Charles Roach Smith - Career

Career

In 1821, Roach Smith was placed in the office of Francis Worsley, a solicitor at Newport, but soon tired of this occupation. The army was then suggested for him, but in February 1822 he was apprenticed to a Mr. Follett,a chemist at Chichester. After remaining there for about six years, he went to the firm of Wilson, Ashmore, & Co., chemists at Snow Hill, London. He established his own business as a chemist in 1834, having set himself up at the corner of Founders' Court, Lothbury. When his premises were taken over by the city, he suffered a great loss to him. He removed to Finsbury Circus, where he lived from 1840 to 1860.

At a very early date in his life Roach Smith felt the passion of collecting Roman and British remains, and he was encouraged by Alfred John Kempe, whom he considered to be his "antiquarian godfather". For twenty years, during London excavations or dredging of the River Thames, he was on the alert for antiquities and found several. The knowledge of his acquisitions spread when he published in 1854 a Catalogue of the Museum of London Antiquities. The antiquities catalogued in this publication were collected during extensive street and sewage improvements in the city of London, as well as work on the Thames near the London Bridge, the collection being formed under accidental circumstances. His collection contained a portion of the antiquities found in London, becoming a self-imposed stewardship, and resulting in the formation of his Museum of London Antiquities. His fellow antiquaries urged that the collection should be secured by England, but his offer of it to the British Museum in March 1855 was declined as they could not agree on a price. Later, they were transferred to the British Museum and formed the nucleus of the national collection of Romano-British antiquities.

Roach Smith was by this time accepted as the leading authority on Roman London. He subsequently pioneered 'urban site observation' and his Illustrations of Roman London (1859) remained the principal work on the subject until 1909. He wrote the book for the most part as a result of his personal investigations while he lived in Lothbury and in Liverpool Street, in the City of London.