Tag Archives for Historical collections

How to Reimagine a 117-year-old Diorama of Seabirds for a 2021 Gallery.

Written by Patricia Francis, Natural History Curator, Gallery Oldham. 

An account of ‘how to’ reuse an old, forgotten about diorama and turn it into a display highlighting a widespread and major environmental problem of today.

I first found this large sea stack diorama in a corner of a museum storeroom. The storeroom being in a basement of a building without lift access, so the display obviously had had a bit of a rough arrival to its resting place. It had been left uncovered for many years and was in a bit of a sorry state. There were a few birds left in position covered by plastic bags, sad remnants of a previous splendid display. It is a four-sided diorama and on one side at the base of the display is a ‘rock pool’ where a large sea worn pebble bears the following: Fred Stubbs, Oldham 1905.

After a bit of background research, I found this exhibit had four periods when it has been displayed. Firstly, in Oldham’s first Museum which opened in 1883 and where it was made – one of four original dioramas mentioned in a notebook and in the local newspaper the ‘Oldham Chronicle’ in an article of 1909 when it was described as: ‘A splendidly conceived stack, an isolated sandstone rock in the sea…provides accommodation on its ledges for a number of seabirds…makes up a beautiful picture at once artistic and scientific’. At this time a young Fred Stubbs was a leading light in the Oldham Natural History Society. Although the Museum was overseen by the Borough Council, the Society had been charged with the day to day running and creating natural history displays.

Very strangely three of these dioramas were coastal – sea stack, salt marsh and seashore, the fourth was woodland. Quite odd for a town museum like Oldham, far from the sea and where the largest local habitat is the Pennine and Peak District moorland! The maker, Fred, was born in Liverpool – so I wondered if his continued family connections with the coast had influenced this?

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Discovering Treasures in the Depths of the Dagnall.

Written by Ruth Cowlishaw of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

This year marks Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s 125th anniversary. The school was the first institute of its kind back in 1898, built to help investigate some of the tropical diseases brought back to the busy port city from shipping expeditions and trade. To celebrate such a major milestone an array of events and activities have been planned by the school, including outreach events and fundraising, whilst also giving us a chance to reflect on our history. One such planned scheme was the distribution of internal funds for exciting projects, proposed by staff members that would make a difference in this very special year.

Mary Kingsley Building, LSTM. ©LSTM

The Dagnall Laboratory situated in the Mary Kingsley Building is the main teaching laboratory for the school. Within its walls it houses many historical pathological and entomological samples, from mosquito wings and blood films to seven-meter-long tapeworms. Throughout the years a selection of these samples has been used to help educate thousands of medical professionals, postgraduate students and armed forces personnel. However, a large part of the collection became forgotten and neglected as specimen preservation skills and staff were lost over time. With news of potential funding myself and the team saw an opportunity to rediscover these “lost” specimens and decided to put together a bid with the aim to reinvigorate our collection. The project not only aligned with the 125 Anniversary theme of Heritage and History but also looked forward to the future.

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William Thomas March, a Jamaican Collector, Naturalist and Early Pioneer of Biological Data Recording in Jamaica.

Written by Olivia Beavers, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

Figure 1. William Thomas March’s bird skins stored in the Vertebrate Zoology collection at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool © National Museums Liverpool (World Museum: NML-VZ T1134, NML-VZ T760, NML-VZ T5652, NML-VZ 1989.66.1279, NML-VZ T19525, NML-VZ T12817, NML-VZ T9981, NML-VZ T1128, NML-VZ T14037, NML-VZ T14031/ Olivia Beavers)

August celebrates Jamaican independence, so what better way to celebrate than to talk about a Jamaican collector from the 1800s whose contributions to understanding Jamaican biodiversity are not yet fully recognised. 

I recently finished the project stage of the Associateship of the Museum Association (AMA). My project focused on helping to tell untold stories of the collections held at World Museum. 

Through trial and error, I started to look through World Museum’s database and Google the names of collectors to see if we had collectors who had black or brown heritage – with a focus on collectors with specimens from the Caribbean. I ended up finding William Thomas March. Only two previous papers were written about him, both by Catherine Levy (Managing Director of Windsor Research Centre, former President of the Caribbean Birds, and of BirdLife Jamaica). 

To coincide with the research and my project, I created a new dataset titled ‘Bird skins from Jamaica in the collections of World Museums Liverpool’ – now available on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) website. It includes specimens from William Thomas March.

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How a Giant Panda – possibly called Grandma – ended up at Leeds City Museum.

Written by Clare Brown, NatSCA Membership Secretary & Curator of Natural Science, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds Discovery Centre.

On display in the basement gallery of Leeds City Museum is a stuffed Giant Panda. We’ve always known and referred to her as “Grandma”, the panda that died only a few days after arriving in London in 1938.

Photograph of a taxidermy giant panda at Leeds Museum.
‘Grandma’ the Giant Panda ©Leeds Museums and Galleries.

Grandma, named as she was the oldest of the group, and her compatriots Happy, Grumpy, Dopey and Baby (Snow White was released in March that year) were the first live Giant Pandas to arrive in the UK. They had taken a long and complicated journey out of central China. Trapped in the forests above Weizhou, Sichuan, the pandas were initially kept at Chengdu under the care of Elizabeth and Floyd Tangier Smith.

Over several weeks, paperwork was prepared and plans were put in place for moving six pandas across the country during a Japanese invasion. It was then Elizabeth who, leaving a poorly Floyd to catch a plane, navigated her way to the Hong Kong Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ Dogs Home, a journey of some 1400km. One panda died en route.

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‘Tom’ The Burlingham Bird

Written by Anthony Roach FLS (He/Him), Archives Assistant, Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service.

Whilst we do have some objects held at Worcestershire Archives, a mummified bird filed in a plastic pocket was a hugely surprising find all the same! The bird was ‘filed’ – its place as important as other key events in the history of Burlingham & Co., Evesham, a business, which from the late 19th century onwards was managed by Henry Burlingham.  

Image of the Burlingham bird when first discovered Ref 705.1373 BA12963.6.63 © WAAS

Either side of the mummified bird contains photographs of the Evesham premises charting its changing fortunes, a catalogue of products sold, adverts and circulars sent out to clients. Whilst Burlingham & Co. began as merchants and agents of a wide range of goods, including coal, their interests narrowed as sellers of construction materials, garden machinery, and fertiliser.

Close up of the Burlingham Bird Ref 705.1373 BA12963.63 © WAAS

I was excited by ‘The Burlingham Bird’ find and set about the challenge of learning more about it and also how best to conserve and safely store the specimen in our archives.

The Mummy Bird

Close up of image with text ‘Mummified seabird found in bag of Arabian Guano’ c.1957-8 Ref 705.1373 BA12963.6.63 © WAAS

As you can see it was described as ‘Mummified sea bird found in bag of Arabian Guano c.1957/8’  When I first examined it, I thought it most resembled either a cormorant or a shag having been used to seeing both around the coasts and estuaries in Devon. Having reviewed the different species found in Arabia using the image supplied with the bird and the morphology of the mummified bird itself, it most closely resembles the Socotra cormorant (Phalacrocorax nigrogularis) – endemic to the Persian Gulf and the south-east coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

Socotra cormorant – Phalacrocorax nigrogularis – Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macauley Library © Oscar Campbell
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