Edward Hawkins

Edward Hawkins (5 May 1780 – 22 May 1867) was an English numismatist and antiquary. For over 30 years he was the Keeper of Antiquities at the British Museum. Life Born at Macclesfield on 5 May 1780, he was the eldest son of Edward Hawkins of Macclesfield, banker, and his wife Ellen, daughter of Brian Hodgson of Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He remembered as a child meeting Dr Samuel Johnson a few days before the latter's death in 1784. He was educated at Macclesfield grammar school, and privately from 1797 to 1799 by Richard Ormerod, vicar of Kensington. Around 1799, he returned to Macclesfield, and received a commission in a volunteer corps raised there. He was employed under his father in the Macclesfield bank until 1802, when the family left Macclesfield, and settled at Court Herbert in Glamorganshire. While there he was a partner with his father in a bank at Swansea, and they superintended the copper works at Neath Abbey. In 1807, he left Court Herbert, and lived successively at Glanburne, Drymon, and Dylais in North Wales. At this time he turned his attention to botany, and was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1806. He also formed a collection of books and prints relating to Chester, and added a great number of engravings to his copy of George Ormerod's History of Cheshire. In 1816 his father died, leaving heavy debts, which Hawkins voluntarily charged on his own estates.