Samuel Ayscough

Samuel Ayscough
Born	1745
Died	1804
Nationality	British
Occupation	Librarian
Known for	'The Prince of Indexers'

Samuel Ayscough (1745–1804) was a librarian and indexer, known as 'The Prince of Indexers'.

He was the grandson of William Ayscough, a stationer and printer of Nottingham, where he introduced the art of typography about 1710, and died on 2 March 1719, and the son of George Ayscough, who succeeded to his father's business, which he carried on upwards of forty years.

George Ayscough was much esteemed in the neighbourhood, and was connected with some of the most respectable families in the county. His first wife died childless. He then married Edith, daughter of Benjamin Wigley of Wirksworth, by whom he had a son, Samuel, and a daughter, Anne. He inherited a good business, but, instead of devoting his energies to its development, launched into various wild speculations, among others being one to extract gold from the dross of coals. Having in this way gradually got rid of nearly all his money, about the year 1762 he took a large farm at Great Wigston in Leicestershire, where he was still more unfortunate, losing not only the remainder of his own property, but the fortunes of his two children.

Samuel Ayscough was born in 1745, and was educated at the free grammar school in Nottingham. The son assisted his father in the successive failures of business, speculations and farm. At last, when complete ruin confronted the family, Samuel hired himself to take care of a mill in the neighbourhood, and bravely laboured as a working miller to keep his father and sister. The new start in life proved unsuccessful, but an old schoolfellow and intimate friend of early life, Mr. Eamer (afterwards Sir John Eamer, lord mayor of London), hearing of his distress, about the year 1770 sent for him to come to town, clothed him, and procured for him a situation as overlooker of street-paviors. It was doubtless this employment which gave him the capacity for such rude labour as index-making. Soon afterwards he entered the shop of Mr. Rivington, bookseller, of St. Paul's Churchyard, and subsequently obtained an engagement at a very modest salary as assistant in the cataloguing department under the principal librarian of the British Museum. This was the turning-point of his laborious and useful career. His value was soon recognised by a small increase in his weekly stipend, and he was able to occupy some of his leisure in arranging private libraries. These additions to his income, added to some assistance from Mr. Eamer, enabled him to send for his father, whom he maintained in comfort till his death, in November 1783.

Ayscough's excellent catalogue of the undescribed manuscripts in the British Museum was commenced in April 1780 and published in 1782 by leave of the trustees, but as a private venture of the compiler. The plan of the book was original, and the publication reflects credit upon the enterprise of Ayscough, who claims (Preface, p. x) that no work of like extent was ever completed in so short a time. He acknowledges the help received from previous catalogues and occasionally from frequenters of the reading room, but to all intents and purposes the two quarto volumes were the work of Ayscough's unaided efforts. He states that the catalogue was drawn up on 20,000 separate slips of paper. Each manuscript was specially examined. The classification is ample, and two indexes, the first of the numbers of the manuscripts and pages of the catalogue where they are described, and the second of all names mentioned in the two volumes, render the book of easy reference. In 1783, he issued anonymously a small pamphlet in reply to the 'Letters of an American Farmer,' printed the year before by Mr. Hector St. John [Crevecœur], a French settler. Ayscough contended that the writer was neither a farmer nor a native of America, and that his sole purpose was to encourage foreigners to emigrate to that country, called by a reviewer in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (1783, liii. 1036) 'an insidious and fatal tendency, which this writer, as an Englishman, is highly laudable for endeavouring to detect and counteract.'

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