The collection comprises correspondence, diaries, notes and drafts from the personal papers of members of the Hodgkin and Howard families. The bulk of the material dates from the nineteenth century.
The single largest accumulation of material relates to Thomas Hodgkin MD (1798-1866), the pathologist and philanthropist: almost half of the collection. Around the papers of this one individual, however, are numerous smaller tranches of material generated by related persons, resulting in the dividing of the archive into numerous sections dealing with other individuals or groups of people. A brief outline of the history of the family will help to explain the structure of the collection, and to set out the links between the Hodgkins and the various other Quaker families that occur in it.
The Hodgkin family were for many generations resident in Warwickshire; since the middle of the seventeenth century they had been Quakers. A handful of documents from the early eighteenth century represent this phase (section A), leading down the generations as far as John Hodgkin of Shipston (1741-1815), the grandfather of the pathologist. The first individual concerning whom there is substantial documentation is John Hodgkin of Pentonville (1766-1845), the father of the pathologist and thus referred to in the catalogue as John Hodgkin senior, who left Warwickshire for London and set up as a tutor (section B). He married Elizabeth Rickman (1768-1833), and some papers of this Sussex Quaker family are also in the collection as section C; they include material on her sister Lucy Rickman (1772-1804) who married the architect Thomas Rickman (1776-1841) and her apothecary-preacher uncle Joseph Rickman (1745-1810). Her sister Mary (1770-1851) married John Godlee (1762-1841) and had several children who occur as correspondents in this collection.
John Hodgkin senior and Elizabeth Rickman Hodgkin had four sons, of whom the first two (John and Rickman) died in infancy; the third and fourth survived. The elder of these, Thomas Hodgkin MD (1798-1866) or "Uncle Doctor" as he was known to succeeding generations, has already been mentioned. His papers, covering the wide range of his medical, general scientific and philanthropic activities, are held as section D of the archive.
Thomas Hodgkin MD married relatively late and left no children: it is from his younger brother, John Hodgkin junior (1800-1875), that the contemporary Hodgkin family descends. The latter practised law into his early forties but then, like his brother, devoted himself to philanthropic activity. His papers constitute section E of the collection. He married three times and left children by each marriage. His first wife, Elizabeth Howard Hodgkin (1803-1836), died in childbirth in 1835, her fifth child surviving only a few days. Her four other children all lived to marry and have descendants of their own. John Eliot Hodgkin (1829-1912) became an engineer and a collector of books and manuscripts; a small collection of his papers constitutes section F. Thomas Hodgkin junior (1831-1913) founded a bank (later merged with Lloyds) and had a parallel career as a historian; it was he who cared for the family archive now listed here. Documentation relating to him constitutes section G. Mariabella Hodgkin (1833-1930) married the lawyer, Edward Fry (her children included Roger Fry the art critic) and Elizabeth Hodgkin (1834-1918) married the architect Alfred Waterhouse. John Hodgkin junior's second marriage, to Ann Backhouse (1815-1845), joined the Hodgkins with a prominent Quaker family in the North-East (the Backhouses of Darlington were bankers and were based in Darlington), but the marriage lasted only a few years before her death of Bright's disease. The one child of this marriage, Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin (1843-1926), appears in this collection chiefly as a small boy; later, he was to marry into the Pease family, a North-Eastern Quaker family of industrialists and bankers several of which occur in the archive as correspondents. Likewise, the six children of John Hodgkin's third marriage, to the Irish Quaker Elizabeth Haughton Hodgkin (1818-1904), are on the whole thinly represented here. What papers there are in this collection relating to children other than Hodgkin's two elder sons are all grouped together as section H.
Two more sections complete the Hodgkin material: I brings together miscellaneous pre-twentieth-century material that was found amongst the Hodgkin papers but not attributable to any specific individual, whilst J deals with twentieth-century members of the family, chiefly descendants of Thomas Hodgkin junior since it was his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who administered the collection until its presentation to the Wellcome Library.
John Hodgkin junior's first marriage, to Elizabeth Howard, linked the Hodgkins to another important Quaker family. Elizabeth was the daughter of the meteorologist and chemist Luke Howard (1772-1864), best known for his system of describing clouds which, with a few modifications, is that which is used today, and Mariabella Eliot (1769-1852), whose forename and surname recur in the Hodgkin and Howard families. The bulk of the Howard family papers are deposited elsewhere, but the family is well represented in this collection: there are papers relating to Luke Howard (section K) and to his daughters Elizabeth (section L) and Rachel (1804-1837) (section M).
Elizabeth Howard's brother Robert (1801-1871) married Rachel Lloyd (1803-1892), member of a Birmingham Quaker banking family, who was known in the family as Rachel Robert Howard to avoid confusion. Rachel "Robert" Howard was to play a notable role in the upbringing of the children of John Hodgkin junior's first marriage after the death of their mother. Her sister, Sarah Lloyd (1804-1890), married Alfred Fox (1794-1874) of Falmouth - a link to yet another significant Quaker family. Their daughter Lucy Anna Fox (1841-1934) was to marry Thomas Hodgkin junior. Correspondence of the sisters Rachel and Sarah Lloyd, and other family members, constitutes section N.
Finally, a few papers relating to the later history of the Howard family are held as section O.
