James Parkinson (museum proprietor)

James Parkinson (baptised 28 February 1730, St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury – 25 February 1813) was an English land agent and the proprietor of the Leverian Museum which he won in a lottery. He then moved the Leverian collection to a museum at the Blackfriars Rotunda which was sometimes referred to as "Parkinson's Museum". He has sometimes been confused with the surgeon James Parkinson.[1]

Life
The ticket for the museum sold at 2 shillings and 6 pence

Parkinson was the son of James Parkinson and his wife, Jane Birch who had moved from Ireland to Shrewsbury in 1723. His first training was as a law stationer, but he then became a land agent and accountant. In 1769 he helped in the settlement of Sir Thomas Robinson's tangled estates at Rokeby, Yorkshire. This success made his reputation. He later became involved in the Ranelagh Gardens.

Parkinson's wife Sarah (married around 1775) had bought two tickets at a guinea each of the lottery for the disposal of the Holophusicon collection of Sir Ashton Lever sometime in 1784. On 23 March 1786, the draw had been made and Parkinson later discovered that his wife, now deceased, had won the lottery. The formation of the collection had bankrupted Lever. Parkinson spent nearly two decades trying to make a success of its display, at the Blackfriars Rotunda, which he specially designed with the help of his son, the architect Joseph T. Parkinson. He published various pamphlets and made The museum however did not pay for its maintenance and after twenty years, he put it up for auction in 1806, and the collection was dispersed. The auction took place over 65 days with 8000 lots and earned a total of £6600.[2][3]

Parkinson had two sons and a daughter. Of the sons, John (1775-1847) who had an interest in minerals became a diplomat, and was elected FRS in 1840 while Joseph (1782-1855) became an architect.

References
Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about James Parkinson.
  1. Perceval, Spencer George (1894). "James Parkinson, the Author of "Organic Remains of a Former World."". Nature. 51 (1306): 31–32. Bibcode:1894Natur..51...31P. doi:10.1038/051031c0. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 4039545.
  2. Torrens, H. S. "Parkinson, James (bap. 1730, d. 1813), land agent and museum proprietor". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21370. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. King, J. C. H. (1996). "New evidence for the contents of the Leverian Museum". Journal of the History of Collections. 8 (2): 167–186. doi:10.1093/jhc/8.2.167. ISSN 0954-6650.
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