Horatio Bland | |
---|---|
Born | |
Baptised | 30 January 1804 |
Died | 31 March 1876 | (aged 73–74)
Occupation(s) | Merchant and collector |
Horatio Bland (1802 – Reading Museum in 1882. [1] [2]
31 March 1876) was a merchant and collector of artefacts from around the world. He set up a private museum in Berkshire and his collection foundedBland was born in about 1802 at Bonavista, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. [3] [4] His parents were John (1760-1826) and Sarah Bland (1726-1836). [4] John Bland was born in Devon and had arrived in Newfoundland and married Sarah Bland by 1789. [5] He was probably a merchant’s agent, first becoming a magistrate and in 1809 he was appointed High Sheriff of Newfoundland. [5] He took a special interest in the welfare of the indigenous people, the Beothuk, particularly condemning fisherman and furriers for their treatment and alienation of the Beothuks. [5]
Bland left Newfoundland in about 1823, spending time in New York and Liverpool. [1] [6] By 1838 he was in South America where he went into business with William Joseph Myers, a Liverpool merchant. [1] They set up a merchant house at the port of Valparaiso in Chile, trading as Myers, Bland and Company. [1] In the 1830s Bland was speculating on a new agricultural fertilizer, guano, the accumulated droppings of sea birds over many centuries. [1] In July 1839 through the Myers, Bland and Company he sent thirty bags of guano to Liverpool from Valparaiso on board the ship Heroine. [7]
In 1838 in Valparasio, Chile, Bland had a son Horatio Bland Guerra. [1] By the 1840s a wealthy Bland moved to England, [3] where on 3 August 1847 he married Emily Alicia Cherry (1826–1868), [8] [1] the oldest daughter of the Rector of Burghfield Rev Henry Curtis Cherry [9] and his first wife Anne Alicia Cameron. The Bland's lived in a large Georgian house called Culverlands at Burghfield Hill. [1] Bland also owned adjoining land at Burghfield Common and in 1855 he bought Hartley Grange at Hartley Witney, Hampshire. [10]
Bland's wife Emily Bland died on a trip to Jerusalem in March 1868 [11] where she is buried in the Protestant Cemetery. [1] Bland founded Mrs Bland’s School [12] at Burghfield Common in memory of his wife. [13] The school bell was a large Japanese temple bell dating to 1746 [12] that Bland had collected on his travels. In 1953 it was given to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. [14]
Family scandal in the courts made the newspapers in 1850s. [15] Emily Bland’s father, Rev Henry Cherry [9] attempted kidnapping his second wife Emily Mary Sutherland. [16] She wanted to leave the marriage and applied to the court of Queen's bench to protect her, while Cherry applied in 1858 a suit for restitution of conjugal rights. [15] [1]
In 1861 Bland commissioned the architect Walter Scott [17] of Liverpool to design a new red and blue brick gabled house with a slate roof on his land at Burghfield Common called Hillfields. [17] Hillfields was constructed at a cost of £2961. [17] Today it is the headquarters for Guide Dogs for the Blind. [17] He had a "detached Brick and Slated Building erected for a Museum" according to the 1892 Hillfields house sale catalogue. [18]
In 1874 Bland built a new museum in Burghfield for his growing museum collection, replacing the smaller museum building at Hillfields. [19] The eclectic collection and museum was described by Dr Joseph Stevens, the first curator of Reading Museum. It contained a stuffed lion, kangaroo and platypus, marine shells from Australia, Papua and Philippines, pottery from ancient Egypt, Greece and Peru, and weapons and implements from Africa and the Pacific. [19]
Bland died on 31 March 1876, aged 73, [20] and was buried at St Mary’s churchyard, Burghfield. [1] He gave Hillfields house to his nephew Thomas Bland Garland, another property to nephew Marcus Horatio Bland [21] and the residue of his estate to his son Horatio Bland Guerra. [1] [20] [22] Bland Garland offered the Bland Collection to Reading Corporation in 1877. [23] New museum galleries were built at Reading Town Hall [23] and the collection was permanently transferred to Reading Museum in September 1882. [24] [19]