page_title: Walter Hawkins (ship broker)
section_title: Bequeathal of possessions
hierarchical_section_title: Walter Hawkins (ship broker) / Background / Bequeathal of possessions
caption_attribution_description: English: Front page of catalogue from auction on 11 July 1862, by Messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby &amp; John Wilkinson.
context_page_description: Walter Hawkins was a British ship and insurance broker, antiquarian and numismatist, based in the City of London.
context_section_description: In his will, dated 9 January 1849, Hawkins left various, books, paintings, etchings and other items to, among others, his three sisters (Charlotte, Mary and Sarah) and three nieces, one of whom (Lavinia Elizabeth Chapman Jones, younger daughter of Sarah) was besotted with the works of the self-styled prophetess Joanna Southcott.
  Hawkins left his large collection of coins and medals to the United Services Institute in London. It is now the Royal United Services Institute for Defence & Security Studies (RUSI) in Whitehall. The RUSI Museum was housed in the Banqueting House, Whitehall but the collection was broken up when the government of the day regained full use of the Hall in the early 1960s. There seems to be no record of where items from the collection went. The lease on Hawkins’s house, together with several items of furniture and “20 doz. of choice Madeira and other wines”, were auctioned in May 1862. About two months later, on 11 July 1862, Messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby & John Wilkinson auctioned “a valuable assemblage of miscellaneous articles of ancient, mediaeval and modern art, formed by the late Walter Hawkins, Esq., F.S.A. of Kensington.” The front page of the auction catalogue gives a good indication of the range of objects he had amassed, perhaps as a result of his ship broking activities.
caption: Front page of catalogue from auction on 11 July 1862, by Messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby & John Wilkinson.
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