Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Salter, James (fl.1723)
SALTER, JAMES (fl. 1723), proprietor of ‘Don Saltero's coffee-house,’ settled in Chelsea about 1673, having come thither ‘from Rodman on the Irish main.’ He was at one time a servant of Sir Hans Sloane [q. v.], whom he accompanied on his travels. He occupied a substantial house facing the river in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which he opened about 1695 as a barber's shop. Sloane and other collectors made him a present of various curiosities, and Rear-admiral Sir John Munden bestowed on him the title of ‘Don Saltero.’ Under the name of ‘Don Saltero's coffee-house,’ the place became a favourite lounge for men like Sloane, Mead, and Nathaniel Oldham [q. v.] In 1709 Steele described in a paper in the ‘Tatler’ (No. 34) ‘the ten thousand gimcracks’ at Don Saltero's. Thoresby (1723) and Benjamin Franklin (about 1724) visited the place as one of the sights of Chelsea. The don himself was—according to Steele—‘a sage of a thin and meagre countenance.’ He was famous for his punch, could play a little on the fiddle, and shaved, bled, and drew teeth for nothing.
Salter's museum was an astounding assemblage of oddities, such as a petrified crab from China, medals of the Seven Bishops, Laud and Gustavus Adolphus, William the Conqueror's flaming sword, King Henry VIII's coat of mail, Job's tears, of which anodyne necklaces are made, a bowl and ninepins in a box the bigness of a pea, Madagascar lances, and the root of a tree in the shape of a hog. The last object was presented as a ‘lignified hog’ by John (great-uncle of Thomas) Pennant. The curiosities were placed in glass cases in the front room of the first floor, and weapons, skeletons, and fishes covered the walls and ceiling. Salter printed (price 2d.) ‘A Catalogue of the Rarities to be seen at Don Saltero's Coffee House in Chelsea,’ of which there are no fewer than sixteen different editions in the British Museum, ranging in date from 1729 to the ‘forty-eighth’ in 1795. The list of donors set forth in the catalogues include the names of Sir Robert Cotton, Martin Folkes, the Earl of Sutherland, and Sir John Cope, bart.
Salter inserted a poetical account of himself and his ‘Museum Coffee House’ in the ‘Weekly Journal’ for 22 June 1723. The date of his death is unknown. The coffee-house and museum were carried on till about 1760 by his daughter, a Mrs. Hall, and the collection, or a considerable part of it, remained on the premises till 7 Jan. 1799, when the house and the collection were sold by auction. The sale of the curiosities—distributed in 121 lots—realised only about 50l., the highest price for a single lot being 1l. 16s. for a model of the Holy Sepulchre. In its later days the house became a tavern. It was pulled down in 1866, and a private residence (No. 18 Cheyne Walk) was afterwards built on the site.
[Salter's Catalogues; Tatler, No. 34; Gent. Mag. 1799, i. 160; Beaver's Memorials of Old Chelsea; Faulkner's Chelsea, i. 378 f.; L'Estrange's The Village of Palaces, ii. 198 f.; Walford's London, v. 61 f.; Wheatley and Cunningham's London. i. 511; Angelo's Picnic, p. 105; various references in Notes and Queries, especially 4th ser. iii. 580.]