Horatio Bland

Horatio Bland (1802 – (1876-03-31)31 March 1876) was a merchant and collector of artefacts from around the world. He set up a private museum in Berkshire and his collection founded Reading Museum in 1882.^[1][2]

Childhood[]

Bland was born in about 1802 at Bonavista, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, Canada.^[3][4] His parents were John (1760-1826) and Sarah Bland (1726-1836).^[4] John Bland was born in Devon and had arrived in Newfoundland and married Sarah Bland by 1789.^[5] He was probably a merchant’s agent, first becoming a magistrate and in 1809 he was appointed High Sheriff of Newfoundland.^[5] He took a special interest in the welfare of the indigenous people, the Beothuk, particularly condemning fisherman and furriers for their treatment and alienation of the Beothuks.^[5]

Business life[]

Bland left Newfoundland in about 1823, spending time in New York and Liverpool.^[1][6] By 1838 he was in South America where he went into business with William Joseph Myers, a Liverpool merchant.^[1] They set up a merchant house at the port of Valparaiso in Chile, trading as Myers, Bland and Company.^[1] In the 1830s Bland was speculating on a new agricultural fertilizer, guano, the accumulated droppings of sea birds over many centuries.^[1] In July 1839 through the Myers, Bland and Company he sent thirty bags of guano to Liverpool from Valparaiso on board the ship Heroine.^[7]

Personal life[]

In 1838 in Valparasio, Chile, Bland had a son Horatio Bland Guerra.^[1] By the 1840s a wealthy Bland moved to England,^[3] where on 3 August 1847 he married Emily Alicia Cherry (1826–1868),^[8][1] the oldest daughter of the Rector of Burghfield Rev Henry Curtis Cherry^[9] and his first wife Anne Alicia Cameron. The Bland's lived in a large Georgian house called Culverlands at Burghfield Hill.^[1] Bland also owned adjoining land at Burghfield Common and in 1855 he bought Hartley Grange at Hartley Witney, Hampshire.^[10]

Bland's wife Emily Bland died on a trip to Jerusalem in March 1868^[11] where she is buried in the Protestant Cemetery.^[1] Bland founded Mrs Bland’s School^[12] at Burghfield Common in memory of his wife.^[13] The school bell was a large Japanese temple bell dating to 1746^[12] that Bland had collected on his travels. In 1953 it was given to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.^[14]

Family scandal[]

Family scandal in the courts made the newspapers in 1850s.^[15] Emily Bland’s father, Rev Henry Cherry^[9] attempted kidnapping his second wife Emily Mary Sutherland.^[16] She wanted to leave the marriage and applied to the court of Queen's bench to protect her, while Cherry applied in 1858 a suit for restitution of conjugal rights.^[15][1]

New Home and Museum[]

In 1861 Bland commissioned the architect Walter Scott^[17] of Liverpool to design a new red and blue brick gabled house with a slate roof on his land at Burghfield Common called Hillfields.^[17] Hillfields was constructed at a cost of £2961.^[17] Today it is the headquarters for Guide Dogs for the Blind.^[17] He had a "detached Brick and Slated Building erected for a Museum" according to the 1892 Hillfields house sale catalogue.^[18]

In 1874 Bland built a new museum in Burghfield for his growing museum collection, replacing the smaller museum building at Hillfields.^[19] The eclectic collection and museum was described by Dr Joseph Stevens, the first curator of Reading Museum. It contained a stuffed lion, kangaroo and platypus, marine shells from Australia, Papua and Philippines, pottery from ancient Egypt, Greece and Peru, and weapons and implements from Africa and the Pacific.^[19]

Legacy[]

Bland died on 31 March 1876, aged 73,^[20] and was buried at St Mary’s churchyard, Burghfield.^[1] He gave Hillfields house to his nephew Thomas Bland Garland, another property to nephew Marcus Horatio Bland^[21] and the residue of his estate to his son Horatio Bland Guerra.^[1][20][22] Bland Garland offered the Bland Collection to Reading Corporation in 1877.^[23] New museum galleries were built at Reading Town Hall^[23] and the collection was permanently transferred to Reading Museum in September 1882.^[24][19]

References[]