User:Zetherstone/Benjamin Wheatley

Early life
Benjamin Robert Wheatley was born on 29 September 1819. His father was a noted book auctioneer in Piccadilly, and his half-brother was noted historian Henry Benjamin Wheatley. Born in London, Wheatley was educated at King's College School. After leaving the school at age seventeen, he cataloged the twelfth part of Richard Heber's library for his father, who would later sell the books in auction rooms. It was noted that this cataloging work indicated to Wheatley his eventual occupation. In 1837, when Wheatley was eighteen, his father died. This left his stepmother and siblings dependent on Wheatley to support them. Two years later, his stepmother also died, which meant that it was up to Wheatley and his eldest sister to raise the family. Due to Wheatley's firm dedication towards caring for his family, he decided to remain a bachelor.

Career
Wheatley became a professional cataloguer and indexer, and was described as being "highly productive, accurate, and organized". He adjusted the Paris classification system to fit the character of each library. In a paper entitled Desultory Thoughts on the Arrangement of a Private Library, which was published in an 1878 edition of the Library Journal, Wheatley explained his key principles of classification.

In 1841, Wheatley was first hired by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society to create a catalogue for their library. Subsequently, he cataloged between twenty to thirty other libraries that belonged to either private possessors or public institutions. This strenuous task took up much of Wheatley's time for several years. 1843 saw Wheatley create a catalogue for a portion of the library of the Athenaeum Club, while under the supervision of bookseller C. J. Stewart. In 1844 Wheatley went to Heckfield and created a catalogue for Charles Shaw-Lefevre, 1st Viscount Eversley's library.