The Hodgkin family papers.

Outline of the Collection and the Persons documented In 1989, through the generosity of the Hodgkin family, the Wellcome Institute Western Manuscripts Department received one of its largest collections of material to date. The material presented spans 250 years and documents the professional and the more personal concerns of several generations of the Hodgkin and Howard families: at its core are the papers of Thomas Hodgkin MD (1798-1866), pathologist, first describer of what is now known as Hodgkin's Disease, philanthropist and campaigner for the rights of the oppressed.' At a time when inflated prices for manuscript material have led to the breaking up of many such family archives in the auction room and the disappearance of the fragments into private collections, the Hodgkin family's donation of such a fine collection intact is a noteworthy event. A few other Hodgkin items, totalling perhaps some 600 letters plus assorted other material, reached the Institute through different routes (see the Provenance section below) and have been incorporated with the main archive. (In order to avoid confusion a small group of manuscripts relating to Thomas Hodgkin MD, already in the Department's catalogue as MSS 5680-5686 at the time of the main archive's presentation, has been left there rather than reintegrated with the family papers-the finished catalogue to the latter makes cross-references as necessary). The collection was sorted and listed over a two-year period and completed in summer 1995, the final adjustments to the catalogue taking place in the last quarter of 1995. A brief outline of the history of the family will help to explain the structure of the collection. The Hodgkin family were for many generations resident in Warwickshire; since the mid seventeenth century they had been Quakers. A handful of documents from the early eighteenth century represent this phase. The first individual about whom there is substantial documentation is John Hodgkin of Pentonville (1766-1845), the father of the pathologist, who left Warwickshire for London and set up as a tutor.2 He and his wife Elizabeth (1768-1833) (nee Rickman; some papers of this Sussex Quaker family are also in the collection), had four sons of whom the first two died in infancy. The third son,