Animal Artists

This is what you would expect to see in a zoology museum right. Well this plus loads of other creepy specimens, and I did! Moles in jars, brains of every imaginable animal, worms and leeches and other things that make you feel decidely squeemish.
What I hadn't expected to find was the display of paintings done by animals.
Don't believe me? Then go check it out at the Grant Museum at the University College London.

The Artist

London is a truly wonderful city to be an artist in. Every day there is something new to see. The Victoria and Albert museum inspires on many levels, not only the exhibits but it's a great place to practice your art as well.

Reading Room

Most book shops don't encourage reading before you buy but the Victoria and Albert Museum bookshop in Thurloe Place combined with a wine bar encourages you to read the quality books with glass of wine or cup of coffee in the intimate rooms with high ceilings and floor to ceiling bookshelves.

Folklore Pop-Up Store

Want to find a Christmas present that's a bit different? I found the pop -up store for The Museum of British Folklore. Just open until Christmas in a basement on the corner of Thurloe Place and Exhibition Road. I found myself a great little book on May Day celebrations around the country. I'm busy marking all the quirky festivals I'll be going to.

The Wellcome Museum of Medical Science (1914-1989)

Almost 40 boxes of additional records of the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science (WA/MMS) have recently been transferred from storage and are now catalogued and available to researchers in the Wellcome Library.

The idea for this 'teaching museum' was first conceived in 1914 by Sir Henry Wellcome, with the idea of supporting an increase in the knowledge around and treatment of tropical diseases. International events intervened almost immediately, however, and the museum put itself at the service of the War Office during the entirety of World War I, offering training for troops serving abroad in tropical climates and carrying out research in different theatres of war. The museum was housed in a number of different locations in Bloomsbury during its first ten years, before finally settling in 183 Euston Road in purpose built facilities. Following serious damage to the museum of the London School of Topical Medicine and Hygiene during World War II (the Wellcome collection had been dismantled and put into storage when the Blitz began) the museum held a unique position, and expanded to around 80 bays of material on a number of different subjects. Success could be read in attendance figures, which rose from 9,000 a year in the 1930s to over 16,000 a year by the late 1970s: remarkable when you consider that admittance to the museum was through application only and that it was never open to general admission.

The exhibits and display panels were designed to educate specialists in the field of tropical disease and medicine and to teach the latest techniques in diagnosis and prevention. Visitors could pick up and study specimens from every angle, and could access the latest literature from a drawer beneath the relevant display panel. Fold down desks were devised to line the walls so students studying for long periods had somewhere to keep and take notes. In fact, the Museum operated rather like a classroom for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and paramedical students. Special exhibits also toured the world, in partner museums and institutions.


The staff were not initially museum professionals, rather scientists who later acquired curatorial skills, but they did become involved in the developing field of museum studies, contributing to the development of professional training and techniques. One of the first curators, S. H. Daukes, introduced a revolutionary (during the 1920s) visual teaching method which formed the basis of the display panels, and he later wrote a book detailing the method and its implementation in the museum. Experimental methods in displaying specimens, e.g. encasing them in Perspex, were also developed and written up for inclusion in professional journals.

The records in this collection consist of administrative papers relating to the museum’s day to day activities between 1914 and 1989. They include general correspondence files; the papers of the museum curators; details of specimens; records of staff research interests and lecturing work and material relating to the provision of medical education, and how medical museums and higher education institutions across the world collaborated to further this aim. There are also guide books, visitor books and photographs of the museum’s exhibits, specimens, staff and facilities over a number of years.

The museum eventually closed in the 1980s, but it is fondly remembered by many of its former staff and visitors, and we still receive enquiries about it. We hope that these, and other researchers, will find much of interest in these newly-opened records.

Author: Lindsay Ince

[See here for an earlier blog-post explaining how the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science had a cameo role in J.G. Ballard's fiction.]

Images:
Wellcome Medical Museum leaflet, giving opening hours (undated).
Group photograph of Wellcome Medical Museum staff (undated), from Wellcome Images (image number L0018615).
Wellcome Medical Museum display, section 13, neoplasms (undated), from Wellcome Images (image number M0003783).

Let the Games Begin

Fun and frivolity or blood and guts? Just one year until the 2012 Olympic games will be played in London. To mark the occasion the museum of London hosted gladiator games at guildhall, where a real Roman amphitheatre lies beneath the current courtyard.
The gladiators are in two teams, Londinium and Camulodunum – London and Colchester. We have learnt how to shout for mercy or demand death to the losing gladiator. It is rather scary how often we demand death.

Museum of Childhood

Not just for children. The museum of childhood shows so much about the lives of those growing up in earlier periods. Grand doll's houses, puppets, games. Do you know what a zoetrope is? Children's clothing and cots. They've certainly changed a lot.
Rocking horses from several centuries, beginning with a wooden horse believed to have belonged to Charles I in 1610.

Elevator

An original elevator from the department store Selfridges, now in the Museum of London. Just over a hundred years old Selfridges was the first store to allow customers in to "just browse". In Victorian times one only went into a store to make a purchase. It was unheard of to actually leave without having bought anything.

Watt - Inventor

James Watt was seen by contemporaries as the founder of the Industrial Revolution. His improved engine meant that steam could be used everywhere, not just in coal mines, boosting output in breweries, potteries and textile mills.

When Watt died in 1819, his workshop at his home near Birmingham, was locked and its contents left undisturbed as an 'industrial shrine'. Then in 1924, the complete workshop including contents, was transported to the Science Museum. Now for the first time is on public display.

During his retirement Watt turned to sculpture, turning out a huge number of busts, many of himself. He will no doubt be delighted that his head will be portrayed on the new £50 note.

Men at Work #33

Adam Hart-Davis photographer, writer, broadcaster, a man passionate about his subjects. One of those subjects is James Watt. Yesterday Adam shared his passion at the opening of the "James Watt and Our World" exhibition at the Science Museum.
Watt through his invention of the condenser (amongst many things), was a huge driving force in the industrial revolution which changed our world forever.
Tomorrow I will show you more about James Watt and this exciting exhibition.

Trains Galore

This weekend is one of the rare days the London Transport Museum's depot at Acton Town is open.
Everything from miniature steam engines to Victorian trams and buses. Station signs showing the stops that were planned and never eventuated.
More than 70 rare vehicles are on display. I loved the original switchboard and manual signal box. Some real gems on display.
You have until the end of today to catch it.

Art at Kew

Showing this weekend only at the Kew Bridge Museum Made @ Kew Bridge is the work of 15 talented artists. The exhibition includes paintings, ceramics, jewellery, furniture, sculptures, miniatures and blacksmith forged pieces.

The works are exhibited among the wonderful steam engines of the museum. Several of the artists workshops and studios are situated next to the museum and will be open to visitors this weekend.

The works in the exhibition are fabulous and combined with a chance to see the artists at work makes this a great opportunity not to be missed - only on this weekend.

The Courtauld Gallery

The Courtauld, a small lesser known gallery on the Strand side of Somerset House, houses an impressive collection of mainly French impressionist and post impressionist art.
Thanks to the philanthropist Samuel Courtauld who founded and donated the works in 1932, you can see and study these works.

Where are all the modern philanthropists? Time bankers and others with the wealth gave back to the community.

Foundling Museum

In 18th century London the instances of abandoned babies and infanticide were common - up to a thousand a year in London alone. The abandoned children were known as "foundlings" (a child of unknown parentage, abandoned by its mother). In 1722 Thomas Coram started lobbying for a Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children. Like all good lobbyists, his temperament was not suited to administration and Thomas was soon ousted from the Board of Governors.

The hospital/school was successful, with patrons such as William Hogarth the artist and Handel the composer. As a result of this patronage the Hospital amassed a large and very valuable collection of art works. The school ceased to be a foundling institution in 1954 and is now Ashlyn's school in Hertfordshire.

The Foundling Museum in London now houses and displays the art collection.

Men at Work # 23 - The Clock Repairers

The Foundling Museum has an incredible collection of old clocks, some dating back to the 1700's. Clocks like these require the skills of some pretty special people to maintain and repair them. These experts are from West Dean with decades of experience between them.

The clock being taken apart here is an 1850's mahogany table clock with a silver dial signed by J R Losada of Regent St. (Clocks of this era would usually have the name of the retailer on them).
It needed a fine tune to ensure its strike was regular and perfect. Dust and heat can cause problems. However this one should be fine for several more years after being put back together.

Berlin Wall

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 several panels were given to various institutions around the world.
These three panels, weighing 9 tonnes, were presented to the National Army Museum in Chelsea, London.

Romantic London

An idyllic setting for a little romance.
One of the many ice-skating rinks in London during the winter months, this one is in front of the Natural History Museum.

Rackstrow's Museum

Exquisite Bodies, the Wellcome Collection exhibition which closes this Sunday, aims to provide a history of the anatomical model in the nineteenth century. The show begins however, with an introduction to anatomical museums in the eighteenth century.

One of the first items on display is the Wellcome Library’s copy of A descriptive catalogue ... of Rackstrow's Museum: consisting of a large, and very valuable collection, of most curious anatomical figures, and real preparations ... with a great variety of natural and artificial curiosities. To be seen at no. 197 Fleet-Street ... London.

Rackstrow’s was one of the most (in)famous museums of its kind in late eighteenth century London. Surviving catalogues give us not only an overview of its proclaimed contents, but also an insight into contemporary tastes. (Its most famous exhibit in its early years was a wax model figure of a heavily pregnant woman, with red liquors passing through its glass veins to illustrate the circulation of the blood).

Noted in by his contemporaries as a modeller, Benjamin Rackstrow's Museum – not in its day regarded as a salubrious environment - lived on after his death in 1772. From existing catalogues, we know that in the 1780s, Rackstrow’s Museum was arranged into three sections: the Anatomical Collection, the Collection of Natural and Artificial Rarities and the Collection of Figures resembling Life.

The Anatomical Collection contained the majority of objects in the Museum (74 out of the 117 items listed in the 1784 catalogue), and was a mix of waxwork models and specimens preserved in spirit. Here then, were to be found “diseased wombs”; “children still-born, preserved in spirit”; “miscarriages or abortions”; “monstrous births, from women” (but also “from beasts”, such as cows, ducks, cats and dogs).

A sense of the museum’s scale is given by the “astonishing skeleton of a Spermi-Ceti Whale, measuring seventy-two feet in length”, and of its enterprising nature by the fact that not only was an “An ancient Mummy, in its original coffin” exhibited, but a “fine print” of the Mummy was also available for purchase.

The “Natural and Artificial Rarities”, consisted of preserved animals “Dried and in Spirits”. Here, the paying customer would come face to face with (amongst others) an armadillo, a porcupine, a shark and two crocodiles. The “Collection of Figures resembling Life”, lends a regal air to the medico-menagerie; with a bust of George III sharing space with “a grand figure of George II” but also harks back to the extremes of life from the start of the Museum, with moulds taken from life of the recently deceased Mr Bamford (“the Staffordshire Giant”) and Mr Coan (“the Norfolk Dwarf”).

The Museum lasted until the 19th Century, during which time this part of Fleet Street became associated in fiction with a different form of anatomical study. Rackstrow’s address of 197 Fleet Street no longer registers on the mental landscape, but the fictional resident of 186 Fleet Street certainly does.

(Catalogues for Rackstrow’s Museum are available through Eighteenth Century Collections Online, one of the online resources available free of charge to Wellcome Library readers).

Happy birthday, Paul Ehrlich!

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) was a leading medical researcher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries particularly famed for his work in bacteriology and immunology. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908. He is best remembered for 'Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet', Compound 606, the arsephanemine drug salvarsan discovered in 1909, which provided a cure for syphilis,.

Shortly after the Second World War, Gunther Schwerin, one of his grandsons, located Ehrlich's copybooks in Germany, and sent them, along with other material, to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in London for safekeeping. While they were there, his former secretary Martha Marquardt, who was also his biographer, and the co-editor of the four volumes of his collected papers, one of the few people able to read his handwriting, prepared seven sets of typewritten transcripts. These carbons are the 3rd set (of 4) copies, formerly in the possession of Sir Henry Dale, and presented by him to the Library early in 1958. The originals, and 3 sets of copies, are now held with the Paul Ehrlich archive in the Rockefeller Archive Center, New York, by whose kind permission this particular set of copies is made available in the Wellcome Library

There are 6 series, representing both copies of letters sent by him, and experimental notebooks. There are not complete sets of transcripts for all of these: in some cases the originals themselves appear to no longer exist. According to a letter from Dr E A Underwood, Director of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, to Gunther Schwerin, 25 Mar 1963 (WA/HMM/CO/Eau/13), there are some misreadings by Marquardt of scientific terms in the originals, as, although she was capable of deciphering Ehrlich's writing, she was not herself a scientist.

Ehrlich's name is one of those on the frieze of names of the most distinguished figures in medical science, created in 1913 for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum when it was based in Wigmore Street. The frieze is now viewable around the gallery of the Wellcome Library Reading Room at 183 Euston Road