Henry Yates Thompson | |
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Born | Henry Yates Thompson 15 December 1838 near Liverpool, England |
Died | 8 July 1928 London, England |
(aged 89)
Education | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Occupation | Newspaper proprietor |
Known for | Illuminated manuscript collector. |
Political party | Liberal |
Spouse | Elizabeth Smith (m. 1878-1928) |
Children | None |
Henry Yates Thompson (15 December 1838 – 8 July 1928) was a British newspaper proprietor and collector of illuminated manuscripts.
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Yates Thompson was the eldest of five sons born to Samuel Henry Thompson, a banker, and Elizabeth Yates, the eldest of five daughters of Joseph Brooks Yates, a West India merchant and antiquary. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the Porson prize for Greek verse.[1] After graduation, Yates Thompson was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn but never practiced, choosing instead to travel extensively throughout Europe and the United States, during which time witnessed the Second Battle of Chattanooga. He served as private secretary to Earl Spencer, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, from 1868 until 1873, and stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal for election to the House of Commons from South Lancashire in the 1865 general election, as well as in the 1868 general election and an 1881 by-election.
Two years after his marriage to Elizabeth Smith, the eldest daughter of publisher George Smith, in 1878, Yates Thompson's father-in-law gave him ownership of the Pall Mall Gazette. Previously a Conservative newspaper, Thompson transformed it into a Liberal publication, hiring first John Morley, then Morley's assistant, W. T. Stead, to edit the paper. He supported Stead through the controversy surrounding the editor's famous exposé of child prostitution, "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" in 1885. Yet Yates Thompson had little interest in the publishing business, and he sold the Pall Mall Gazette for £50,000 to William Waldorf Astor in 1892.[2]
Yates Thompson's sale of the Gazette allowed him to spend more time on his primary interest, manuscript collecting. The inheritance of a set of medieval manuscripts from his grandfather, Joseph Brooks Yates, in 1855 started what became a lifelong interest in manuscript collection, one that established Yates Thompson as the leading British manuscript collector of his day. He benefited from the dispersal of a number of collections, including those from the libraries of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Firmin Didot, John Ruskin, and the earl of Ashburnham. He had a prodigious memory, which aided him in combining long-separated volumes and manuscripts into complete sets. Endeavoring to keep his collection manageable, he sold off lesser volumes that he acquired, improving the overall quality of his collection as a consequence.[3]
A few of the items that Yates Thompson collected were subsequently donated to museums, including the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum. A philanthropist, he also donated buildings to Harrow and Newnham College, Cambridge, and hospitals to Crewe and the Horwich railway works. He died at his London home in 1928; upon his wife's death in 1941 an additional collection of illuminated manuscripts was donated to the British Museum (now the British Library).[4]