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HISTORY:
- THE COLLECTORS -
(page 7)
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    Some of the great names in Victorian and Edwardian taxidermy prepared the mounts and articulated skeletons for display.  Very few of these taxidermy mounts and articulated skeletons carry provenance.  In most cases, the accession records of the receiving institution only record the name of the taxidermist from which they were purchased.
 
taxidermy Aa 1637
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Taxidermy Aa 1637. Courtesy: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
Source: International Thylacine Specimen Database (2013).
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skeletal mount Ab 2127
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Skeletal mount Ab 2127.  Courtesy: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
Source: International Thylacine Specimen Database (2013).
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    The London based taxidermy firms of Edward Gerrard & Sons and Rowland Ward supplied a number of major museum and university collections with thylacine specimens (Source: ITSD, 5th revision, 2013).  Some of these specimens were sourced from thylacines that died at the London Zoo, others from their respective agents overseas.  The "Index to Deaths" records for the London Zoo (Source: Zoological Society of London library) note that the remains of three of the zoo's thylacines [28.4.1891 - 27.9.1891 (female); 26.3.1902 - 17.1.1906 (female); 28.4.1891 - 5.7.1894 (male)] were sold to Edward Gerrard & Sons.  They also record that Rowland Ward purchased the body of a male thylacine that died at the zoo on the 25th December 1914.  Once prepared, these specimens were then sold to various museums.  The Ward specimen is now in the collection of the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery preserved as a taxidermy (Aa 1637).  Its skeleton, also in the museum's collection (Ab 2127), was prepared by Gerrard & Sons as an articulated mount (Source: ITSD, 5th revision, 2013).

    Diplomats and civil servants posted overseas frequently took an interest in the natural history of their new surroundings and sent specimens back home.  In 1906, Count Birger Mörner was appointed Consul General for Sweden in Sydney.  During his period of office he sent home a thylacine skin now housed in the collection of the Natural History Museum in Göteborg (GNM Ma.ex. 782) (Source: ITSD, 5th revision, 2013).

thylacine skin GNM Ma.ex. 782
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Thylacine skin GNM Ma.ex. 782. Courtesy: Natural History Museum, Göteborg.  Source: International Thylacine Specimen Database (2013).

    In 1902, Dr. Frederic W. Goding, the U.S. Consul in Newcastle (NSW), procured a female thylacine and her three pouch young for the National Zoo in Washington D.C. from the City Park Zoo in Launceston.  Their remains are now preserved as specimens in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (Source: ITSD, 5th revision, 2013).

Goding's thylacine specimens
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Goding's thylacine specimens. Courtesy: Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History.
Source: International Thylacine Specimen Database (2013).

    Between 1864 and 1877, naturalist Francis de Laporte de Castelnau (1810-1880) was the French Consul in Melbourne.  In 1875, he sent home two thylacine specimens to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, both of which remain in the museum's collection to this day [MNHP A12447 (male skull) & MNHP 1875-805 (female taxidermy) (Source: ITSD, 5th revision, 2013).
 
    In addition to the major institutions, a number of private collectors had thylacine specimens in their collections.  The contents of the collection of Hobart librarian Mr. Alfred J Taylor, which included the articulated skeleton of a Tasmanian tiger, are mentioned in the Mercury newspaper of the 8th June 1895 (p.1):

    "It (Taylor's home) contains what is emphatically the finest private collection of ethnological and general scientific specimens in Hobart - probably, the best in Tasmania - possibly, from the scholarly viewpoint, the best in these Austral colonies...  Keeping to skeletons, adjacent to the veranda are, several of the principal marsupials of Tasmania, all articulated - the Tasmanian tiger, the Tasmanian devil, the wallaby of these parts, the native cat; also leaving marsupials the wedge-tailed eagle and a particularly beautiful and perfect skeleton of the platypus".

    The Healesville and Yarra Glen Guardian of the 8th November 1907 (p. 2), reports on the contents, including a stuffed thylacine, of the Old Curiosity Shop at Browns River:

taxidermy specimen MNHP 1875-805
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Taxidermy specimen MNHP 1875-805. Courtesy: Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.  Source: International Thylacine Specimen Database (2013).
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    "At the river is an old curiosity shop, kept by an old Tasmanian; there are torture instruments, chains worn by the convicts, beautiful shells, stuffed birds, clothes worn by convicts, eggs, a stuffed Tasmanian wolf, and a Tasmanian devil.  You can buy shells, but the other things are not for sale".

    Over time, many of the specimens from these small private collections found their way into museum and university collections, usually without any provenance.

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References
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