A letter to Benjamin Hawes, Esq., M.P., being strictures on the minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on the British Museum; with an appendix, containing heads of inquiry respecting the improvement of the Museum / [Edward Edwards].

  • Edward Edwards
Date:
1836
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Benjamin Hawes, Esq., M.P., being strictures on the minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on the British Museum; with an appendix, containing heads of inquiry respecting the improvement of the Museum / [Edward Edwards]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [372.] Will you inform the Committee of the salary of the Deputy- assistant librarians generally ? Is there a scale of salary in the Museum ?— No; some are paid 10s. a day; some 12s.; Dr. Rosen receives 20s. a day. These gentlemen are only paid for the days of their attendance, the days on which they perform their duty. They are almost all paid under different agreements. [373.] What is the rule you attend to in apportioning a proper salary to each officer?—The trustees settle that in Committee; though in the case of one gentleman, who had 12s. a day, I think he has now 15s., in consequence of his services being very effective, and of his superior fitness. [374.] Do the trustees directly sanction this daily pay to literary men?— They conceive they obtain more efficient services, I believe, by this inode of payment, than by giving a salary; and they can relieve the institution from the encumbrance of the employ, when the necessity for it ceases. Is this a state of things which ought to continue ? The salaries, taken generally throughout the Museum, seem less than they ought to be, for. the duties to he thoroughly per¬ formed. There is, consequently, a highly injudicious plurality of offices in the Museum itself; and a frequent combination of other employments with Museum offices, utterly incompatible with the efficient discharge of either. Sir Henry Ellis receives a salary of £500 as principal librarian; after stating that he holds the office of joint secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, and receives for it a salary of 150 guineas, adds, “ If I did not, I could not afford to be principal librarian of the British Museum’7 [283]. Is not this a disgrace to the trustees of the Museum ? Surely, its principal librarian should receive a salary large enough to render it at least unnecessary for him to hold any other office. Mr. Forshall holds the situations both of keeper of the MSS. and secretary ; receiving for the former a salary of £425*, and other emoluments £15 ; and for the latter £100 a year. He says himself that “ the duties of keeper of the MSS. would very well fill up the whole time of any one individual'’ [731]; and * I have taken the return for 1832 as my guide. The last column of the Return states the salaries of Messrs. Forshall and Baber respectively at £162..10s. for three months, to 25th March 1833. I suspect this to be a misprint (JJ because there is no alteration in that of the principal librarian. If it be not, then the salaries of these gentlemen must have been raised, in 1833, from £425 to £650 a year, the salary of the principal librarian remaining £500 a year. This is not probable
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