13 Facts About Henry Christy

Henry Christy was an English banker and collector, who left his substantial collections to the British Museum.

Henry Christy was still a board member of the bank at the end of his life, despite other activities.

Henry Christy innovated with woven silk rather than beaver for the manufacture of top hats.

Henry Christy was a philanthropist, active in the Great Famine and other causes.

Henry Christy was one of the founders of the Aborigines' Protection Society.

Henry Christy was a committee member of the British and Foreign School Society.

Henry Christy belonged to both the Ethnological Society of London and the Anthropological Society of London, representing different strands arising from early ethnology.

Henry Christy became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1856, and joined the Geological Society in 1858.

Henry Christy took part in both the archaeological societies of the period, and the Royal Geographical Society.

In 1858, the antiquity of man was proved by the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes on flint implements in France; Henry Christy joined the Geological Society that year.

Henry Christy had a partial catalogue of his collections made in 1862, by Carl Ludvig Steinhauer.

Henry Christy's funding contributed to the discovery of Cro-Magnon man in 1868 in a cave near Les Eyzies.

An account of the explorations appeared in a half-finished book left by Henry Christy, entitled Reliquiae Aquitanicae, being contributions to the Archaeology and Paleontology of Perigord and the adjacent provinces of Southern France; this was completed by Henry Christy's executors, first by Lartet and, after his death in 1870, by Thomas Rupert Jones.