page_title: Tweddell remains affair
section_title: Tracking the remains
hierarchical_section_title: Tweddell remains affair / Tracking the remains
caption_attribution_description: English: Account of the examination of the Elgin-box - Title page - Tweddell Robert - 1817
context_page_description: The Tweddell remains affair was a British scandal that came to a head in the years 1815–7. It was a controversy over the papers, paintings and other possessions of John Tweddell, a young barrister and scholar who had died in 1799 in Athens. It was conducted mostly by publications in periodicals and a book by Robert Tweddell, who directed animus for the apparent neglect of the remains at Lord Elgin. William St Clair calls the affair a "first-class scandal". In the background, the Levant Company had felt that their monopoly on trade around the Aegean Sea had been threatened by Elgin as ambassador in Constantinople, and wished to undermine further such appointments.
context_section_description: The subsequent fate of Tweddell's remains is still obscure, but was aired in controversy some years later. Journals and pictures had disappeared, and Tweddell's brother Robert subsequently accused Elgin of appropriating them.  Elgin's account of their handling was supported by his chaplain Philip Hunt; his reply to the charges was not published till 1816. Robert Tweddell was supported by Edward Daniel Clarke, by Thornton, and by John Spencer Smith, Elgin's predecessor.
  Some had in fact been sent home via William Hamilton Nisbet, Elgin's father-in-law, others with Thornton had been lost by fire; and a third collection in a trunk had suffered water damage, were given to Joseph Dacre Carlyle and Hunt to sort, and were lost track of, though on Hunt's account they were sent in a merchant ship.
caption: Account of the examination of the Elgin-box at the Foreign-Office in Downing-Street, on 7th.November 1816, by Robert Tweddell
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