Catalogue of the John Lindsay Coin Collection

Manuscript catalogue (with full descriptions and prices) of Greek and other early coins collected by John Lindsay, barrister-at-law.

John Lindsay was an eminent Irish numismatist. He was born in Cork in April 1789, the eldest son of the barrister Thomas Lindsay, and was a lineal descendent of John Lindsay, Earl of Crawford. Lindsay was educated in Cork and at Trinity College Dublin. He worked briefly as a barrister, but the income he inherited from his father allowed him to commit himself fully to his numismatic and antiquarian interests. Lindsay published a number of numismatic works between 1839 and 1868, including Notices of remarkable Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and other medieval coins in the cabinet of the author in 1860. These books were usually illustrated by his daughter (later Mrs Carleton) and were recognised to be some of the best examples of the Cork typography of the time. Suffering from poor health in the 1860s, Lindsay was persuaded to sell his coin collections. The Sotheby's sale on August 1867 realised £1,260. Lindsay died on 31 December 1870.

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Purchased by Mrs Enriqueta Rylands, on behalf of the John Rylands Library, in 1901 from James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford.

Description compiled by Henry Sullivan, project archivist and Elizabeth Gow, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts and Archives, with reference to the biography of John Lindsay in Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, vol. 4 (1898), pp. 198-204.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1928 (English MS 22).

Formerly part of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, the Library of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres, from Haigh Hall, Wigan, Lancashire.