OBITUARY.
We regret to announce the death on 30th April, 1917, at Hampstead, of Dr. Henry Benjamin Wheatley, D.C.L., F.S.A., who joined the Folk-Lore Society in 1883. He was in his 79th year, served as clerk to the Royal Society from 1861 to 1879, and as assistant secretary to the Society of Arts from 1879 to 1908. He was long associated with the Early English Text Society; he had been president of the Samuel Pepys Club, the Prior and Johnson Clubs, the Sette of Odd Volumes, and the Bibliographical Society. His chief work was the edition of Pepys’s Diary reprinted from a new collation of the original text, and illustrated by a series of admirable notes and a valuable volume of Pepysiana. His knowledge of London, particularly during the Stuart period, was remarkable, and his revised and largely extended edition of Peter Cunningham’s Handbook, under the title of London Past and Present, published in 1891, remains the best account of the literary and historical associations of the Metropolis. He served for many years on the Council of the Folk-Lore Society, and as chairman of the committee appointed to collect materials for a new edition of Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, he did valuable service. The last paper from his pen, “The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare,” appeared in Folk-Lore, 1916, vol. xxvii.
