Henry Willett

Henry Willett born Catt (1823-1903) was a founding father of Brighton Museum. He was a wealthy collector of paintings, porcelain, rocks and fossils, especially those of the Brighton area. He wanted his collections to be available to the people to encourage their taste and artistic education. When he presented his collections to the town of Brighton, this provided the impetus to the setting up of a Museum and Art Gallery, and his large porcelain collection, together with paintings from the 14th-19th Centuries, are housed there. It is the porcelain that stands out, and this is one of the better provincial collections, with examples of many early types, together with representative work from Victorian times. His fossils went to the Booth Museum of Natural History, in the same part of the country.

Willett was also active in other areas, most notably setting up an Emigration Society to aid poor people living in the Brighton area to emigrate to Canada. He was a friend of John Ruskin, and apparently persuaded the great critic that his books must be published cheap enough for the general populace to afford them.

Henry changed his name from Catt to Willett by royal Licence 3 Nov 1863 His mother Hannah died shortly after Henry was born. According to Mollie Gonin's booklet 'A Family History', Elizabeth Catt was saddened by the teasing her younger brothers got at school with the name Catt. In her will she left her estate to those of her brothers and sisters who would change their names from Catt to Willett within 12 months of her passing.

Henry and his brothers and sisters were raised at Newhaven Tidemills, the largest watermill in Sussex, built on reclaimed land. He moved to Brighton in 1841 where he ran the West Street Brewery and bought property throughout Sussex, particularly after his marriage to Frances Coombe, who came from a landed West-Sussex family. He was an astute businessman, investing in the Blackpool Electric Tramway, the Midland Railway and public utilities including electricity companies in Western Australia. In his will of 1905 he left an estate worth over £230,000.

References, Sources and further reading

• http://rpmcollections.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/personality-of-the-m...