Henry Ellis (librarian) - in The Face of Reform

In The Face of Reform

The museum was at a low ebb in the 1830s. William Cobbett campaigned against it, and Benjamin Hawes used a complaint from an ex-employee as a pretext to set up a parliamentary enquiry.

Ellis told the parliamentary committee of 1835 that if the museum were not closed for three weeks in the autumn, "the place would positively become unwholesome", and that it would never do to open it on Saturdays, when "the most mischievous part of the population was abroad". The committee's conclusions were enough to forced on the trustees a change in management practices. They devolved the heaviest of the principal librarian's duties on the secretary, who became the most important officer in the museum.

Josiah Forshall took on the position of secretary in 1837, who took control, with Madden and Anthony Panizzi under him. Ellis, though seemingly unconscious of any change in his position, was virtually superseded as chief officer; and when the committee of 1848–9 united the offices of secretary and principal librarian, Panizzi was the real ruler of the museum.