Leonard James Spencer, Keeper of Minerals in the British Museum (Natural History) from December 1927 to July 1935, joined the Department of Mineralogy officially on January 1, 1894, filling a vacancy caused by the death in 1892 of Thomas Davies. Davies had served in the Department since 1857. Trained by Nevil Story- Maskelyne, Keeper from 1857 to 1880, he had taken a great share in the arrangement and labelling of the mineral collection and in his later years had also had charge of the collection of rocks. Spencer was almost equally well qualified as a petrologist and as a mineralogist. He had studied chemistry at the Dublin Royal College of Science before going to Cambridge, where he studied geology as well as mineralogy and chemistry and gained the Harkness Scholarship for Geology in 1893. The examination for the vacancy at the Museum was held in August 1893 and Spencer was the successful candidate.