Sales catalogues

Sales catalogues from commercial auction houses and salesrooms for material purchased by the WHMM and WHML staff. The catalogues are annotated with details of lots purchased and price paid. In some cases, accession numbers or details relating to lots purchased by others are noted. A useful memorandum on auction catalogue annotation conventions used by the Wellcome staff bidding at sales from the 1920s can be found at WA/HMM/CO/Sub/204.

The catalogues are arranged in boxfiles, in alphabetical series by name of salesroom. There are two main sections: WA/HMM/CM/Sal/0 to WA/HMM/CM/Sal/24) representing purchases for the museum and WA/HMM/CM/Sal/25 to WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52 representing the library. There is a 'miscellaneous' series of catalogues at the end of the section where there are only one or two catalogues per salesroom, often regional sales houses or booksellers, or sales which took place at specific country house estates (WA/HMM/CM/Sal/24 for the museum sales catalogues and WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52 for the library series). Within each series the catalogues are arranged chronologically, and in many cases there are multiple copies of each catalogue with differing annotations: it was not uncommon for more than one buyer to attend a single sale.

The catalogues have suffered some rearrangement over the years, resulting in some confusion between the Library and Museum series of catalogues. The series of sales catalogues may also not be complete, particularly for dates after Henry Wellcome's death in 1936.