Frank Ransom

Frank Ransom of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, presented the Ransom family antiquities to the Cambridge museum of archaeology and anthropology, which received them in 1923. His father William Ransom (1826-1914) was a Quaker philanthropist, the founder of a pharmaceutical company and later an amateur archaeologist and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and the son "would continue both the pharmaceutical firm and the antiquities collection"¹.

The gift came with £250 for cases, and the Cambridge University Reporter announced it on 3 June 1924¹. It was described as nearly 1,500 objects (23.116-1203), "mainly from the Hitchin district, and from the London area, and from Cyprus"¹. The Cypriot part included Hellenistic and Roman glass, a Mycenaean-type gold diadem, Bronze Age and later pottery, and votive statuettes¹.

Some of the Cypriot pieces came from the Lawrence-Cesnola sale of 1888. The sources differ on the buyer: Barker says Frank Ransom bought at the sale, while Barker and Merrillees write of "one of the two Ransoms, probably William"^1,2.

In 1947 part of the Ransom material went from Cambridge to the Nicholson Museum in Sydney on the Cambridge Loan. About 28 pieces marked "R.C. 23" there are identified as Lawrence-Cesnola items, among them NM47.291¹.