ABSTRACT

At Oxford Phillips was keeper o f the Ashmolean Museum from 1854 to 1870 and keeper o f the University Museum from 1857 until his death. He treated these posts quite differently. At the Ashmolean he was the thirteenth keeper o f the oldest public museum in Britain, opened in 1683. As such he was not a zealous innovator and he kept only a light hand on the administrative tiller. Once others had created a new function for the Ashmolean in the 1860s, he was happy to resign. The keepership of the new University Museum was far more demanding. As a paid official o f the University he was not entirely a free agent and had to respond to its requests and requirements. Once again he was in part a general factotum, a role with which he was familiar from his responsibilities with the British Association and the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. Yet as the first keeper o f the new Museum and the first occupant o f the purpose built keeper’s house, Phillips had no precedents to follow. Cautiously and gradually he defined the functions o f his post so that by the mid1860s he was regarded as the lord keeper o f the Museum. He presided over the University’s biggest building which not only displayed collections but also possessed laboratories, lecture rooms, and a library. He was in charge o f a science centre, the facilities o f which were superior to those then existing at Cambridge. Though he was not, like Acland and Daubeny, a polemicist in Oxford on behalf o f science and the Museum, he implemented their ideals which he shared.