Forty thieves

The forty candidates brought forward from the Athenaeum’s waiting list and elected by the Committee in June 1838, when the permitted membership was increased to 1,200 to improve the Club’s finances. They included Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens. The candidates were selected for distinction in science, literature, the arts, or as patrons of those activities, and were subsequently known jocularly as the “Forty Thieves”, after the Forty Thieves of the Arabian Nights.