Vlll THE HANCOCK MUSEUM AND ITS HISTORY 



collection while it was in his hands. He opened the museum 

 to the public, and he characteristically records that in three 

 and a half years it was visited by 7,327 persons. 



After his death in 1800, the museum remained at the Grange 

 until 1822, when an important change in its fortunes took place. 

 In that year it was purchased by the Newcastle Literary and 

 Philosophical Society, and became for the first time — what 

 it has ever since remained — the " Newcastle Museum." 

 Under this name it was carefully and elaborately catalogued 

 by the Rev. George Townshend Fox in his " Synopsis of the 

 Newcastle Museum," published in 1827. From this valuable 

 work most of the foregoing particulars of its earlier history 

 have been taken ; as are also the following interesting details 

 as to the removal of the collection from Darlington to New- 

 castle. This, we are told, "was effected by its being most 

 commodiously packed in a frame of wood-work, placed on a 

 spring glass-waggon, which was lent for the purpose by 

 William Cuthbert, Esq., of Benwell, and it arrived safely in 

 Newcastle without the injury of a feather, notwithstanding its 

 encountering on Gateshead Fell one of the highest gales of 

 wind ever known." An obvious reflection suggested by this 

 passage is that it would take many waggons and " frames of 

 wood-work" to move the contents of the museum which has 

 developed out of the one catalogued by Mr. Fox, and this in 

 spite of the fact that nearly all the specimens of that date 

 have long ago been superseded. Practically all that survive 

 in the museum of to-day are a few stuffed birds which served 

 Bewick as models for his woodcuts, and some extremely 

 valuable native implements from New Zealand and the South 

 Seas. These are all now marked on their labels as being 

 from the "Allan Museum." 



The home of the museum thenceforth for sixty years was a 

 set of rooms adjoining the Literary and Philosophical Society's 

 premises at the bottom of Westgate Road. For a few years 

 it was under the direct ownership and management of that 

 society. But when, in 1829, an offshoot was formed under 

 the title of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, 



