Place Name
Frederick John Horniman (October 8, 1835 – March 5, 1906) was a hugely successfully merchant who by 1891 was running the world’s biggest tea trading business. He inherited the company from his father and although successful in his own right he was aided in part by some of the first mass testing on foods. By 1855 many foods were contaminated with chemicals to make them colourful, when the results of hundreds of tests were published, Horniman’s tea was a rare exception and declared pure and safe, giving a huge boost to sales. He used his fortune to travel the world and accumulate some 30,000 items in his various collections, covering natural history, cultural artefacts and musical instruments. Shortly before his death he founded the Horniman Museum to house them, apparently on the insistence of his wife, Rebekah, who is said to have told him: “Either the collection goes or we do.” A quaker, he was a social reformer, member of the London County Council, and Liberal Member of Parliament for Penryn and Falmouth in Cornwall from 1895 until his death. The work on the museum was continued by his son, Emslie Horniman, who in 1911 added an additional building to the west of the main building,
