Crockett & Sons 19 Mar 1895 & 8 Oct 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
34 A&E Amsden, 5 Feb 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
35 Kirby Beard & Co, 13 Aug 1895, A. Marshall, 17 Apr 1895, and James Purdey & Sons 7 Oct 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
36 ‘Watkins & Doncaster: Our History,’ https://www.watdon.co.uk/acatalog/History.html, [accessed 31 August 2023].
37 James Purdey & Son, 7 Oct 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
38 Aylesbury Food Co. Ltd, 2 Apr 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
39 ‘Rothschild to Hartert,’ 24 April 1893, TM3/12, NHM. Rothschild instructed Hartert to feed two recently arrived marmots on dog biscuits and cabbage before releasing them into a meadow on the estate.
40 ‘Current Accounts,’ I/2/27, RAL.
41 L. Wain, ‘The Hon. Walter Rothschild’s Pets,’ The Windsor Magazine, 2 (1895), p. 669.
42 K. Jordan, ‘In Memory of Lord Rothschild,’ Novitates Zoologicae, 41 (1938), p. 16.
43 Jordan, p. 11.
44 ‘Current Accounts', I/2/27, RAL.
45 Rothschild was later a member of the American Entomological Society, Deutsche Ornithologische Gesellschaft and Zurich Entomological Society, demonstrating his awareness of the importance of zoologists communicating beyond geographical boundaries to advance the discipline.
46 A. Secord, ‘Artisan Botany,’ in Cultures of Natural History, ed. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord, and E.C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 381.
47 H.F. Witherby and F.C.R. Jourdain, ‘Obituary: Ernst Johann Otto Hartert. 1859–1933,’ British Birds, 27 (1934), p. 225.
48 E. Hartert, 25 May 1897, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
49 K. Jordan, 18 July 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
50 The career of Karl Jordan has been well documented in K. Johnson, Ordering Life: Karl Jordan and the Naturalist Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
51 N. D. Riley, ‘Heinrich Ernst Karl Jordan. 1861–1959,’ Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 6 (1 November 1960), p. 107.
52 Rothschild, p. 1–2.
53 ‘Death Of Mr. Alfred Minall,’ Bucks Herald, 16 December 1911.
54 Alfred Minall, 25 Jan 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
55 J. G. Williamson, ‘Earnings Inequality in Nineteenth-Century Britain,’ The Journal of Economic History, 40 (1980), p. 474.
56 Frederick Young, 11 Jan 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’; Williamson, p. 474.
57 Mrs Minall, 27 Sept 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
58 J Shipp, 24 Dec 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
59 William Warren, July 1896, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
60 Handbook of Instructions for Collectors (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1902), pp. 57–8.
61 Jordan, p. 10.
62 ‘Establishment Book, Giving Salary and Tax Details 1887–1893,’ DF ADM/1006/3, NHM.
63 There is some precedent for this. Domestic servants received higher wages if employed in the city than in the country. See The Author of ‘Manners and tone of good society,’ The Servants Practical Guide: A Handbook of Duties and Rules (London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1880), p. 164; C.E Collet and Board of Trade, ‘Report by Miss Collet on Money Wages of Indoor Domestic Servants’ (London: Darling & Son Ltd, 1899), pp. 5–7.
64 Prior to the division of the British Museum all keepers received an official residence in addition to their salary. If they had no need of a residence, they received additional payment. To entice existing staff to relocate to the new BMNH in South Kensington in 1881, museum authorities temporarily replicated the arrangement. Keepers that transferred museums kept their additional payment until they resigned or retired. New keepers were hired on new terms. See ‘Printed Lists of Trustees and Staff Volume 6 1898–1905,’ DF909/7, NHM.
65 Rothschild, p. 118.
66 T. Amsden, email message to author, June 21, 2018.
67 E. Larsson, ‘Collecting, curating and the construction of zoological knowledge: Walter Rothschild’s zoological enterprise, c.1878–1937’ (PhD diss., King’s College London, 2020), Chap. 5.
68 Frohawk, 5 Feb 1895, ‘Current Accounts', I/2/27, RAL.
69 It is unlikely Jordan was paid an additional sum for illustrations, rather these formed part of his work as a curator and entomologist.
70 Mintern Bros, Apr, Sept and Dec 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’; Mintern Bros, 8 Jan 1895, ‘Current Accounts', I/2/27, RAL.
71 Werner & Winter, 30 Jul 1895, ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
72 ‘Current Accounts', I/2/27, RAL; ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
73 ‘Petty Cash Books, 1890s’.
74 Meeting Minutes for 18th December 1895, ‘Council Minutes Vol XIX Jan 18 1893- Mar 16 1898,’ GB 0814 FAA, Zoological Society of London.
75 D.E. Allen, ‘The Struggle for Specialist Journals: Natural History in the British Periodicals Market in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,’ Archives of Natural History, 23 (1996).
76 S. Shapin, ‘The Invisible Technician,’ American Scientist, 77 (1989), pp. 554–63; I.R Morus, ‘Invisible Technicians, Instrument Makers, and Artisans,’ in A Companion to the History of Science, ed. B.V. Lightman (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), pp. 108–9.
77 Compiled using DF ADM/1006/3 and TM3/1, NHM.
78 Compiled using financial ledger I/2/28, RAL and TM3/1, NHM.
79 Compiled using financial ledger I/2/28, RAL and TM3/1, NHM.
80 Compiled using financial ledger I/2/28, RAL and TM3/1, NHM.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Eleanor Larsson
Dr Elle Larsson is a historian of science, specialising in the history of natural history and history of animals. She completed her PhD, ‘Collecting, Curating and the Construction of Zoological Knowledge: Walter Rothschild’s Zoological Enterprise, c.1878-1937’, at King’s College London in April 2020. Her current research interests include natural history networks, zoo history and exotic animal ownership and she published her second article entitled “Here They Are in Flesh and Feather”: Walter Rothschild's “Private Zoo” and the Preparation and Taxonomic Study of Cassowaries with Centaurus in late 2022. Elle also devotes her time to her role on the Council for the Society for the History of Natural History as Meetings Secretary and as co-founder of the international Animal History Group.