How much did Balfour purchase?
You could posit that probably there was far more purchased during Balfour’s time in museum than afterwards so we researched into this, searching the ‘up to 1945 database’ for purchased in acquired field and omitted all entries with 194 in accession number field [because this was post his death] in PRM source field which gives total numer of objects of 36,707. Total number of purchased items 1884 – 1939 = 36,707 Total number of purchased items 1884 – 1945 = 37,929 percentage obtained 1884 – 1,939 = 96.7% So during Balfour’s ‘reign’ we obtained 36,707 objects by purchase, after that date we acquired by purchase: 1940s – 1,695 1950s – 780 1960s – 7,863 1970s – 2,458 1980s – 2,680 1990s – 1,112 2000s – 404 Total 1940 – 2003 = 16,992 Which means that over twice as many objects were obtained when Balfour was curator by purchase than they were after his death. However it is impossible to be exact how many of these purchases were instigated by Balfour (though we must assume that a great number
