Records of the Department of Mineralogy

Records of the Department of Mineralogy of the Natural History Museum.

• Departmental correspondence is in DF 1
• Registers of departmental and other correspondence are in DF 2
• Individual collections of departmental correspondence are in DF 3
• Reports to Trustees and other official documents are in DF 4
• Authorisations from Trustees meetings are in DF 5
• Staff files are in DF 6
• Subject files are in DF 7
• Correspondence and papers of W Campbell Smith are in DF 8
• Publications, correspondence and artwork are in DF 9
• Notes, reports and correspondence on specimen collections are in DF 10
• Correspondence on collecting expeditions and other visits are in DF 11
• Papers relating to the Mineral Gallery and exhibits are in DF 12
• The Keeper of Mineralogy's accommodation files are in DF 13
• Correspondence and papers relating to the Mineral Library are in DF 14
• The Keeper of Mineralogy's internal correspondence is in DF 15
• Annual Reports of progress are in DF 16
• Correspondence and papers of L J Spencer are in DF 17
• The Keeper of Mineralogy's papers on staff and staffing are in DF 18
• Laboratory notebooks and registers of apparatus are in DF 19
• Official diaries, correspondence and papers of scientific staff are in DF 20
• Invoices and accounts are in DF 21
• Visitors books are in DF 23
• Pass books are in DF 24
• Parcel books are in DF 25
• Requisition books are in DF 26
• Laboratory order books are in DF 27
• Correspondence and papers of the Oceanography section are in DF 28
• Outgoing donations books are in DF 29
• Specimen loan books are in DF 31

Topics

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Museums and galleries

Diaries

The Department of Mineralogy has its origins in the Department of Natural and Artificial Productions which was set up at the foundation of the British Museum in 1756. In 1806 it was renamed the Department of Natural History and Modern Curiousities and was under the keepership of George Shaw (1751-1813) and later Charles Dietrich Eberhard Konig (1774-1851).

In 1837 the Department was divided into three branches, of which Mineralogy and Geology was one, and in 1856 the branch became a department in its own right, almost immediately being divided into the two departments of geology and Mineralogy. The first keeper of Mineralogy was M H N Story-Maskelyne (1823-1911), a lecturer and later Professor at Oxford, a Member of Parliament, and an agriculaturallist and country gentlemen.

Thomas Davies (1837-1932) joined the Department as an attendant in 1858 and took charge of the rock collection. A chemical laboratory was provided in Great Russell Street in 1867, and Walter Flight (1841-1885) was appointed analyst. By the time the Department moved to South Kensington in 1881, it had a staff of ten, and was responsible for a huge collection of rocks, minerals and meteroites.

In South Kensington the Department initially developed around the collections of minerals, meteorites and rocks.

Cataloguing and curation of the mineral collection, with the development of crystallographic and chemical techniques involved a number of staff, including Lazarus Fletcher (1854-1921), Leonard J Spencer (1870-1959) and Jessie M Sweet (1901-1979). The meteorite collection was looked after by successive keepers, including Fletcher, George T Prior (1862-1936) and W Campbell Smith (1887-1988), while the rocks were worked on by Prior, Campbell Smith and Stanley E Ellis (1904-1986). The chemical laboratory, staffed by Prior, Max H Hey (1904-) and Alan A Moss (1912-1990), was involved in work on all these three collections. Many staff worked in more than one of these ares, and the Department was not formally divided into sections until the 1950s.

Two important developments came with the appointment of Frederick A Bannister (1901-1970) in 1927 to develop X-ray crystallography, and the formation of an Oceanography Section under John D Wiseman in 1935, following the transfer of the John Murray collection from the Department of Zoology. New methods of rapid mineral analysis were developed in the 1950s, and the department's first electron microprobe was delivered in 1964.

By 1975 the department had a staff of 37 and was divided into nine sections, including General Mineralogy, Petrology, Meteorites, Oceongraphy, Chemistry and the Departmental Library .