Enriqueta Augustina Rylands supporters of the Library and unveiled on 9 December 1907, a few months before her death. In later life she was affected by rheumatic symptoms and spent frequent periods convalescing overseas. In 1894, she purchased a villa in Torquay where she died 14 years later on 4 February 1908. Following her funeral in Stretford, Manchester, she was cremated and the ashes interred in the vault where her husband had been buried twenty years earlier in the Southern Cemetery, Manchester. Enriqueta Augustina Rylands Enriqueta Augustina Rylands (31 May 1843 – 4 February 1908) was an Anglo-Cuban philanthropist who founded the John
John Rylands Library prevent the air being 'fouled by the opening of the outer doors' with internal swing doors between the circulation areas and the main library to 'preserve the valuable books from injury'. By 1900 the ventilation system had evolved to include electric fans to draw in air at pavement level through coke screens sprayed with water. On opening in 1900, the library had 70,000 books and fewer than 100 manuscripts and by 2012, more than 250,000 printed volumes and over one million manuscripts and archival items. The main foundation of the library's collections acquired in 1892 was the "Althorp Library" of