In 1851, Franks was appointed assistant in the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum. The post was newly founded, and the brief was to develop a collection of "British antiquities". Franks in a 45-year career at the Museum went on to launch five distinct departments.
David M. Wilson writes that "In many respects Franks was the second founder of the British Museum".
Administrator At the British Museum, and as director of the
Society of Antiquaries of London, an appointment he received in 1858, he made himself the leading authority in England on medieval antiquities of all descriptions, upon porcelain, glass, artefacts of anthropological interest, and works of art later than the
Classical period. In 1866, British and medieval antiquities, together with
the ethnographic collections, were formed into a separate department under his superintendence, as Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography. The
Christy collection of
ethnography in Victoria Street, London, was also under his care before its incorporation into the British Museum collections. He became vice-president and ultimately president of the Society of Antiquaries; and in 1878 he declined the principal librarianship (then the title of
the executive head of the British Museum). Franks was a member (No152) of the
Roxburghe Club 1894-1897 and elected a member of the
American Philosophical Society in 1895. Franks retired on his seventieth birthday in 1896. In 1892 he succeeded in raising the £8,000 needed to buy the
Royal Gold Cup; "to Franks this was his greatest acquisition, and the one of which he was most proud". He had temporarily had to fund the purchase with £5,000 of his own money. Towards the end of his career, he wrote: Franks used personal influence on behalf of the Museum to help in the acquisition of collections. This he applied in the cases of
Felix Slade,
John Henderson, Lady Fellows for the collection of
Sir Charles Fellows,
William Burges and
Octavius Morgan.
Personal collecting Franks had a substantial personal fortune, which he used to build up some remarkable personal collections in parallel with his museum work on acquisitions. Though this activity was as an independent collector, it was of benefit also to the holdings of the British Museum, either in the short or longer term. and Franks built up that side of his collection through dealers in India and by purchase from
Alexander Cunningham. Franks was also an authority on classical art, especially Roman remains in Britain. He set up an exhibition of his Asian ceramics, mainly porcelain, at the
Bethnal Green Museum in 1876. He collected
netsuke and
tsuba from Japan,
finger rings and
drinking vessels. He was interested too in
bookplates and
playing-cards, of both of which he formed important collections; the friendship of
John Warren, 3rd Baron de Tabley led him to bookplates, and he completed the reference work of
Charlotte Elizabeth Schreiber on playing cards. Franks' great-grandmother, Sarah Knight, was a cousin of
Richard Payne Knight, another wealthy bachelor benefactor of the British Museum. Augustus blamed his obsessive collecting on his genes. In a manuscript account of his life, which was discovered in 1983, Franks began, "Collecting is a hereditary disease, and I fear incurable." ==Death and legacy==