How Dead Rodents Became the Darlings of the Victorian Elite

[admin tim]

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles...ictorian-elite

[Cogidubnus]

The Bramber Museum of Curiosities (Potter's Museum) was gloriously eccentric...hence the strong appeal, to me at least, back in the late 60s/early 70s...

Almost as odd, (again to me), was the Booth Bird Museum in Dyke Road, Brighton...it's now the Booth Museum of Natural History...I think what appealed to me, at the time, was the irony of this Victorian Naturalist going out and slaughtering every known species of British Bird and then having them stuffed to form dioramas...

There was even a display featuring his gun-punt armed with a miniature cannon, intended to inflict maximum slaughter on marshland birdlife...but of course it was all ok and legit because he collected butterflies, moths and fossils too...

[String]

Talking of preserving remains. I was down at the Ulster museum recently and they have a mummy on display Takabuti was her name.



I've been going to see this mummy since I was I would say 7, in all those years, about 44, she has't changed a bit, but I have changed quite a lot.
Maybe those Egyptians had something.

[Chris G.]

The Bramber Museum of Curiosities (Potter's Museum) was gloriously eccentric...hence the strong appeal, to me at least, back in the late 60s/early 70s...

Almost as odd, (again to me), was the Booth Bird Museum in Dyke Road, Brighton...it's now the Booth Museum of Natural History...I think what appealed to me, at the time, was the irony of this Victorian Naturalist going out and slaughtering every known species of British Bird and then having them stuffed to form dioramas...

There was even a display featuring his gun-punt armed with a miniature cannon, intended to inflict maximum slaughter on marshland birdlife...but of course it was all ok and legit because he collected butterflies, moths and fossils too...

Hi Dave

One of the facets of John James Audubon's art is that he also had to kill the birds or other animals in order to depict them in his art. Although the beasts in the following print of an Audubon scene appear to make for an action scene, both would have been dead when he painted them. I wrote the poem below about the irony of him having to kill the animals in order to paint them.

All the best

Chris



John James Audubon (1785-1851)



Tawney Weasel Killing a Rooster by Audubon


Audubon in Edinburgh, 1826

To the Brits, I'm a wild thing, an uncouth
longhair buckskin beast from the swamps
and tupelo of their lost colonies. So be it!

They invite me to their salons to display my art.
But I'd be happier outside their frou frou boxes
watching sparrows pick at dung in the street.

I carefully arranged that band-tailed pigeon
on a branch of dogwood. She looks
alive but I painted her dead.
I shot her with my own gun.

As they eye the viviparous and me,
the kept Kentucky woodsman, I dream
that I sail the air above, feathered.

Christopher T. George

[Robert Linford]

I seem to remember Potter's stuff was right next door to Jamaica Inn. Shame it's gone.