Charles Morton (310)

Charles Morton (1716–10 February 1799) was a physician, librarian, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1771. He was born in Westmorland in England and studied medicine at Leiden University in the Netherlands before returning to England to begin his practice. He graduated as a doctor in 1748 after publishing his thesis, De Tussi Convulsiva. A few years later he was a consultant physician at Middlesex Hospital in London, and physician at Foundling Hospital four years after that. During this time he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians (1751), and a member of the Royal Society of London (1752). In 1756, upon the establishment of the British Museum, Morton accepted an appointment as an under-librarian, responsible for manuscripts, books, coins, and medals. In 1758 Morton was promoted to head of the new department of manuscripts. During this time he became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Russian imperial science academy, the Imperatorskaya Akademiya Nauk in St. Petersburg. He also was admitted to German science academies, including the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften and the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, and he served as secretary to the Royal Society of London from 1759 to 1774. His reputation began to falter after working on an edition of the Domesday Book, after which he received a payment of £500 ‘for doing little or nothing’ and ultimately someone else finished and published the facsimile. Still, in 1776 Morton became principal librarian at the British Museum, though by this time his gout began to impede on his daily life and his reputation for inactivity only grew; he even failed to appear for a visit from King George III. He married three times. His third and final wife was a close relative of his second, forty-five years his junior, and they wedded only two months after the second’s death, in 1779. He died a few years later in his apartments in the British Museum. (DNB)