Thomas Okey (30 September 1852 – 4 May 1935) was an expert on
basket weaving, a translator of Italian, and a writer on art and the
topography of architecture and art works in Italy and France. Okey's first experience of the Italian language came when he attended the Extension Lectures at
Toynbee Hall in the 1880s.[1][2]
In 1919, he became the first
Serena Professor of Italian at the
University of Cambridge.[3] Okey was a hereditary basket maker from a poor East End of London family, and on his appointment at Cambridge he stated that:
Money...social position as such counts for nothing...
and
the consciousness that one stands for what one is worth as a scholar and a man... All stand on an equality of worth, from the porter at the gate to the Master in the lodge.
^"Thomas Okey". Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
^Dante Alighieri, 1., Okey, T., Oelsner, H., Wicksteed, P. H. (Philip Henry). (1912). T
he Purgatorio of Dante Alighieri. London: J.M. Dent & sons ltd.