Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And do you
Speaker 1: know is Sarah? Do you recall your first exposure to
Speaker 1: our topic today? Taxidermy? Well, I was going to save
Speaker 1: this story a little bit, but I'm gonna bring it
Speaker 1: out now. I was telling it to you already this morning.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure at the Atlanta's Capital, Georgia State Capitol
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, lovely building, gold Dome. Anybody who's been
Speaker 1: to Atlanta's probably not. If it driven up eighty five,
Speaker 1: you've seen it. If you grow up in Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: go there on many a field trip. And the most
Speaker 1: memorable memorable part, at least for me and for I
Speaker 1: think most of my classmates, was not the trips to
Speaker 1: of the you know, see the legislators or any of that,
Speaker 1: what we're excited about government in action. It was the museum,
Speaker 1: the Little Capital Museum, which featured lots of strange Georgia history,
Speaker 1: but also, most memorably, a two headed calf sweetened a
Speaker 1: two headed snake. Welcome to Georgia, visitors, And I said
Speaker 1: the CEO this morning. But I went there sort of
Speaker 1: on a whim just a few years ago, so as
Speaker 1: an adult, and I noticed that those two items were
Speaker 1: not as prominently displayed as they used to be. They
Speaker 1: almost seem to be displayed just as like a nod.
Speaker 1: We know people really liked these, we have to keep
Speaker 1: them out, but they're kind of weird and maybe don't
Speaker 1: exactly belong in the state capital. Yeah, so that's my answer,
Speaker 1: that's my Those are the first clear memories of taxidermia.
Speaker 1: I would have been familiar because I both of my
Speaker 1: parents are from farm families that hunted, so I know
Speaker 1: there were some deer head and I vaguely remember being
Speaker 1: at my grandparents house and being barely transfixed by one
Speaker 1: particular buck that I had that simultaneously, oh this is
Speaker 1: really neat and interesting and oh he was just looking
Speaker 1: for a meal and you shot him fandi stad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do remember being fascinated and like questioning my
Speaker 1: father relentlessly about how did they why? Who thought this
Speaker 1: was a good idea? What do you think? Just how?
Speaker 1: Like I was completely simultaneously horrified and just fascinated, like
Speaker 1: why does this exist? Yeah? Why do we do it?
Speaker 1: And then later in my life I was exposed to
Speaker 1: the work of the text ermist were talking about today
Speaker 1: who anyone who is into taxidermy, I am confident will
Speaker 1: know this person the second we say his name, and
Speaker 1: it is Walter Potter. And I got exposed to his
Speaker 1: work when I was working in the library and a
Speaker 1: book that featured one of his pieces came across my
Speaker 1: desk and I remember looking at it and then looking
Speaker 1: at it again, and looking at it about seventeen more
Speaker 1: times in the next twelve minutes. And somebody really put
Speaker 1: this together because he did these amazing, wondrously bizarre tableau
Speaker 1: with animals. And this is where people do need to
Speaker 1: stop for a minute. And if you're on your run, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll come back to it last describe a few things,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna want the visual for yourself that this
Speaker 1: stuff for sure. I know that it makes you wish
Speaker 1: that it was a video podcast at a time like this,
Speaker 1: But check out these because well to describe them, but
Speaker 1: you really need the pictures. And there's some great pictures
Speaker 1: fortunately to like modern color pictures. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: kind of where his work is now, um like where
Speaker 1: the physical works exist now, um, but we'll start at
Speaker 1: the beginning. So he was born in Sussex, um in
Speaker 1: five and he worked at his family's in which was
Speaker 1: called the White Line in now it's called the Castle
Speaker 1: and it's in Bramber. And I have never I've read
Speaker 1: several biographical accounts about him. No one ever really talks
Speaker 1: about his early childhood. I presume it was probably pretty
Speaker 1: standard and kids, you know, kids stuff, working in the
Speaker 1: family um in. But then at approximately aged fifteen, he
Speaker 1: I'm presuming, because no one ever spelled this out either,
Speaker 1: I'm presuming that his pet canary passed before he had
Speaker 1: the idea to preserve it. Um, let's hope. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a memento almost. Yeah, And this was at
Speaker 1: a time when preserving your pets was starting to become
Speaker 1: more popular anyway, So it was not necessarily a thing
Speaker 1: an idea he would have just magically had on his own.
Speaker 1: He may have seen something about it or read something
Speaker 1: about it. Not the sign of a disturbed teenage boy,
Speaker 1: A normal thing to do. No, he didn't do it
Speaker 1: that well though. No, Apparently that first effort was not
Speaker 1: so hot, which anytime someone's learning a new craft or trade,
Speaker 1: usually the first Go is not going to be a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: There has been some discussion, but there's never been any
Speaker 1: corroboration that he might have been influenced by an exhibit
Speaker 1: that was at the Great Exhibition in London in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one by Ermann Pluquet, and anyone feel free to
Speaker 1: correct me if I mispronounced that. But he had an
Speaker 1: exhibit that was Small Animal Taxidermy UM, and it was
Speaker 1: UM basically the story of Rennicky the Fox, which is
Speaker 1: based on the Wilhelm von Kalbach etchings of Geta's medieval
Speaker 1: trickster Tail. So it's kind of like a uh, it's
Speaker 1: these if you've never seen that one, it's these hilarious
Speaker 1: little rodents that are acting out these adventures and they're
Speaker 1: kind of like two. It's like a pair that are
Speaker 1: doing one activity after another, like almost like a comic
Speaker 1: strip animal tableau. Yeah, so it's not one big tableau
Speaker 1: that tells the story. It's it's laid out like sequential art.
Speaker 1: I like the idea that he would have been inspired
Speaker 1: by the Great Exhibition. To so many of the subjects
Speaker 1: we've discussed in the past, including to Blina's last episode.
Speaker 1: There was some toilet inspiration that came from the Great Exhibition.
Speaker 1: It's an exciting time in London that it is this
Speaker 1: sort of cultural point where where all people are exposed
Speaker 1: to new things for the first time. And it certainly
Speaker 1: seems plausible that this young boy from a country village
Speaker 1: would come across something that he found really magical at
Speaker 1: the Great Exhibition. Well, and even like I said, there
Speaker 1: have not been any corroborative writings to say definitively yes,
Speaker 1: he was there, but the Great Exhibition was so big
Speaker 1: that people were talking about the things that they had seen,
Speaker 1: and it traveled even so U So, yeah, he did
Speaker 1: his canary, and there's a great um quote that he
Speaker 1: gave apparently in he did a correspondence interview with the
Speaker 1: Idler magazine and he says, well, after I'd done my canary,
Speaker 1: people encouraged me to persevere. If they saw any bird
Speaker 1: or animal they thought I would like, they'd bring it
Speaker 1: or send it to me. So he was practicing throughout
Speaker 1: these years after he was fifteen, because he did take
Speaker 1: a shine to this craft, and then he got the
Speaker 1: idea that he could put them together in big works
Speaker 1: of art. And that's kind of the turning point here,
Speaker 1: not just melting an animal and displaying it uniquely creating
Speaker 1: some scene with it. Yeah. It really became almost like
Speaker 1: a painter with a paintbrush. He would create entire vistas
Speaker 1: and stories using mounted animals. Um And the first big
Speaker 1: one is the History of cock Robin, which uh he
Speaker 1: used ninety eight birds. I believe that he had been
Speaker 1: working on through the years. And this is when he
Speaker 1: was nineteen. He had gotten all of those together and
Speaker 1: he worked on the history of the original death and burial.
Speaker 1: I'm so it wasn't The history um is the original
Speaker 1: death and burial of cock Robin. And he worked on
Speaker 1: this for years and years. But it basically was a
Speaker 1: big funeral procession for cock Robin, including the I believe
Speaker 1: it was a sparrow that had shot him with an
Speaker 1: arrow with my bow and arrow. Yeah, and there was
Speaker 1: an owl grave digger, and you know, the grave is there,
Speaker 1: and there are other animals there to pay their respects.
Speaker 1: It's like a big story, yeah, inspired by the nursery
Speaker 1: rhyme to where all of the birds are picking their
Speaker 1: roles the role they will perform during cock Robin's funeral. Um.
Speaker 1: And and that's the other major difference here, So putting
Speaker 1: the animals together in a tableau, but not in an
Speaker 1: animal like way. It's not a natural history museum setting.
Speaker 1: It's a human like setting. Yeah, these aren't. Later on
Speaker 1: he starts to add even more human accessories to it.
Speaker 1: These aren't like clothed yet. There are a couple with
Speaker 1: ribbons around their necks. Um. And the owl clearly is
Speaker 1: holding a little a little shovel where that he's digging
Speaker 1: the grave with. But yeah, this is really you know,
Speaker 1: as Sarah said, the very time, that it was mounted
Speaker 1: animals doing human things, almost like you would see in
Speaker 1: like a children's book or a cartoon. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: nursery vime inspiration is very apparent, and it carries through
Speaker 1: his work pretty much his entire life. Uh So at
Speaker 1: that point, as his work started to expand, they had
Speaker 1: to expand his work area. So he first moved into
Speaker 1: a barn loft at his family's house. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: once he started creating these big works, they went on
Speaker 1: display at the end. Uh And there have been different
Speaker 1: accounts of where they went on display and what the
Speaker 1: purpose was. And I think it's kind of a case
Speaker 1: of revisionist history. Uh. It sounds like his parents were
Speaker 1: very encouraging of his work because I'm sure they saw
Speaker 1: it as a potential career. Um and he says in
Speaker 1: that same interview with the Idler that his father um
Speaker 1: eventually built do they call it a t shehad, I
Speaker 1: think behind the end where he could put his his
Speaker 1: big work on display. And of course then his work
Speaker 1: continued to grow and growing. Glenny described the little girls
Speaker 1: about his age, you know, teenage girls coming to to
Speaker 1: see the see his work for the first time and
Speaker 1: leaving some coins behind and starting to get that idea,
Speaker 1: Oh wait, maybe I can make money. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: he got his idea for a museum. Well, and as
Speaker 1: you were mentioning too, with other accounts you see of this,
Speaker 1: I mean, some are saying it was a direct marketing
Speaker 1: strategy that his parents were like, come and see the
Speaker 1: end where we have have a high animal check out
Speaker 1: of the death of cock Robin. Yeah, exactly. But others
Speaker 1: are more like, oh, it kind of happened accidentally. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can see it either way. I mean we were
Speaker 1: saying earlier, I think I would go slightly out of
Speaker 1: my way to visit a inn or a pub that
Speaker 1: had these strange scenes, especially since they were pretty trendy
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, or just you know you happen
Speaker 1: upon them. It has nothing to do with marketing the pub. Yes.
Speaker 1: So eventually, um in eighteen sixty six he moved his
Speaker 1: workshop to a new spot because the stable loft was
Speaker 1: not containing his situation anymore. And then again in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty he moved into a specially built building which eventually
Speaker 1: became his museum. And that museum wasn't only for his work.
Speaker 1: He also collected curiosities from other places, um, including like
Speaker 1: a lot of it was natural history type items like
Speaker 1: horns and teeth. There were skulls, and he had some
Speaker 1: human artifacts like his shoes and jewelry. Uh, just sort
Speaker 1: of a random collection hodgepodge of things. This part of
Speaker 1: the story reminded me so much of P. T. Barnum's
Speaker 1: story and the the era before him of of natural
Speaker 1: history museums, I guess, the birth of natural history museums
Speaker 1: and going from these collections curios just a strange hodgepodge
Speaker 1: of things, some valuable, some just old teeth or horns
Speaker 1: or whatnot, all brought together and and the fad for
Speaker 1: for seeing those at the time. Yeah, I mean people
Speaker 1: were very fascinated by this idea of just looking at
Speaker 1: things from other people's lives or other animals that they
Speaker 1: maybe hadn't been exposed to in their natural, day to
Speaker 1: day life. UM. That it was, as you said, like,
Speaker 1: this was really when the idea of the Natural History
Speaker 1: Museum was starting to kind of boom and grow, and
Speaker 1: the Natural History Museum and the Freak Show Museum, and
Speaker 1: it was all kind of two different people were looking
Speaker 1: for entertainment a variety of ways at the same time. UM.
Speaker 1: And he did start taking on work as um a taxidermist,
Speaker 1: like on demand for people, like he would preserve their
Speaker 1: pets for them. UM. It was very starting to get
Speaker 1: very popular for people to keep mounted animals in their parlors. UM.
Speaker 1: Some would be like their personal family pets, but some
Speaker 1: also collected like exotic birds. Apparently, UM, Queen Victoria had
Speaker 1: some exotic birds, which is the thing I had not
Speaker 1: known until we were digging in on research for this. UM.
Speaker 1: So he would do all of that, but really he
Speaker 1: always wanted to continue creating these tableau And a question
Speaker 1: that always comes up whenever you're talking about Walter Potter
Speaker 1: with people is where was he getting these animals? Did
Speaker 1: he start seeing tableau with twenty kittens and them will
Speaker 1: cross your mind? Yeah? So apparently he mentioned in that
Speaker 1: that interview that I sided earlier, that people would bring
Speaker 1: him what they thought were interesting specimens. But he also
Speaker 1: kind of had a deal going on with local farmers.
Speaker 1: And this is where our modern pet loving brain has
Speaker 1: to kind of close down and be put aside for
Speaker 1: a little while, because I have a hard time with
Speaker 1: this being like a crazy animal person. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: on farms, they don't always spay neuter their pets and
Speaker 1: cats are there to work, they're there to keep vermin
Speaker 1: at bay. But because they are animals that have not
Speaker 1: been fixed, they are having lots of babies and often
Speaker 1: way more than really can be sustained by what the
Speaker 1: road and population on the farm is. So farmers would
Speaker 1: bring him unwanted kittens. I have not really found a
Speaker 1: clear indicator as to whether they were already deceased when
Speaker 1: they got to Mr Potter or if he took care
Speaker 1: of that. Um. But I do know, like I said,
Speaker 1: I grew up with some farm family background. For you know,
Speaker 1: people that grow up in that it's often and especially
Speaker 1: at this period of time. It wasn't like you went
Speaker 1: to the vet and had animals euthanized. You kind of
Speaker 1: learned to do the dirty work and make the hard
Speaker 1: decision of taking care of situations like that. Well, and
Speaker 1: the history of the animals seemed to become kind of
Speaker 1: an issue too in the nineteen seventies, with the museum
Speaker 1: and visitors concerned that it was cruelty to animals, so
Speaker 1: much so that museum had to put up a little
Speaker 1: placard saying, for one thing, these are over a hundred
Speaker 1: years old, and also don't worry. No animals were specifically
Speaker 1: killed for the project, which they would have been done
Speaker 1: away with one way or the other. This way, they
Speaker 1: just went on to become part of art's troubling it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I, as I said, I have to kind
Speaker 1: of put away my my animal loving brain for a
Speaker 1: moment and just think about, you know, the time period
Speaker 1: and how animals you know, we're seeing more as livestock
Speaker 1: at that point. It wasn't like their cuddly pet. It
Speaker 1: was they were working creatures. But also people would bring
Speaker 1: him um unfortunate specimens that had maybe not lived very
Speaker 1: long because they were not healthy. Maybe once more in
Speaker 1: line with my two headed snake. Um we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: You can find all manner of images of these things
Speaker 1: if you look, and some of them, like some of
Speaker 1: the more malformedones there. It's like the kitten with eight
Speaker 1: legs and two tails, which is what it's called. It's
Speaker 1: very basic. Um kitten with eight legs and yeah, kitten
Speaker 1: with eight legs and two tails. There's one that has
Speaker 1: There are a couple that have like two faces. There
Speaker 1: are um you know. So he did those kind of
Speaker 1: about a fascination, and I think he was probably studying
Speaker 1: anatomy at the same time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It was giving him some clues into how the differences
Speaker 1: between right and wrong create the structure properly. But then
Speaker 1: he was also doing really artistic works like the Village School,
Speaker 1: which is a bunch of tiny bunnies with little chalkboards
Speaker 1: and they have little desks, and he would craft all
Speaker 1: of their accessories as well, so they're tiny little lesson books.
Speaker 1: All of that was handmade. Um. The guinea pigs cricket
Speaker 1: match that one has always cracked me up. There is
Speaker 1: a full guinea pig band with brass multi Yeah, they
Speaker 1: are they are full and ready to play orchestral pieces.
Speaker 1: There's a pavilion, and then there are the guinea pigs
Speaker 1: who are getting ready for their cricket match. And another
Speaker 1: thing to point out about these tableau two is they
Speaker 1: all have these beautifully soft painted background which seemed striking
Speaker 1: against the by this point kind of dusty Victorian animals. Um.
Speaker 1: But they add to that nursery rhyme fairytale quality was
Speaker 1: trying to go for. For sure. There's one really odd
Speaker 1: one that is a When we first started talking about
Speaker 1: doing this episode, I was like, Sarah, you have to
Speaker 1: see this picture. And it's a monkey riding a goat,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why. Every time I look at
Speaker 1: it it makes me kind of chuckle because the expression
Speaker 1: on the monkey's face is funny. The whole setup is funny.
Speaker 1: The proportion of it is just perfectly hilarious. That one
Speaker 1: seemed so reminiscent of Barnum to me because you know,
Speaker 1: and you can give this to Potter too, who was
Speaker 1: not trying to um pull one over on his audience.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, this is a this is a
Speaker 1: kitten who was born with two heads or whatnot. He
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to create creatures that didn't exist. Monkey riding
Speaker 1: in the Goat was, yeah, just a strange decision to
Speaker 1: combine two animals into into one scene like this, And
Speaker 1: then the big one that um, I think for people
Speaker 1: that are fans of his work, and it is very striking.
Speaker 1: There's one called the Kitten's Wedding, and it is a
Speaker 1: full wedding party comprised of kittens in full gown, elaborate
Speaker 1: dresses and jewelry and little suits. It's it's fascinating and bizarre,
Speaker 1: and there's a growth task element to it, but it's
Speaker 1: also one of those things where I can't help but think,
Speaker 1: like about the hours of meticulous, exacting labor that goes
Speaker 1: into something like this. I mean, he made teeny tiny
Speaker 1: costumes to put on each of them, and they're all
Speaker 1: quaffed like their hair is done there. It's it's really
Speaker 1: quite fascinating to think about how much just he must
Speaker 1: have been in love with his art, because he really
Speaker 1: did seem to just dedicate his heart and soul to it.
Speaker 1: It's easy to focus solely on the mounts though, and
Speaker 1: and not look at not look at the kittens dresses,
Speaker 1: but look at their face. Looks quite right, you know,
Speaker 1: I think, um, probably the goal of many taxidermists today.
Speaker 1: And we've heard from we have listeners to who have
Speaker 1: written in to tell us about their work. UM, tell
Speaker 1: us that it's not stuffing, it's mounting. UM. I think
Speaker 1: maybe of the modern goal of tax army is to
Speaker 1: look as though the animal whre wants alive. It's the
Speaker 1: idea of capturing a natural moment, a living quality about them.
Speaker 1: And you certainly cannot say that about Potter's work, And
Speaker 1: I don't think that was the goal, but his taxidermy
Speaker 1: skills wouldn't have allowed that anyway. I mean, the kittens
Speaker 1: don't have they don't look like they were ever alive. No,
Speaker 1: they look like dolls. They really do have a doll
Speaker 1: like quality by the time he has done humanizing them,
Speaker 1: you know, antropomorphizing them with outfits and accessories and just
Speaker 1: concepts that they would not be put into. Like you know,
Speaker 1: very few kittens get invited weddings in my experience, but
Speaker 1: some once in a while it happens. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not trying to capture that moment of
Speaker 1: the animal in the wild. Some of his um malformed
Speaker 1: creatures are more intended to look like their life like state. Um,
Speaker 1: the these ones. Once he gets into Tambleaux, it's really
Speaker 1: about creating something entirely new. Some of the life like quality,
Speaker 1: or lack thereof two comes from his skill mounting to
Speaker 1: I mean, things didn't always go quite as planned, especially
Speaker 1: for more exotic animals. Yeah, because he didn't have practice.
Speaker 1: He didn't get to practice with them. He got pretty
Speaker 1: good at kittens and apparently was very good with birds.
Speaker 1: But there is allegedly a baby giraffe that he attempted
Speaker 1: that I could never find a photo for that just
Speaker 1: didn't come out quite right. Um, and the lion that
Speaker 1: looks like it's wearing saggy panty hose because his the
Speaker 1: skin on the legs. You know, it's with any anyone
Speaker 1: who's been around a cat, you know that the skin
Speaker 1: has some flexibility. But he didn't quite get where it is.
Speaker 1: It's like. And just the stance of the lion too.
Speaker 1: It's one of those where Okay, maybe he didn't ever
Speaker 1: see a living lion. Maybe he didn't have that opportunity
Speaker 1: because the lion doesn't stand quite like that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks just off. I mean, you can recognize it as
Speaker 1: a lion, there is a certain you know, it's a lion,
Speaker 1: so there's a certain natural majesty to it. But you
Speaker 1: just something's not quite right. Because that reminds me of
Speaker 1: of old engravings of descript you know, explorers who have
Speaker 1: described animals and then they're illustrated by engravers back in Europe,
Speaker 1: and these are African animals or North American animals, and
Speaker 1: the illustrator has never seen them and they're trying to
Speaker 1: imagine what the animal looks like. Yeah, it's just not
Speaker 1: quite right. A plus effort um and he continued to
Speaker 1: mount his entire life, and then in nineteen fourteen he
Speaker 1: suffered a stroke and he never really fully recovered. And
Speaker 1: he was I believe seventy nine at the time, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like he was struck down as a very
Speaker 1: young man. Um But then in nineteen eight he passed
Speaker 1: away and he had spent his whole life there in Sussex.
Speaker 1: Basically he was buried in the village churchyard um and
Speaker 1: his museum was left to his daughter Minni Collins and
Speaker 1: his grandson Alter also named Walter, but his last name
Speaker 1: was Collins Uh and they were the curators of the
Speaker 1: museum until the nineteen seventies, and they basically got to
Speaker 1: a point where, you know, they just couldn't handle it anymore.
Speaker 1: It was too much work. I mean, that's a lot
Speaker 1: to keep going, and so um it got moved first
Speaker 1: to Arundel, and then in the nineteen eighties it went
Speaker 1: to the Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. There was a moment
Speaker 1: in the middle where it was almost going to be
Speaker 1: shipped off to America because I think that first stopping
Speaker 1: point also didn't quite know what to do with it
Speaker 1: and didn't have the resources to keep it in good condition.
Speaker 1: And then the Jamaica in stepped in and said, no, no,
Speaker 1: we will take it. So those people hung on to
Speaker 1: it until two thousand three and they decided to liquidate
Speaker 1: the collection because their curator had died or had retired
Speaker 1: rather I'm sorry, and their taxidermists had passed away. He
Speaker 1: had leukemia, and they who had maintained all of these
Speaker 1: specimens too, and it's like ten thousand specimens by that point,
Speaker 1: and it would be a lot of work too. It's
Speaker 1: not something that you can just put in a case
Speaker 1: and then forgot about. No, it needs constant care and maintenance,
Speaker 1: especially you know, as it gets older, it is more
Speaker 1: and more work. You sent me a video from the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties where there's a man who is tending to
Speaker 1: some of the specimens, I think, to a cow in
Speaker 1: one of the pictures, which he didn't preserve a life
Speaker 1: size cow. It's a it with cap skin, but the
Speaker 1: curator is carefully dusting and cleaning and then returns the
Speaker 1: cow to the chapleau. It would be a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of work. And also I and see why the museums
Speaker 1: would be facing problems in this time too, because this
Speaker 1: is kind of kitchy that it was very popular in
Speaker 1: the Victorian era to go look at mounted animals and
Speaker 1: they found it quite charming. There was a growing um
Speaker 1: sense of unrest at it, like there wasn't the same oh,
Speaker 1: that's magical and charming. It was they saw more of
Speaker 1: the grotesque than the charm at that kind of the
Speaker 1: cob And like we mentioned earlier, the questions about wait
Speaker 1: a minute, is this humane or not? They were all
Speaker 1: killed a hundred years ago. Yeah, certain changing tastes played
Speaker 1: a role in this. Yeah. So, and it was a Mr.
Speaker 1: And Mrs Watts that owned the collection at this point.
Speaker 1: So in two thousands three they decided that they would
Speaker 1: sell the collection, and they were hoping that someone would
Speaker 1: buy the whole thing in one shot and maintain the museum,
Speaker 1: because even though it had shifted, it was not in
Speaker 1: the original museum, they still considered it the museum um
Speaker 1: And unfortunately that did not happen. I mean, there were
Speaker 1: many attempts made. There was even a landowner nearby that
Speaker 1: was offering a parcel for free and saying, you can
Speaker 1: build a new museum here if you can keep the
Speaker 1: collection together. But they still needed capital to do all
Speaker 1: of that, and it never came through. And it it's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, did numbers when you look at the prices
Speaker 1: some of these pieces fetched? And then we'll come back
Speaker 1: to sort of some other things that developed or came
Speaker 1: to light after the fact. There was a little bit
Speaker 1: of scandal, and there were, as I said, there were
Speaker 1: lots of people trying to get together the money to
Speaker 1: put this thing, to keep it together and to buy
Speaker 1: the whole collection outright, but they just never there was
Speaker 1: never enough and so eventually, for example the death and
Speaker 1: burial of Cock Robin, the original estimate for what I
Speaker 1: was going to go for was ten thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: I think it actually went for twenty three thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred British pounds, which is about thirty three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: US at the time of the sale, and that was
Speaker 1: the high high mark for for the works, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them Kitten's Wedding actually it's a little bit
Speaker 1: more more. Yeah, that was thirty five thousand dollars UM.
Speaker 1: But a lot of them were pulling in in the
Speaker 1: in the twenties. UM. Eleven thousand, ten thousand Monkey Monkey
Speaker 1: Riding a Goat brought in eleven thousand, six hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which I think is a bargain. But I mean there
Speaker 1: really were even though this is years and years later.
Speaker 1: I mean this is in the two thousand's, there were
Speaker 1: enough people that knew about his work that were very
Speaker 1: excited to go. And you can read some accounts online
Speaker 1: of people that were like, Okay, I have you know,
Speaker 1: I'm throwing out a random number, like ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get whatever I can because I really want
Speaker 1: a piece of Walter Potter's legacy. Okay. So the crazy
Speaker 1: thing is, though, even though these works went for way
Speaker 1: more than expected and ultimately pulled in around five thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred pounds, which, as he said, was twice what
Speaker 1: they had predicted. The scandal came because there had apparently
Speaker 1: been an offer to keep the collection together, and that
Speaker 1: offer had been for way more than that collective price
Speaker 1: a million pounds, right, and that was from an artist,
Speaker 1: a British artist named Damien Hurst. Uh, and he really
Speaker 1: wanted it. I mean, he's a fan of Walter Potter.
Speaker 1: He knew about his works. That's known to by the
Speaker 1: way for the shark suspended tank. When it came to
Speaker 1: light that he had actually made an offer to Bottoms,
Speaker 1: which was the auction house that handled the sale, the
Speaker 1: Watts were actually really upset because they had never been
Speaker 1: informed of this offer. As of two thousand seven, they
Speaker 1: were threatening to sue Bottoms for not accepting that offer
Speaker 1: and for not informing them, because they were supposed to
Speaker 1: have no deified them if they received any serious offer
Speaker 1: to keep the collection intact, and let alone one that
Speaker 1: was so high above what they actually Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: were planning to sue both for monetary damages for um
Speaker 1: half a million pounds. But also they really did. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are people that actually tended this collection for years.
Speaker 1: It's not like they just were trying to turn it
Speaker 1: and make a buck. You know. They clearly cared about
Speaker 1: it and wanted it to go in one big set,
Speaker 1: not piecemeal. It ended up in different lots and which
Speaker 1: is I'm sure heartbreaking to people that had tended to
Speaker 1: it very lovingly for you know, decades at that point.
Speaker 1: So as it stands, Mr Watts has taken it to
Speaker 1: Cora and he said, we have tried to discuss this amicably,
Speaker 1: but with no joy. They leave us with no option
Speaker 1: to let to pursue our complaint in the court. So
Speaker 1: that seems to be ongoing. It was no recent update
Speaker 1: on it, Yeah I didn't see one, but there is
Speaker 1: a different recent update there is, and the collection is
Speaker 1: coming together again, although it did briefly um Um Damien
Speaker 1: Hurst again and he did buy some of the lots.
Speaker 1: Was basically kind of using his connections in the art
Speaker 1: world to try to put this together. In the Museum
Speaker 1: of Everything, which is a pop up museum in Primrose
Speaker 1: Hill in London, which I apparently used to be a
Speaker 1: Victoria It was a dairy in Victorian era and then
Speaker 1: it became a recording studio get acoustics, and then it
Speaker 1: was at least for this time, a pop up museum space,
Speaker 1: and so he actually did get together a lot of
Speaker 1: the pieces, even some that had been sold to collectors overseas.
Speaker 1: I know there were some pieces that were here in
Speaker 1: the US that were being shipped over for the collection.
Speaker 1: And it ran until the end of at least I
Speaker 1: don't know if any portion of it continued um as
Speaker 1: an exhibit, but I have a feeling this is probably
Speaker 1: not the last time we will see people will trying
Speaker 1: to put this together, because it's odd how lovingly people
Speaker 1: look at this collection. There's just something about it that
Speaker 1: it it makes you want to like pull for it
Speaker 1: to all come back together. It does, I mean, I
Speaker 1: was it's interesting to look at these and it is
Speaker 1: such a i don't know, a strange slice of Victorian life.
Speaker 1: But the fascination that people have with it, even though
Speaker 1: this is clearly not in style today, is interesting. And
Speaker 1: that there are these people who are investing great deals
Speaker 1: of money in it too to try to reunite these
Speaker 1: pieces and bring them all back together. Yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: when you read accounts of people that were trying to
Speaker 1: save it during the two thousand three auction. I mean
Speaker 1: there's really like a sense a tone of just dismay
Speaker 1: and heart heart that it's you know, a pity they
Speaker 1: think it's a national treasure. Why isn't you know, some
Speaker 1: big institution stepping in and making sure that this you know,
Speaker 1: full collection museum doesn't get preserved as it is. And
Speaker 1: I wonder to how much of that comes into nostalgia too,
Speaker 1: if if this museum was a favorite place for generations
Speaker 1: of kids to visit, you know, through through the seventies certainly,
Speaker 1: but beyond too, and the Watts were maintaining it. Um,
Speaker 1: just like I would be sad if the Capital finally
Speaker 1: put away their two headed snake. Don't let me know
Speaker 1: if you work there and it's gone now. Um. I
Speaker 1: wonder if if people feel that way too, that this
Speaker 1: is something um strangely British and worth maintaining and celebrating.
Speaker 1: It's also there's such a sweetness to the story that
Speaker 1: it was just basically a simple kid in the country
Speaker 1: who had a love for a thing and that was
Speaker 1: the only thing he really did his whole life. I mean,
Speaker 1: he married, he had several children, but it was his
Speaker 1: life's work, was his museum and his taxidermy and you know,
Speaker 1: mounting animals in new and creative and artistic ways that
Speaker 1: no one had ever thought to do before. There's just
Speaker 1: you want to cheer for those people, so you know,
Speaker 1: you want to maintain what's left of their work when
Speaker 1: they're gone, and that he did have success in his
Speaker 1: life too. Even if the collection is now going through
Speaker 1: there are times being split up. But um, I thought
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting points was that at one
Speaker 1: point the museum was so popular that they had to
Speaker 1: extend the railway platform in town to accommodate the people
Speaker 1: that were just visitors coming up, coming out to visit,
Speaker 1: coming to see a kitten wedding. They got an invite
Speaker 1: to the kitten wedding, they brought their gifts, they're ready
Speaker 1: to be fabulous guests and have a good time. So
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll see more stories about the Potter collection, and
Speaker 1: I would love to see it myself at some point.
Speaker 1: That's like one of my bucket list items is to
Speaker 1: see at least some decent chunks of the Potter call.
Speaker 1: It sounds like kitten wedding is possibly in the States too.
Speaker 1: If if is Damien Hurst had had trouble to the collection.
Speaker 1: They mentioned it was somewhere, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's in in a private collection in somebody's house. This
Speaker 1: story made me sort of more interested to in just
Speaker 1: the history of taxidermy too, and um, you know how
Speaker 1: it got to this extremely decorative point in the late
Speaker 1: Victorian era, but it's earlier roots too. And and also
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but thinking of the health issues to
Speaker 1: working with the chemicals. I mean, he lives to a
Speaker 1: rifled age. It obviously doesn't seem to have affected his health,
Speaker 1: but arsenic there's a lot of a lot of sludge
Speaker 1: and gross chemicals that are not kind to the the body. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's funny too because we love these things so much.
Speaker 1: But I the idea of preserving a beloved pet has
Speaker 1: certainly fallen out of favor. I mean, I know there
Speaker 1: are people that still do it from time to time,
Speaker 1: but they're definitely outliers of like the pet parent community.
Speaker 1: I know fewer people I don't know anymore personally, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's done that, um, but I know people
Speaker 1: do it. So it is kind of a it's an
Speaker 1: interesting lens that we can kind of flare out where
Speaker 1: we really love this, but we would be a little
Speaker 1: creeped out by our own you know, animals being part
Speaker 1: of something like that. Well, in that game preservation is
Speaker 1: still a totally mainstream Yeah, I'm suddenly having a flash
Speaker 1: to the Field Museum in Chicago. Have you ever been
Speaker 1: a huge taxidermy collection. I have not. I thought of
Speaker 1: the Biltmorehouse in there, the Gentleman's Room essentially, Uh, there
Speaker 1: is a huge collection of of game. Yeah. If anyone
Speaker 1: is in Chicago or is visiting Chicago, go to the
Speaker 1: Field and I'm you know, it's it blows you away
Speaker 1: just how many specimens they have on display. They even
Speaker 1: have the Ghost in the Darkness, the lions that were
Speaker 1: murderous um that there was a movie about them there
Speaker 1: on display there. I mean, it's just walking through museum
Speaker 1: Hall af from Museum Hall of mounted animals. It's kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating. I'm sure we're going to hear from our
Speaker 1: I hope. I bet they can give us all manner
Speaker 1: of insights that you don't always get when you're doing
Speaker 1: regular research. There are things that you learn from the
Speaker 1: inside of any trade that you would not normally learn
Speaker 1: when you're reading about it. Or studying about it, so
Speaker 1: I look forward to those, So, Holly, before we go
Speaker 1: on to listener mail, we're gonna return to one of
Speaker 1: the stuff you missed in history class classic features, Love
Speaker 1: of Good Movie Club, any excuse to watch a film?
Speaker 1: Time for listener. Now, first of all, I wanted to
Speaker 1: do a thank you for listener Kara from Utah, who
Speaker 1: as uh she makes her own jewelry and sells it
Speaker 1: on Etsy at Caribou Classics, and she was so kind
Speaker 1: to mark this post transition by sending ear rings for
Speaker 1: the four of us. They're beautiful for Dablina, for you,
Speaker 1: for Tracy, for me, and they are lovely. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much Kara. And the sporting our or jangly
Speaker 1: ear rings. Although not under our under our big headphones,
Speaker 1: we were discomfort and this man um, so thank you
Speaker 1: to her. Also, Holly, I picked out this email just
Speaker 1: for you and for Ulter Potter too. It just seemed
Speaker 1: perfectly in line. So this email came from listener Nick,
Speaker 1: who is a curator at a collection in London, and
Speaker 1: he wrote to suggest we cover Jeremy Bentham. Now I
Speaker 1: knew the name Jeremy Bentham because of loss. He's actually
Speaker 1: come up last host change Um. Candice came back for
Speaker 1: a few episodes to join me and Candice and I
Speaker 1: have both big Lost fans. We talked about famous names
Speaker 1: on Lost. Jeremy Bentham was one of them, but Nick
Speaker 1: suggested that we talked about him in a little more details, specifically,
Speaker 1: dedicate an episode to what happened to Jeremy Bentham after
Speaker 1: his death. Nick went on to write, he was dissected
Speaker 1: by his friends and displayed in his friend Dr Southwood
Speaker 1: Smith's surgery until eighteen fifty. After this, he came to
Speaker 1: University College London and has been moved around a bit
Speaker 1: until coming to rest in our South cloisters. Um, and
Speaker 1: so he was suggesting it at his collection. There's quite
Speaker 1: a bit on Bentham, but I thought nothing could be
Speaker 1: more appropriate than that for the topic we just discussed.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's fascinating not display it in a tableau
Speaker 1: attending a kitten wedding, but that's really interesting. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we'll follow up to with a little more how to
Speaker 1: Jeremy then thought point um, and then one more thing,
Speaker 1: an awesome postcard. It looks exactly like a shingle, like
Speaker 1: the kind of store would would hang outside of its door.
Speaker 1: I think I might put it outside of my cube.
Speaker 1: It's very cute. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective to Baker Street.
Speaker 1: So thank you to Tim and Joey from Alexandra Virginia
Speaker 1: who sent us this postcard. Although do you think if
Speaker 1: I hang this outside my cube our coworkers will start
Speaker 1: trying to get me to salve mystery the case of
Speaker 1: the missing lunch? There you go, Or you could just
Speaker 1: start stealing things and see if people come to you
Speaker 1: looking for help. I can cross out Sherlock and write Sarah.
Speaker 1: There you go. All sorts of ideas. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about the topic we've discussed today,
Speaker 1: you can go to our website and enter the term
Speaker 1: taxidermy in our search part and you will get how
Speaker 1: taxidermy works, which is super interesting and you can really
Speaker 1: research almost anything your mind can conjure by visiting our website,
Speaker 1: which is how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com