Thomas Watts (Librarian)

Thomas Watts (born April 28, 1811 in London , † September 9, 1869 there ; pseudonym: Verificator ) was a British librarian .

Life

Childhood and youth

Thomas Watts was born on April 28, 1811, the second child of the wealthy bricklayer Joseph Watts and his second wife Sarah Philips. He had a lifelong friendship with his three years older brother Joshua and four years younger sister Ann Elizabeth.

Around 1805 Joseph Watts acquired the so-called Peerless Pool Baths and built other parts of the property. The baths made a handsome profit, which Watts used to finance the education of his son Thomas at Linnington's Academy . After his school days Watts devoted himself to literary studies and linguistics . His studies of the Celtic , Slavic and Oriental languages ​​made Watts a regular visitor to the library of the British Museum (now the British Library ), about which he also published an article in Mechanic's Magazine in 1837 .

Activity at the British Museum

When the prints, owned by the British Museum, were to be moved from Montagu House to the northwest wing of the new building designed by Sir Robert Smirke in 1837, volunteer work was needed. In addition to Watts, Nicholas Simons, George Bullen and John Humffreys Parry were also accepted as volunteers, all of whom later received a paid position at the British Museum. It turned out that Watts would also be of help with cataloging because of his language skills , and soon he was solely responsible for indexing the collections of Sir Richard Colt Hoare and Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode .

On the initiative of Anthony Panizzi , Watts was promoted to paid assistant on January 17, 1838 and received a permanent contract ten months later on November 27. From 1839 Watts was part of a five-person working group to create a new library catalog, which included Panizzi himself, John Winter Jones , John Humffreys Parry and Edward Edwards .

During the work on the new catalog, the differences between Watts and Edwards became increasingly clear, which Edwards' publications in the Athenaeum did not improve. Watts published, also in the Athenaeum , under the pseudonym Verificator, a series of letters in which he criticized Edwards' misleading use of library statistics and did not rule out a manipulative intention behind it.

Until 1857 Watts was responsible for contemporary foreign language literature and the acquisition of older works. In 1845 he wrote a report with Panizzi on the financial situation of the British Museum, which resulted in a generous sponsorship of the same. Two years later Watts introduced a self-developed "elastic" listing system that was supposed to simplify any later adjustments and had the library catalog printed for the first time. As a result of these merits, Watts' annual salary was increased to £ 300 in 1851 (before that he was making £ 215 a year). From then on, Watts began intensively with the acquisition of valuable prints, including large parts of the libraries of P. August Fischer , the bookseller Andrade and the Japan researcher Philipp Franz von Siebold .

Overall, Watts enjoyed great popularity in the British Museum, which William Brenchley Rye attributed in a letter to the "bearish amiability" of his superior.

Sickness and death

When Watts went on vacation with his two siblings in August 1869, he injured his right leg while getting out of the carriage in front of the Crown Hotel in Bridgnorth and had to receive medical treatment on site. Since there was still no improvement after ten days of bed rest, Watts consulted a London doctor who diagnosed phlebitis and again prescribed strict bed rest. On the morning of September 8, 1869, the doctor announced that Watts would soon be able to resume work, but only a few hours later he suffered a heart attack and died of the consequences in the afternoon.

On September 15, 1869, Watts was buried next to his mother at Highgate Cemetery . Many of his colleagues attended the funeral, including his successor George Bullen , Samuel Birch and Sir Campbell Clarke .

Publications

• A letter to Antonio Panizzi, Esq. Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum on the reputed earliest printed newspaper, The English Mercurie, 1588 . London: William Pickering, 1839.
• Sketch of the History of the Welsh Language and Literature. (First edition probably before 1861 in Charles Knights English Cyclopaedia )
• The Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge . London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans 1842-1844. (further volumes were planned, but were not completed)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Richard Garnett, PR Harris: Watts, Thomas (1811–1869), librarian . In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew (ed.): The Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000 . 1st edition. tape 57 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Robert Cowtan: Memories of the British Museum . Richard Bentley and Son, London 1872, p. 113 ff . ( google.at ).
3. ↑ Robert Cowtan: Memories of the British Museum . Richard Bentley and Son, London 1872, p. 117 .
4. ^ Alistair Black: Edwards, Edward (1812-1886), librarian and writer . In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Howard Harrison (Eds.): He Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000 . tape 17 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
5. ^ Richard Garnett: Edwards, Edward (1812-1886) . In: Stephen Leslie (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . tape 15 . Smith, Elder & Co., London 1888, p. 115-117 .
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Robert Cowtan: Memories of the British Museum . Richard Bentley and Son, London 1872, p. 262 ff .