Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 5

5. Sir Ashton Lever established his natural history museum at Leicester House, Leicester Square, in 1774, and charged 5s. 3d. admission. He offered to sell his collection to the British Museum in 1783, but the trustees declined to buy it. Lever disposed of his museum in 1788, and his collection soon moved to the south bank of the Thames, where it was dispersed by auction in 1806. Capt. James Cook had set sail on his last voyage in July 1776, and was killed by Hawaiians on what he named the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) in Feb. 1779; his expedition returned to England in 1780. Both in DNB.