Raymont (Braunholtz), Joan

Joan Raymont (married name: Braunholtz) scientific staff, Greece and Rome; materia medica active: Nov 1928 -- autumn 1932

work at WHMM: Worked in ‘Greek and Roman section of the Materia Medica’. (Symons 1987, p16.) “I catalogued and re-labelled the Greek and Roman bronze surgical instruments and terracotta votive offerings, and tried to find out all I could about them from any books I could lay hands on, and infrequent visits to the British Museum Library and Hellenic Society. … I published a paper on ‘ancient dentistry’, and wrote one on ‘donaria’, not published. When I showed the piece on dentistry to Malcolm he said it was not permitted to publish anything without permission from him.” (pp.18-19).

Cataloguing of 'donaria' (votive offerings), 1929. Staff reports 1929 (WAHMM/RP/Sta/1, canvas 99).

biographical notes: Graduate of Somerville college, Oxford in Classical Archaeology. left WHMM in 1932, after marrying Hermann Braunholtz of the British Museum Ethnographical Department. (“Our acquaintance had continued in spite of Malcolm’s objection to his staff ‘hob-nobbing’ with people from the B.M.”)

sources: oral history in Symons 1987, pp.16-19. WC archive materials: Report by Malcolm on Braunholtz’s resignation WA/HMM/ST/ Lat/A.29.

Handwriting sample: Staff reports 1929 (WAHMM/RP/Sta/1, canvas 99) https://wellcomecollection.org/works/aadq2es3/items?canvas=99&langCode=false&sierraId=b19106051

image:

Quotes from oral history:

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Soon after our arrival in Wigmore Street, we, the ‘scientific’ staff were supplied with stiff heavy khaki overalls of the kind worn by warehousemen and furniture removers, and dispatched to a disused factory or warehouse at Willesden. The employment situation was such that no one dared complain. Independence meant everything to me. But we had all taken the job on the understanding that we were to work at Wigmore Street, and had made arrangements accordingly. For me the journey was a long and tedious one by bus up the Harrow Road. … The factory…lay between a tannery and an anchovy essence factory, and there were appalling smells (especially on Fridays). .. The premises where we had to work were practically unheated, and the winter of 1928-9 was a particularly cold one; all of us were more or less ill. …At Willesden, we took our orders from Mr. Port and Miss Jones. … These two had over the years evolved at system and a language of their own. ‘Curious object, use unknown’, we were often advised to write or ‘It has been good’. Otherwise it was ‘shelve it’ – when all else failed.

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Sir Henry was at that time buying through his agents anything and everything, almost regardless of its connection with the history of medicine – coaches, carriages, perambulators, African spears, skeletons, porcelain, Japanese netsukes, all arrived almost daily in huge consignments. As our ignorance of much of this material was almost total, the cataloguing was largely guess-work.

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source: Symons 1987, pp.17-18.

[[museum staff]] [[scientific staff]] [[Greece and Rome]] [[materia medica]]