Dates

• Existence: 1831 - 1886

Biography

Bradshaw, Henry (1831-1886), librarian and scholar, the third son and fifth child of Joseph Hoare Bradshaw and Catherine, daughter of Richard Stewart of Ballintoy, co. Antrim, was born at 2 Artillery Place, Finsbury Square, London, on 2 February 1831. His father, a partner in Hoare's Bank, belonged to an Irish branch of the Bradshaw family of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire. Bradshaw was educated at Temple Grove, East Sheen, and then in 1843 entered Eton College, first as an oppidan and then, following the collapse of his family's fortunes and his father's death, aged sixty-one, in 1845, as a colleger; he became captain of the school. In 1850 he proceeded as a scholar to King's College, Cambridge. Rather than take his BA without examination, as members of the college were then entitled, Bradshaw chose to sit the classical tripos: he gained a second class in 1854. In February 1853 he had obtained a fellowship of his college; but lacking the resources to remain in Cambridge, he took employment under a friend from King's, George Williams, as a schoolmaster at St Columba's College, near Dublin, an institution that combined Irish patriotism with high-church Anglicanism. In Dublin he found kindred interests with J. H. Todd, but after Williams returned to Cambridge Bradshaw followed in 1856. In 1856 he became Assistant Master at St Columba's College, near Dublin. Thereafter, he joined Cambridge University Library, where he was Assistant, 1856-1858, and Superintendent of Manuscripts, 1859-1867. He carried out the reform of the Department of Manuscripts, and served as University Librarian, 1867-1886. Bradshaw died on 11 February 1886.

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