Charles and Brenda Seligman were distinguished anthropologists who, for many years, lived at Court Leys in Toot Baldon.
Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873 - 1940) was born in London, studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, but spent most of his career researching human cultures across the world. He was Professor of Ethnography at the London School of Economics (LSE) and became a Fellow of the Royal Society. The LSE has a library named in his honour.
Portrait of Charles, 1924. Two further images of Charles, held at the National Portrait Gallery, can be viewed here: Charles Gabriel Seligman - Person - National Portrait Gallery
Brenda Zara Salaman (1883-1965) married Charles in 1905. She was a skilled linguist and together she and Charles conducted many anthropological expeditions around the world - studying and publishing works on different cultures in, for example, New Guinea, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Japan and Sudan.
Brenda Seligman
They bought Court Leys in 1920, and it became the location for much of their socialising and intellectualising with friends and colleagues. “Here one would encounter a Colonial administrator home on leave, a Sinologist interested in Seligman's jades, a younger colleague fresh from the field, or some older, better established figure in anthropology. Here were discussions of the problems arising out of Seligman's varied interests, and those of his wife and distinguished collaborator...” (Herskovits, 1941). They built their own museum as an extension to Court Leys.
Much of their collection of more than 5,000 artefacts is now held in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, and some items are also in The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Petrie Museum at University College London.
Brenda continued to live at Court Leys after Charles’ death in 1940, but sold the house in 1947 and moved back to London, where she continued to be active in anthropological matters, becoming vice-president of the Royal Anthropological Institute and president of the Association of Social Anthropologists. She died in 1965.
The Seligmans have subsequently been criticised for removing items, often with sacred or other cultural significance, from their rightful owners. Also, Charles’s theory on the origins of certain African civilizations is now considered to be underpinned by racist ideology.
Sources
· Herskovits, Melville J. 1941 'Charles Gabriel Seligman' in American Anthropologist vol. 43 no.3. pt. 1 pp. 437-439
· Historic England Consultation Report, 26 April 2024, Case Name: Court Leys, Toot Baldon, Case Number: 1489291
· Pitt Rivers Museum https://history.prm.ox.ac.uk/collector_seligman.html
· Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Gabriel_Seligman