John Henry Hopkins
The following obituary was published in The Times on 10 May 2008.
John Hopkins
Librarian and fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London whose association with the institution spanned 74 years
John Hopkins
John Hopkins was fond of observing that people interested in antiquity are prone to become a part of it, and his own life bore witness to this. He was a lifelong servant of the 300-year-old Society of Antiquaries of London, starting work as a boy of 14 at its imposing premises in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in 1933 and not retiring until 68 in 1986. He was a Fellow until his death and was therefore associated with the society for 74 years. No one else has been associated with it for so long.
John Henry Hopkins was born in London in 1918 and lived there all his life. His father, who had the same name, worked in the building trade, at one time employed by the music-hall impresario Fred Karno whose Fun Factory and scenery store was a few streets away. Hopkins’s irreverent sense of humour and love of the music-hall perhaps derived from this contact. He owed his first position as general assistant at the Society of Antiquaries to his mother’s connections with the Minet family, the wealthy owners of the nearby Minet estate. William Minet had been the society’s treasurer, and his daughter, Susan, proved later to be one of the society’s greatest benefactors.
Hopkins left school in 1933 at what was then the normal school-leaving age of 14, preferring the certainty of work in insecure times to the school scholarship that he was offered. During the Second World War he was asked by the archaeologist and later society president, Mortimer Wheeler, to join his new regiment, but in the meantime received his call-up and instead served in North Africa and the Middle East with the Royal Army Pay Corps.
First appointed general assistant, Hopkins studied librarianship in evening classes at Goldsmiths College and was appointed library clerk in 1946. He got to know many of the leading archaeologists and art historians of the time, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of readers’ interests and helped many in their research. Wheeler, in particular, relied on Hopkins’s briefings before his appearances on the popular television quiz show of the 1950s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?
His extensive knowledge of the collections and dedication to the society secured him the post of librarian in 1964. Under his cheerful guidance, there was a dramatic expansion in the use and size of the library, securing its place as the leading source of written information on British archaeology and related subjects. Academic recognition of his contribution came nine years later. He was awarded an honorary MA by the University of Leicester for services to antiquarian scholarship. The society’s statutes were changed to allow him to become a Fellow (previously employees had been banned) and in 1983, to mark 50 years’ devoted service, he was given the society’s only silver medal.
He was also a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute from 1954, served on its council, was a vice-president, and regularly took part in the summer excursions.
His involvement with the society and the institute ceased in the past few years with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. However, he was able to visit the society’s tercentenary exhibition, Making History, at the Royal Academy in 2007 and enjoy the public display of many items from the collections that had been in his care for so long.
A bronze bust, completed shortly after his death by David Neal, FSA, is intended to be placed in the society’s library. He is survived by his wife and by a son and a daughter.
Bernard
Nurse has written the following appreciation of John’s life.
John Hopkins: born 26 April 1918; died 19 February 2008, at the age of eighty-nine; elected a Fellow on 6 January 1983
‘John
Hopkins was born on 26 April 1918 and worked for the Society all his life –
starting at the age of fourteen in March 1933 and retiring at the age of
sixty-seven in April 1986 – with an interruption for war service
between 1940 and 1946. At fifty-three years, this is thought to be the longest
period that anyone has served the Society. In 1983, John was elected a Fellow
after the Statutes were changed to allow the Assistant Secretary and Librarian
to be Fellows. In the same year, to mark fifty years’ service, he was given the
only Silver Medal the Society has ever awarded. John was therefore associated
with the Society for nearly seventy-five years as an employee and later as a
Fellow, a period that is also thought to be a record (Sir Thomas Lennard, who
died in 1857, currently holds the record for the longest period of Fellowship at
seventy-two years).
‘John owed his first position as general assistant to his mother’s contacts with the Minet family, owners of the Minet estate in Camberwell near where they lived. William Minet (died 1933) had been the Society’s Treasurer and his daughter, Susan Minet, proved later to be one of the Society’s greatest benefactors. He left school at the then normal leaving age of fourteen, preferring the certainty of work in insecure times to the school scholarship he was offered. In 1946, on return from service in the Middle East with the Royal Army Pay Corps, John was appointed Library Clerk on condition that he studied librarianship in evening classes. His extensive knowledge of the collections and dedication to the Society secured him the post of Librarian in 1964. Though he published very little, academic recognition came in 1975 when he was awarded an honorary MA by the University of Leicester for services to antiquarian scholarship. He was a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute from 1954, served on its Council, was Vice-President (later Honorary Vice-President) from 1987 and regularly took part in the summer excursions.
‘John
saw the library as a live institution, a place where all seekers after
knowledge would receive a ready welcome, and not just a collection of books. He
had an encyclopaedic knowledge of readers’ interests and is best remembered for
the frequent help he gave others in their research. He witnessed a huge
expansion in the use of the library after the 1930s, especially by students
from the Institute
of Archaeology and the
Courtauld Institute and by members of the Royal Archaeological Institute.
‘As
Librarian, he responded to the rapid growth in periodical publication by
installing mobile shelving in the basement. His extensive knowledge of the
Society and sense of humour shone through in the highly entertaining lecture he
gave just before retirement, when he regaled the audience with tales of Fellows
in the 1930s strolling in from their clubs in evening dress ‘half-seas over’ to
hear Mortimer Wheeler and others give their lectures. His own special
contribution to a bygone era was the puff of smoke that occasionally emerged
from his pipe (or sometimes from his pocket).
‘John was a frequent visitor to Burlington House after his retirement and, despite his fading memory in recent years brought about by Alzheimer’s, he looked forward to the Society’s Tercentenary. His last visit was made in the autumn of 2007 to see the exhibition at the Royal Academy. Unfortunately John did not live to see the bronze bust of himself that David Neal modelled at the end of last year. This is currently being cast and will join the pantheon of busts of other notable Fellows in the library, John’s natural habitat, when it is completed in a month’s time. Contributions towards the cost can still be made to the Society in his memory.’
'Surely no one can have had
such a store of anecdotes, many scatological and most delivered in a voice
worthy of his theatrical son; no minatory notices demanding 'SILENCE' in John's
library. When I moved to Sydney - this before email or even the general
availability of fax - a response from John accompanying a photocopy or just a
reference was a treasured document in its own right, handwritten and often
including a copy of John's latest discoveries in the Society's archives,
including that is, another one of Those Jokes.
'John was always welcoming, always overloading the enquirer with
information, equally so to the young as to senior and distinguished Fellows. As
one of the former, researching archaeological entries for Nikolaus Pevsner's
Buildings of England - now there was an education but that's another story
- I swear that much of the work was done by John as he took me into the inner
recesses of the basement, that famous pipe better than any torch. Once there,
as likely as not, John's eye would be caught by piles of back-numbers of the
Society's publications; 'Care for some volumes of Archaeologia?' I did
and I do.
'John learned his librianship trade the hard way but again, typically, he made sure that his assistants were enabled to obtain their own professional qualifications. Latterly, to observe the gradual erosion of that memory for which 'encyclopedic' would be damming with faint praise, was sad indeed. Anyone with close experience of Alzheimer's must feel for John's wife and family and I would hope that many of the Fellowship will indeed be making donations in John's memory to further the work of the Alzheimer's Research Trust or of related organisations.'
'But my own memory will remain of John as at the height of his half-century of tenure. I can hear him now, seemingly trailing clouds of tobacco smoke: "Ah, Meegan, back from the Antipodes? let you out have they? Now, have you heard this one . . ?"'
Andrew Pike, FSA, has contributed his memories of John Hopkins.
I was very sorry to hear of the death of John Hopkins. Back in 1964 I was
appointed to the post of Library Assistant under John - but the position was
initially only temporary since John's own appointment as Librarian had to be
ratified by Council. At the time some members of Council, who had better remain
nameless though they are now deceased, were unconvinced that John had the
academic background for such a post. Happily for us, they were overruled, John
was duly confirmed in his post and so was I!
'I spent five happy years in my very first job.
Since the Society was, at the time, run on a shoestring - at least until the
Minet Bequest - the small staff ended up doing a wide variety of jobs. I vividly
recall coming back to work after the Christmas break one year to find the porter
was unwell, the Society's apartments were freezing and the heating boiler had
not been lit. John and I rolled up our sleeves and coaxed the ancient coke
boiler into action. I have never, unfortunately, driven a steam locomotive, but
firing up the Antiquaries' boiler came very close to doing so.
'John was a mine
of information on all sorts of things. What he didn't know about
the Antiquaries, its Fellows past and present and its library was not worth
knowing. He loved to regale the staff during coffee breaks about his war
service; he served for a time under Sir Mortimer Wheeler. I recall his telling
me of the occasion when he went to a cinema in Jordan. The picture on the screen
was practically obliterated by the sub-titles going along the bottom (English),
along the top (French), down the right-hand side (Arabic) and down the left-hand
side. As a 'boss' he was kind and generous. One of his pleasures was to spend
an evening at the Players Theatre under the railway arches at Charing Cross
and on several occasions he invited me to join Pam and him, preceded by supper
at their house in Herne Hill.'
'After I left in 1969, eventually to pursue an
archaeology degree at university, John and Pam kept in frequent touch. Despite
his frailty in his last years, he always greeted me when we met as he had always
done, with 'Salaam Pikey'. When, in due course, I was myself elected a Fellow,
he rang me to congratulate me and to assure me that he had signed my blue
paper!'
'For the Antiquaries, Fellows and friends, John's death really does mark the end of an era.'
These memories of John Hopkins were contributed by John Kenyon, FSA.
'I was so saddened to hear of the news of John Hopkins’ death. I think that I was John’s second assistant at the Antiquaries' Library, my friend Andrew Pike, FSA, being the first. I was appointed in 1969, taking up my post in the last days of December of that year.
'I can remember my interview well. First of all there were
the friendly faces of Hugh Thompson and John, meeting in the lower mezzanine
room, and then on up to the more formal interview by the President, Francis
Wormald, the Director, Nowell Myres, and John Cowan, the Treasurer (are
potential assistants still grilled by all the Officers?!). My initial impression
was ‘what could I be letting myself in for’, what with the daunting appearance
of those great academics, especially a virtually bald President and a Director
with flowing beard. If Arnold Taylor had been present, as Secretary, I would not
have been so overwhelmed.
'Anyway, following the offer of the job, the advice from someone in the BM was to take the job, as I had an interest in archaeology, which I duly did, until 1974, when I left to become a mature student to read History & Archaeology at Southampton University.
'I never regretted taking up the post, for I owe the Antiquaries so much – I never would be where I am (or think I am!) in castle studies without the Antiquaries, its Library, and its great Librarian John Hopkins. Time was never dull at the Society with John – bawdy jokes, a wealth of stories about various Fellows, and as Bernard Nurse has said, what he did not know about the collections was not worth knowing. It was a real privilege to have known John and to have worked with him, and it was always a pleasure to see him in the Library whenever I ventured up to London from Cardiff. I think that he will always rank as my most unforgettable character.'