Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Madden, Frederic William
MADDEN, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1839–1904), numismatist, eldest son of Sir Frederic Madden [q. v.], keeper of the manuscripts in the British Museum, by Emily Sarah, his wife, was born at his father's official residence in the museum on 9 April 1839. Entering Merchant Taylors' School in April 1846, he passed to St. Paul's in March 1848, and being presented in 1851 by Prince Albert to Charterhouse School, remained there till 1856. In 1859 he became an assistant in the department of antiquities and coins in the British Museum. He resigned this post in 1868, and in 1874 became secretary and librarian to Brighton College. In 1888 he was appointed chief librarian of the public library of Brighton, resigning the post in 1902, when his health began to fail. He died at Brighton on 20 June 1904.
Madden was a member of the Numismatic Society of London from December 1858, its joint-secretary 1860-8, and joint-editor of its journal, the 'Numismatic Chronicle,' from 1861 to 1868. In 1896 he was awarded its silver medal for distinguished services to numismatics (Num. Chron. 1896, proceedings, p. 18). He was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1877.
Madden contributed nearly forty papers to the 'Numismatic Chronicle,' mainly on Jewish and Roman numismatics. Of chief value were his papers (1865 and 1867-8) on the Roman gold coins acquired by the British Museum from the famous Wigan and Blacas collections and the series of articles on the Christian symbols occurring on coins of the Constantinian period. His chief work, 'A History of Jewish Coinage' (1864) was republished as 'The Coins of the Jews' in an enlarged and revised edition (1881, 4to). This exhaustive and fully illustrated treatise remains a standard book; it includes, besides the Jewish coinage proper, a discussion of all the various notices of money in the Bible.
Madden also published a 'Handbook of Roman Numismatics' (1861, 12mo), a sound but somewhat arid manual. He completed and published in 1889 Seth William Stevenson's 'Dictionary of Roman Coins,' and contributed articles on Biblical coins to Kitto's 'Cyclopædia.'
[Numismatic Chronicle, 1905; Proc. Numismatic Soc. pp. 27-28; Athenaeum, 2 July 1904; information from Mr. H. A. Grueber, F.S.A.]