The Royal Anthropological Institute

Abstract

THE anniversary meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute, which was held on January 25, marks the completion of the fiftieth year of the institute's existence. The institute was founded in 1871 as the result of the amalgamation of two pre-existing societies, the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological Society. The history of these two societies throws a very interesting light on the development of anthropological science in this country. The Ethnological Society was founded in 1843 by Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, of Guy's Hospital, Dr. Richard King, and Dr. Thomas Cowell Prichard. Hodgkin, a prominent member of his profession and a Quaker, had been in 1837 one of the founders of the Aborigines Protection Society; but with others, who, like himself, were more interested in the scientific aspect of the problems with which this society dealt, finding little scope for their interests, he decided to found a society which should deal only with the scientific side. In 1859 Dr. James Hunt became secretary of this society. A man of intensely active mind and tremendous energy, Dr. Hunt was strongly of opinion that the society was too narrow in its aims and lacking in energy. As a result he, with others, seceded, and the Anthropological Society was founded in January, 1863, at a meeting at which Sir Richard Burton took the chair.