Walter Hawkins (ship broker)

Walter Hawkins (1787 – 27 January 1862) was a British ship and insurance broker, antiquarian and numismatist, based in the City of London.

They were typically coppered Brigs (120–220 tons) and usually destined for South America, including the Funchal which sailed for Valparaiso and Lima in 1827, under the command of James Weddell.

Captain Colin Munro wrote to Hawkins in January 1840 explaining that all five fish had died en route, probably from striking the cask as a result of the motion of the ship.

For example, Joachim Hayward Stocqueler, the journalist and author who had spent several years in India, met Hawkins at a lecture in London in 1845.

Stocqueler wrote to Hawkins two days later, on 14 March, enclosing a sketch of a paan leaf, and described how it is used in the chewing of thinly-sliced betel nut, which is “in such very common use in India”, and which they had discussed when they met[21] On another occasion Hawkins received, in reply to one of his, a 69-page letter from Dr William Holt Yates (Physician to the Royal General Dispensary, London) beginning “Thoughts on Communication between the Living and the Dead, Sorcery, Witchcraft etc.” which Hawkins summarised in two pages of bullet points for his own reference[22] In his will, dated 9 January 1849, Hawkins left various, books, paintings, etchings and other items to, among others, his three sisters (Charlotte, Mary and Sarah) and three nieces, one of whom (Lavinia Elizabeth Chapman Jones, younger daughter of Sarah) was besotted with the works of the self-styled prophetess Joanna Southcott.

[24] About two months later, on 11 July 1862, Messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby & John Wilkinson auctioned “a valuable assemblage of miscellaneous articles of ancient, mediaeval and modern art, formed by the late Walter Hawkins, Esq., F.S.A.

of Kensington.” The front page of the auction catalogue gives a good indication of the range of objects he had amassed, perhaps as a result of his ship broking activities.