Polar Exploration: Townsend Thorndike Collection

The material listed below comprises manuscript material, cuttings from periodicals and printed ephemera. Prints, photographs and other illustrative items have been transferred to the Wellcome Institute's Iconographic Collections and a few pamphlets to the Institute Library's main collection of published material.

1746-1920

10 items.

The details of how the material collected by Dr. Thorndike was acquired by Henry Wellcome or his successors are not known. Other items related to the theme of Arctic exploration appear to have been acquired from other sources and added to the collection whilst it was in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum stores.

Database description transcribed from Richard Aspin and Christopher Hilton's typescript supplement to S.A.J Moorat's Catalogue of Western Manuscripts

The bulk of this material appears to have been brought together by Dr. Townsend W. Thorndike (fl. 1908-1915) of Boston, Massachusetts, who was an associate member of the Arctic Club of America and a collector of material relating to exploration, chiefly in the Arctic.