Louis Compton Miall

When the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society spent £14 on Cypriot pottery in 1875, its curator was Louis Compton Miall (1842 to 1921). He came from a family of teachers, taught himself zoology and geology, studied anatomy at the Leeds School of Medicine and had been curator at the Bradford Philosophical Society before September 1869, when he began lecturing on geology for the Leeds Society from its collections¹. In 1871, after the death of Henry Denny, he became curator. In 1875 he was also made Lecturer in Biology at the Yorkshire College, and Professor the following year, holding both posts together¹.

In 1875 the Society's president, Joshua Ingham Ikin, raised a special fund of £100, and £14 of it went on "Cypriot pottery". This was the part of T. B. Sandwith's collection that had been shown at that year's Yorkshire Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures¹. Whether Miall sought the purchase or was handed it by Ikin is not recorded. The Council's report called the vessels "examples" in a "series" showing how Greek vessel shapes derived from one another, a way of valuing objects as specimens that A. H. Reeve links to Miall's curatorship¹. Three vessels from the purchase, LEEDM.D.1964.0303, .0346 and .0349, still carry their 1875 Exhibition labels in the Leeds museum collection¹.

Miall's Guide to the Museum of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (1890) placed the Cypriot pottery in a comparative teaching display and left out Sandwith's name, which it gave for named collections of birds^1,2. He left the curatorship in 1893, and Henry Crowther succeeded him¹. In 1894 he sat on the Society's committee that proposed dividing the museum between the city corporation and the Yorkshire College¹.