Henry Christy
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Henry Christy (26 July 1810 – 4 May 1865), English ethnologist, archaeologist and collector who left his substantial collections to the British Museum.
Biography
Christy was born at Kingston upon Thames. He entered his father's firm of hatters, in London, and later became a director of the London Joint-Stock Bank.
In 1850 he started on a series of journeys, which interested him in ethnological studies. Encouraged by what he saw at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Christy devoted the rest of his life to travel and research, making collections illustrating the early history of man which are now in the British Museum. He travelled in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico and British Columbia.
It was in 1858 that the discoveries by Boucher de Perthes of flint implements in France and England were first held to have clearly proved the great antiquity of man. Christy joined the Geological Society, and in company with his friend Edouard Lartet explored the caves in the valley of the Vézère, a tributary of the Dordogne in the south of France. Christy's funding contributed to the discovery of Cro-Magnon man in 1868 in a cave near Les Eyzies. To his task Christy devoted money and time ungrudgingly, and an account of the explorations appeared in Comptes rendus (29 February 1864) and Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London (21 June 1864). He died, however, on 4 May 1865, of inflammation of the lungs supervening on a severe cold contracted during excavation work at La Palisse, leaving a half-finished book, entitled Reliquiae Aquilanicae, being contributions to the Archaeology and Paleontology of Perigord and the adjacent provinces of Southern France; this was completed by Christy's executors, first by Lartet and, after his death in 1870, by Professor Rupert Jones.
By his will Christy bequeathed his archaeological collection to the nation. In 1884 his collection found a home in the British Museum. He also left £5000 which established the Christy fund that allowed the British Museum to purchase many more artefacts. Christy took an earnest part in many philanthropic movements of his time, especially identifying himself with the efforts to relieve the sufferers from the Irish famine of 1847.
