Taxidermy in Victorian England

Taxidermy in Victorian England: The “Bone Articulators”

“Taxidermy” is Such a Funny Word!

The word “taxidermy” has its roots in Greek, and it means “to arrange skin” (Historical Review of Taxidermy 1). The text from which I found most of my material (A Historical Review of Taxidermy) stated that taxidermy could have meant many things in ancient times, such as preserving mummies, or even leather working (arranging of animal skins) but by the time it reached England it was known quite solely as the arrangement of animal skins to represent life (1).

A Compressed History

Taxidermy was then not the art that we know today. In its earliest days (18th century) birds were especially difficult to reproduce. After the long and tedious procedures, specimens were often unrecognizable. This changed with the ideas of a Frenchman named Becoeur (1718-1777). He was the first man to use a paste containing arsenic to preserve bird skins and his methods reaped amazing results. You could actually tell that the specimens were birds. Becoeur never published his recipe during his life so that he might protect his business, but in 1820 a French taxidermist named Louis Dufresne (1752-1832) did. This was a landmark in the history of taxidermy, for it allowed many people to be able to create life-like specimens very similar to Becoeur‘s (3).

The British read Dufresne’s books, and thus much of their taxidermy mimicked the French styles for a time. However, new styles and methods of preservation began to appear, such as the non-poisonous preservative formulae developed by Rowland Ward (1848-1912) and Montague Brown (1837-1923) in the mid to late 19 th century (4).

For the first half of the 19 th century, taxidermy was still trying to become established. The difficulty owed much to the fact that the art was still being perfected. Most specimens from this period were rather stiff and un-lifelike in appearance. The idea of creativity combined with taxidermy had not yet taken flight, but this changed with the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. This show exhibited some of the first “creative” “taxidermical” (coined by me) works of art; the particular works created by John Hancock of Newcastle especially grabbed the attention of the judges. Hancock’s works, such as his tableaux of a falcon grappling with a heron, were “ unsurpassed at the time for their quality and realism” (5). A judge commented that they “... will go far towards raising the art of taxidermy to a level with other arts which have hitherto held higher pretensions” (5).