Harry Geoffrey Beasley (18 December 1881 – 24 February 1939) was a British anthropologist and museum curator who developed an important ethnographic collection during the early 20th century that is now held in various British museums.

Life

Beasley was born in 1881 in East Plumstead in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

and developed an interest in ethnography at a young age. Beasley was privately wealthy after inheriting the North Kent Brewery and, in 1914, married his cousin Irene Marguerite Beasley. The same year, he became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and was an active member until 1937, serving as vice-president between 1932 and 1937. With his wife, Beasley settled in Cranmore House in Chislehurst and there set up the Cranmore Ethnographical Museum which eventually held more than 6,000 objects of ethnographical interest. The Beasley's collected objects from across Europe, buying from auction houses and local museums to expand the collection, which contained material from the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and Northwestern America. Beasley wrote numerous articles for anthropological journals and was considered an expert in his field. He died from

diabetes Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level ( hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ...

in 1939 and his collection was stored with the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

collections during the war, which was fortunate as the Cranmore Museum was destroyed by bombing. After the war substantial portions of the collection were passed to the British Museum, the

Royal Museum The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

, the

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, also known as MAA, at the University of Cambridge houses the university's collections of local antiquities, together with archaeological and ethnographic artefacts from around the world. The museum ...

, the

Pitt Rivers Museum Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed ...

and the Merseyside County Museum. Other pieces were sold by his widow and, after her death in 1974, by their daughters.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Beasley, Harry Geoffrey 1881 births English anthropologists 1939 deaths English collectors People associated with the Pitt Rivers Museum People from Plumstead