George Henry Robins

LC name authority rec. no2003117059

LC heading: Robins, George Henry, 1777-1847

Biography:

Robins, George Henry (1777–1847), auctioneer, was born in London on 29 May 1777, the eldest of four surviving children of Henry Robins (1753–1821) of Oxenton, Gloucestershire, and Ann Marless (1746–1820). In 1790 his father and uncle, John Robins (1766–1821), set up as auctioneers in nos. 9 and 10 Great Piazza, Covent Garden. George Robins worked with them from an early age, deputizing for his father on the rostrum when he was barely nineteen. He took over when they died. He was elected to the Select Society of Auctioneers ‘as a high mark of respect to the memory of his father’, a founding member, but resigned two years later. He married, first on 18 September 1800, a wealthy young widow, Isabella Bunn (née Cates; bap. 1770/1777, d. 1828) who died childless, and second on 13 August 1831, Amelia Marian Losack (d. 1847), with whom he had seven surviving children, five sons and two daughters. None went into the business which was left to his cousin, Edmund Robins.

The staple of the general auctioneer was posthumous sales of chattels and property, whether country estates, farm land, town houses, or commercial premises; but everything was grist to Robins's mill and one of his first auctions was ‘the royal patent of aid for deformed bodies’ (8 Dec 1821). At various times he auctioned a ‘Burmese carriage and throne’ (18 Dec 1826), an ‘Anatomical and Zoological Museum’ (14–28 July 1828), and an ivory model of the Taj Mahal (30 May 1842). His father auctioned property throughout England and the colonies: George Robins continued to do so, even, on 25 June 1840, selling ‘the château de la Folie ... in the Romantic Valley of Blandecques close to St Omer’ with ‘a Protestant church near at hand’. On 30 July 1840 he sold Lundy island.

Robins enjoyed the theatre, and befriended several comedians and their families who fell on hard times. He was on the managing committees of both Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres and earned the enmity of the lessee, Alfred Bunn, by his ruthless and insensitive criticism of the way they were run. He conducted the bidding for the leases of several London theatres and held an auction on the stage of the Richmond Theatre (24 June 1833) of Edmund Kean's household furniture with ‘25 splendid character dresses’ and ‘several suits of stage armour’.

Robins used every trick of the trade, ‘picking bids off the wall’, trotting up the price with the help of well-placed accomplices or winking at dealers' rings which, while they defrauded the vendor, increased the auctioneer's business. On 14 November 1842, The Times and the Morning Post denounced him for a puffing advertisement ‘setting forth with all the emphasis of large type the many advantages of ... a prime grazing district’ in the Cape of Good Hope which he was offering to lease to the highest bidder.

Robins auctioned the pictures of Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy (22–25 May 1829), but his posthumous fame, or infamy, rests on the sale of ‘the classic contents of Strawberry Hill collected by Horace Walpole’ (25 April – 21 May, and 12–13 July 1842) when the bidding exceeded the wildest estimates. The Times reported the sale daily and the Illustrated London News had a profusely illustrated double page spread (21 May 1842). But Robins's cataloguing of the books and prints fell short and they were withdrawn, after six inexpert attempts, recatalogued by Leigh and Sotheby and sold in a separate ten-day sale in London, 13–23 June 1842. On that occasion a notorious booksellers' ring operated. Crofton Croker published a spoof catalogue of ‘Mr Triptolemus Scattergoods sale of Gooseberry Hall, the renowned seat of Sir Hildebrod Gooseberry ... the most brilliant feather that has ever adorned the cap of an auctioneer ... the first of April and the 365 days following’.

Robins's flamboyance on the rostrum and the extravagance of his catalogues made him a gift to the satirist and he was lampooned in street ballads and mock catalogues. His ill-bred, cockney swaggering, part of his stock-in-trade, made him the butt of society wits: ‘It was amusing to hear a man who mercilessly clipped the Queen's English and scattered his “h's” about in the most impartial way, talking of noble lords without mentioning their titles’ (Byrne, 1.105–11). He was courted by the gentry and nobility who accepted his extravagant hospitality while they sneered at his vulgarity.

A legend in his own time, Robins was mentioned by Byron, Dickens, Thackeray, Thomas Hood, Douglas Jerrold, and most of the writers of the day; and he was caricatured as Mr Hammersmith, Mr Triptolemus Scattergoods, Mr George Bobbins, and Mr Redbreast. Robins owned several private properties, including Regency House, a mansion in King's Road in Brighton, where he died on 8 February 1847; he was buried in a mausoleum in Kensal Green cemetery.

Robin Myers

Robin Myers, ‘Robins, George Henry (1777–1847)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/23824, accessed 24 March 2016]