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Holophusicon
The Leverian collection was a natural history and ethnographic collection assembled by Ashton Lever. It was noted for the content it acquired from the voyages of Captain James Cook. For three decades it was displayed in London, being broken up by auction in 1806. The first public location of the collection was the Holophusikon, also known as the Leverian Museum, at Leicester House, on Leicester Square, from 1775 to 1786. After it passed from Lever's ownership, it was displayed for nearly twenty years more at the purpose-built Blackfriars Rotunda just across the Thames, sometimes called Parkinson's Museum for its subsequent owner, James Parkinson (c. 1730-1813). At Alkrington Lever collected fossils, shells, and animals (birds, insects, reptiles, fish, monkeys) for many years, accumulating a large collection at his home at Alkrington, near Manchester. He was swamped with visitors, whom he allowed to view his collection for free, so much so that he had to insist that visitors t ...
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James Parkinson (1730–1813)
James Parkinson (baptised 28 February 1730, St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury – 25 February 1813) was an English land agent and the proprietor of the Leverian Museum which he won in a lottery. He then moved the Leverian collection to a museum at the Blackfriars Rotunda which was sometimes referred to as "Parkinson's Museum". He has sometimes been confused with the surgeon James Parkinson. Life Parkinson was the son of James Parkinson and his wife, Jane Birch who had moved from Ireland to Shrewsbury in 1723. His first training was as a law stationer, but he then became a land agent and accountant. In 1769 he helped in the settlement of Sir Thomas Robinson's tangled estates at Rokeby, Yorkshire. This success made his reputation. He later became involved in the Ranelagh Gardens. Parkinson's wife Sarah (married around 1775) had bought two tickets at a guinea each of the lottery for the disposal of the Holophusicon collection of Sir Ashton Lever sometime in 1784. On 23 March 1786, the d ...
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Ashton Lever
Sir Ashton Lever Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (5 March 1729 – 28 January 1788) was an England, English collector of natural objects, in particular the Leverian collection.Ashton Lever
Manchester celebrities], retrieved 31 August 2010


Biography

Lever was born in 1729 at Alkrington, Alkrington Hall. In 1735 Sir James Darcy Lever, his father, served as High Sheriff of Lancashire. Lever began by collecting seashells in about 1760, and gradually accumulated one of the richest private collections of natural objects, including live animals. He opened it to the public in April 1766, in Manchester, moving the museum to his family home at Alkrington Hall, near Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1771. In the same year he founded Archers' Hall, Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London for the Archers ...
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Leicester Square
Leicester Square ( ) is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. It was laid out in 1670 as Leicester Fields, which was named after the recently built Leicester House, itself named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester. The square was originally a gentrified residential area, with tenants including Frederick, Prince of Wales and the artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. It became more down-market in the late 18th century as Leicester House was demolished and retail developments took place, becoming a centre for entertainment. Several major theatres were built in the 19th century, which were converted to cinemas towards the middle of the next. Leicester Square is the location of nationally significant cinemas such as the Odeon Leicester Square, Empire, Leicester Square, which are often used for film premieres (and the now closed Odeon West End). The nearby Prince Charles Cinema is known for its screenings of cult films and marathon film runs. The ...
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Sydenham Edwards
Sydenham Teast Edwards (5 August 1768 – 8 February 1819) was a natural history illustrator. He illustrated plants, birds and importantly published an illustrated book on the breeds of dogs in Britain, ''Cynographia Britannica''. Edwards was born in 1768 in Usk, Monmouthshire, the son of Lloyd Pittell Edwards, a schoolmaster and organist; and his wife, Mary Reese, who had been married on 26 September 1765, at Llantilio Crossenny Church, and where Sydenham was christened in 1768. Mary Reese was a sister of the Rev. William Reece, the curate of Llantilio Crossenny who had married Ann Mackafee. Their son, Richard Reece was an eminent physician and wrote a number of works on medicine. Young Edwards had a precocious talent for draughtsmanship and when only 11 years old had copied plates from ''Flora Londinensis'' for his own enjoyment. A certain Mr. Denman visited Abergavenny in 1779 and saw some of Edwards' work. Denman, being a friend of William Curtis, the publisher of botanical wo ...
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Sarah Stone (artist)
Sarah Stone (c. 1760 – 1844), later known as Sarah Smith, was a British natural history illustrator and painter. Her works included many studies of specimens brought back to England from expeditions in Australia and the Pacific. Her illustrations are amongst the first studies of many species and are as scientifically significant. Work Stone was the daughter of a fan painter. She worked as a draftsman, natural history and scientific illustrator, and painter between 1777 and 1820. She was commissioned by Sir Ashton Lever in the 1770s to sketch and paint images of objects in his Leverian Museum. which included specimens brought back by British expeditions to Australia, the Americas, Africa and the Far East in the 1780s and 1790s. She exhibited as an "Honorary Exhibitor" at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1781, 1785 and 1786. Stone created numerous watercolour paintings of specimens sent by John White, the First Surgeon General of the Australian colony, between 1789 and 1790. These ...
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William Skelton
William Skelton (1763–1848) was an English engraver. Life He was born in London on 14 June 1763, the brother of the engraver Joseph Skelton. He studied in the schools of the Royal Academy, and was a pupil first of James Basire and later of William Sharp, becoming a line engraver. Skelton resided for many years at Stafford Place, Pimlico, London, and afterwards in Upper Ebury Street, where he died on 13 August 1848, having long previously retired. For fifty years he served on the committee of the Female Orphan Asylum. Works Skelton was employed on the illustrations of many of the fine publications of the day: John Boydell's ''Shakespeare'', Thomas Macklin's Bible, Robert Bowyer's edition of David Hume's ''History of England'', John Sharpe's ''British Classics'', ''Lord Macartney's Embassy to China'', 1797, the ''Museum Worsleyanum'' of Richard Worsley, ''Ancient Marbles in the British Museum'', and ''Specimens of Ancient Sculpture'' published by the Dilettanti Society, 1 ...
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Charles Reuben Ryley
Charles Reuben Ryley (1752?–1798) was an English painter. Life The son of a trooper in the Horse Guards, he was born in London about 1752. He was of weak constitution and deformed in figure. At first he studied engraving, for which he received a premium in 1767 from the Society of Arts; later he took up painting and became a pupil of John Hamilton Mortimer, and a student of the Royal Academy. Bad health affected his work, and he worked for booksellers, and taught in schools. He died on 13 October 1798, at his house in what was then the New Road, Marylebone Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary. An ancient parish and latterly a metropolitan borough, it me .... Works Ryley was awarded a gold medal in 1778 for a painting of ''Orestes on the point of being sacrificed by Iphigenia''. He exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1779, a ...
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Philip Reinagle
Philip Reinagle (1749 – 27 November 1833) was an English painter of animals, landscapes, and botanical scenes. The son of a Hungarian musician living in Edinburgh, Reinagle came to London in 1763 and after serving an apprenticeship, later became a member of the Royal Academy. Biography Philip Reinagle entered the schools of the Royal Academy in 1769, and later became a pupil of Allan Ramsay, whom he assisted on his numerous portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1773. The works he showed were almost all portraits until 1785, when the monotonous work of producing replicas of royal portraits appears to have given him a distaste for portraiture, and led him to abandon it for animal painting. He became very successful in his treatment of sporting dogs, especially spaniels, of birds, and of dead game. In 1787, however, he showed a ''View taken from Brackendale Hill, Norfolk'', at the academy and from then on exhibited works mo ...
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George Shaw (biologist)
George Kearsley Shaw (10 December 1751 – 22 July 1813) was an English botanist and zoologist. Life Shaw was born at Bierton, Buckinghamshire, and was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, receiving his M.A. in 1772. He took up the profession of medical practitioner. In 1786 he became the assistant lecturer in botany at the University of Oxford. He was a co-founder of the Linnean Society in 1788, and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. In 1791 Shaw became assistant keeper of the natural history department at the British Museum, succeeding Edward Whitaker Gray as keeper in 1806. He found that most of the items donated to the museum by Hans Sloane were in very bad condition. Medical and anatomical material was sent to the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, but many of the stuffed animals and birds had deteriorated and had to be burnt. He was succeeded after his death by his assistant Charles Konig. Works Shaw published one of the first English descriptions with s ...
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Blackfriars Road
Blackfriars Road is a road in Southwark, SE1. It runs between St George's Circus at the southern end and Blackfriars Bridge over the River Thames at the northern end, leading to the City of London. Halfway up on the west side is Southwark Underground station, on the corner with The Cut. Opposite is Palestra, a large new office building which houses the Surface transport division of Transport for London, which was formerly the headquarters of the London Development Agency. The road forms part of the A201. The road adjoins Stamford Street and Southwark Street at the northern end. Originally known as Surrey Street, the road was built in the 1760s as the south approach to Blackfriars Bridge, and was laid out by the bridge surveyor, Robert Mylne.Ward, Robert (2007) ''The Man Who Buried Nelson: The Surprising Life of Robert Mylne''. London: Tempus Publishing. . p.76 From 2010 a number of major development schemes have transformed Blackfriars Road from the bridge to the south a ...
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Lottery
A lottery is a form of gambling that involves the drawing of numbers at random for a prize. Some governments outlaw lotteries, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments. The most common regulation is prohibition of sale to minors, and vendors must be licensed to sell lottery tickets. Although lotteries were common in the United States and some other countries during the 19th century, by the beginning of the 20th century, most forms of gambling, including lotteries and sweepstakes, were illegal in the U.S. and most of Europe as well as many other countries. This remained so until well after World War II. In the 1960s, casinos and lotteries began to re-appear throughout the world as a means for governments to raise revenue without raising taxes. Lotteries come in many formats. For example, the prize can be a fixed amount of cash or goods. In this format, there is risk t ...
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