Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Since Jules Verreaux came up in our episode
Speaker 1: on the Platypus, we thought we would bring our Verreaux
Speaker 1: Brothers episode back into people's feeds. The Verreaux Brothers and
Speaker 1: their taxidermy tableaus have also come up on Unearthed, including
Speaker 1: the tableau now known as Lion Attacking and Dromedary. When
Speaker 1: we recorded this, it was believed that this tableau did
Speaker 1: not include any real human remains, but as we discussed
Speaker 1: in Unearthed in Surprize, it actually does. This tableau was
Speaker 1: also covered up for a time in and it came
Speaker 1: back on full display in July of One of the
Speaker 1: Verreau brothers most horrifying actions which we talked about in
Speaker 1: this episode was stealing the body of a man who
Speaker 1: was believed to be from Botswana and then using that
Speaker 1: body to create a taxidermy display. After this episode came out,
Speaker 1: we got a message from listener Tina, who grew up
Speaker 1: in Botswana and let us know that a person from
Speaker 1: Botswana is called a mots Wanna. Cina also noted the
Speaker 1: pronunciation of the city Habrone, and there continues to be
Speaker 1: debates about where this person was really from. There are
Speaker 1: articles from as recently as twenty nineteen, suggesting that he
Speaker 1: may really have been from close to Cape Town, South Africa,
Speaker 1: rather than from Botswana, so the mysteries continue. This episode
Speaker 1: originally came out on November Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Polly Frying and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson. So sometimes we will pick a topic
Speaker 1: because it seems interesting in light, Like we've had a
Speaker 1: lot of heavy stuff. So you and I have both
Speaker 1: been pretty open that we're looking at just some less intense, troublesome,
Speaker 1: fair les horrifying. Yeah. Uh. And then while you're doing
Speaker 1: the research on that thing that seems like it would
Speaker 1: just be cool and fascinating, you discover a whole other
Speaker 1: story that you didn't know was there. This is one
Speaker 1: of those cases. Uh. So for context, it'll sound like
Speaker 1: I'm going off on a crazy tangent, but it's Jermaine.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite animals of all time, like in
Speaker 1: the world, is the verro sifaka. And this is uh
Speaker 1: an animal you've probably seen footage of. There are members
Speaker 1: of the Lemur family uh Indre Day and their native
Speaker 1: dramatic gascar. So even if you don't recognize your name,
Speaker 1: you have probably seen footage of them. Um. They sometimes
Speaker 1: versions of them show up on children's shows and in
Speaker 1: cartoons because they're so incredibly cute. They're mostly white, and
Speaker 1: they have kind of rust brown bellies and these dark
Speaker 1: chocolate colored faces and these big eyes, and they're so cute.
Speaker 1: There are a million videos of them on YouTube hopping
Speaker 1: around because they sometimes will travel on the ground upright
Speaker 1: in kind of a crazy jumping motion, and people like
Speaker 1: to set it to music. It's adorable. We'll try to
Speaker 1: include a link to at least one of those in
Speaker 1: the show notes. So I thought, hey, you know, it
Speaker 1: would be really cool we should talk about Jules Verreau,
Speaker 1: who is the naturalist for whom these charming animals were named.
Speaker 1: And then the research got a little bit dark but
Speaker 1: also kind of interesting and exciting, even though some of
Speaker 1: the subject matter is troubling, and it's not that the
Speaker 1: dark parts are also the exciting parts. There's a largely
Speaker 1: two different parts. There's a lot of different elements to
Speaker 1: the story, and it really involves an entire family and
Speaker 1: sort of their family business. Uh, it's involves botany and
Speaker 1: taxidermy and grave robbing and the Paris exposition and kind
Speaker 1: of a lot of different things that we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before in different episodes, but this really
Speaker 1: kind of stacks a number of them together and it's
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating in that regard. So that is the
Speaker 1: scoop about Jules Verreaux and sort of how we got
Speaker 1: to some you'll see it's about halfway through we get
Speaker 1: to kind of the really thing that might make your
Speaker 1: if you feel a little unease about some of the
Speaker 1: things that they did in the name of exploration and
Speaker 1: uh science, but also kind of sensationalist tourism kind of attractions.
Speaker 1: So normally we would start an episode that revolves around
Speaker 1: the actions of people like this by talking about the
Speaker 1: early lives of those people. But this is kind of
Speaker 1: tricky in this case because even though there was some
Speaker 1: fame and notoriety to the family, the accounts of like
Speaker 1: what their childhood with the family, the patriarch and then
Speaker 1: his children who really become the prime point of the story,
Speaker 1: like what their home life and their childhoods were like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty sparse and there's a lot of really contradictory stories.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of this happens a lot with much
Speaker 1: older history, where it's sort of like and suddenly there
Speaker 1: was a mathematician. Yeah, this seems recent enough that I'm like,
Speaker 1: there should be more stuff. But I think part of
Speaker 1: it is that because there is a lot of exploring
Speaker 1: that happened, and at one point there was a ship
Speaker 1: that sank, was things like I'm wondering if documents got
Speaker 1: lost or journals got lost along the way. So that's
Speaker 1: the scoop. So in eighteen oh three, taxidermist Jacques Philippe
Speaker 1: Verreaux opened Maison Varreau, which was a taxidermy house. So
Speaker 1: Maison Varreau provided taxidermy specimens to museums and collectors, and
Speaker 1: this was the foremost supplier of natural exhibit pieces, and
Speaker 1: work from the Verreau family business is still on display
Speaker 1: in museums throughout the world. Actually, now I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: there were any at the I went to a very
Speaker 1: odd museum a couple of weekends ago that was full
Speaker 1: of really old taxidermy specimens, and now I wish I
Speaker 1: had made note of who had prepared them all. It's
Speaker 1: very possible. There are like a lot of big name
Speaker 1: museums that still have their pieces, and one of them
Speaker 1: were gonna talk about at length a little bit later.
Speaker 1: But I suspect because we're talking about huge volume that
Speaker 1: these guys were doing in terms of the specimens they prepared,
Speaker 1: and uh there, I'm sure some of that has trickled
Speaker 1: out into much smaller, uh and sort of less flagship
Speaker 1: museums that are a little bit more specialized. But so
Speaker 1: jacqu Philippe and his wife Josephine had three sons. So
Speaker 1: there was Jules Pierre, who was born in eighteen o seven,
Speaker 1: Jean Baptiste Eduard, who went by Edwards throughout his life.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ten, and their youngest son was Joseph Alexey,
Speaker 1: and he went by Alexey. When their oldest son, Jules
Speaker 1: was eleven or maybe twelve, because he accounts very a
Speaker 1: little bit, he traveled with his uncle, naturalist Pierre de
Speaker 1: la Land to South Africa. Jules was in South Africa
Speaker 1: until he was thirteen, and when the two of them
Speaker 1: came back, they brought more than a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: thousand specimens home with them. This number was mostly made
Speaker 1: up of plant specimens, but they were also almost three
Speaker 1: hundred mammals more than two thousand birds and several hundred
Speaker 1: fish and reptiles. And then also in their collection were
Speaker 1: a number of human skulls and full skeletons which had
Speaker 1: been exhumed from their burial spots in Cape Town. And
Speaker 1: one of the larger specimens that they brought back was
Speaker 1: the skeleton of a hippopotamus, which I don't think had
Speaker 1: ever been uh collected before, and that went on display
Speaker 1: at the Paris Museum of Natural History. Once he was
Speaker 1: back in Paris, Jewels studied anatomy and taxidermy, and he
Speaker 1: had this natural proclivity for preserving biological sample. He very
Speaker 1: uh almost effortlessly sort of fell in line with the
Speaker 1: family business, like he was just really naturally extremely good
Speaker 1: at at mounting specimens. And in so Jewels had been
Speaker 1: studying for a while his uncle Pierre died. That was
Speaker 1: the uncle that he had traveled to Cape Town originally with,
Speaker 1: and so Juels actually returned to Cape Town after Pierre's death,
Speaker 1: and eventually while he was working there, he helped to
Speaker 1: establish and become curator of the South African Museum, and
Speaker 1: that was a post that he officially began in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine. Although the wheels were turning on getting it
Speaker 1: set up before that, and he also the whole time
Speaker 1: he was there, Can tinued to collect samples of both
Speaker 1: flora and fauna. During this second collection phase, it just
Speaker 1: became glaringly obvious that he was going to need help,
Speaker 1: so he sent for his brother, Edward, the second son
Speaker 1: of Maizomboro, made this journey to Cape Town in eighteen thirty. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that was just the year after Jules became Jules
Speaker 1: assumed his post at the South African Museum. And during
Speaker 1: this time there's also some interesting it's almost like a
Speaker 1: side note in a lot of the the accounts you read, Uh,
Speaker 1: he became interested in seeking out sort of mythological creatures
Speaker 1: to see if they had any basis in reality. So
Speaker 1: he was actually searching for a unicorn during this time,
Speaker 1: and also an elephant bird, which was apparently extinct. It
Speaker 1: was also during this time that the Bureaux brothers came
Speaker 1: into possession of an item that would just be extremely
Speaker 1: controversial and I would say justifiably so long after the
Speaker 1: two of them were gone. But before we get into
Speaker 1: this sort of grim bit of taxidermy, do you want
Speaker 1: to pause and have a word from a sponsor, so
Speaker 1: we don't interrupt sort of the dark weirdness with let's
Speaker 1: do okay, okay. So before the break, Edward had traveled
Speaker 1: to South Africa to assist his older brother Jewels in
Speaker 1: the collection of specimens, both for the museum, where Jewels
Speaker 1: was a curator and for a return to Paris to
Speaker 1: be sold to collectors as part of the ongoing family
Speaker 1: high end taxidermy business. And while the search for a
Speaker 1: unicorn or some other mythical animal didn't pan out, they
Speaker 1: did get their hands on a human specimen and this
Speaker 1: particular piece actually involved a grave robbing um what is
Speaker 1: believed possibly this isn't a hunder percent confirmed, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this later to be a native Botswana man
Speaker 1: was taken from his resting place, preserved and mounted, and
Speaker 1: in a letter to Paris Museum director George Cuvier, Jules wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: an object which is not the least interesting in our
Speaker 1: collection is a stuffed Bushwana. So it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a wiggly a way to say Botswana, which is
Speaker 1: very well preserved, and which was about to cause my
Speaker 1: death because in order to get it I was obliged
Speaker 1: to disenter it at night in places guarded by his fellows.
Speaker 1: Really French guy. Yeah, it's uh, there's one account and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, like I said, this particular specimen more
Speaker 1: because his history reaches quite far through history. Um, there
Speaker 1: was one particular piece of research I was doing. They
Speaker 1: were like, you can almost kind of like excuse it
Speaker 1: a little as just contextualized in the time. But even so,
Speaker 1: I think what's telling is that the museum did not
Speaker 1: want it, but they were like, no, thank you. Uh,
Speaker 1: they said, we would not like to purchase this piece
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah, so it went on display at Maison
Speaker 1: Varrow because they had it. It was already shipped. Upsetting.
Speaker 1: It is upsetting well, and I think the reason that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that we talked about
Speaker 1: that happened in the past would definitely be inexcusable today.
Speaker 1: And like there's some degree at the time, right, attitudes
Speaker 1: are very different. It's been really long established that like
Speaker 1: burying of the dead is a pretty sacrisanct thing across cultures,
Speaker 1: and that's where I kind of go, guys, you should
Speaker 1: have known better. Yeah, well, especially when he talks about
Speaker 1: how he had to like sneakily do it like he's guarded. Yeah,
Speaker 1: surely there was a question mark in your head, like
Speaker 1: is this the right thing to do? And I don't
Speaker 1: We don't know, unfortunately, if he was just so driven
Speaker 1: by this spirit of collection and you know, cataloging the
Speaker 1: world of all of its various types of creatures, or
Speaker 1: if he was just kind of weasily and us wanted
Speaker 1: to sell it off for money, Like, it's not really clear,
Speaker 1: but it certainly seems like there had to have. You
Speaker 1: would hope there was a moment of moral debate in
Speaker 1: his head at least that The following piece appeared in
Speaker 1: the Parisian periodical La Constitutional. And this is a translation
Speaker 1: that runs a little long, but we wanted to include
Speaker 1: all of it because it's a really good indicator of
Speaker 1: the cultural attitude at the time toward Native Africans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this appeared in November of one So bear with me,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read the whole thing. Two young people, monsieur,
Speaker 1: the Varreaux brothers have recently arrived from a voyage to
Speaker 1: the ends of Africa, to the land of the Cape
Speaker 1: of Good Hope. One of these interesting naturalists is barely
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, but he has already spent twenty months
Speaker 1: in the wild country north of the land of the
Speaker 1: Hot and Tots, between the latitudes of Natal and the
Speaker 1: top of Saint Helena Bay. How can one possibly imagine
Speaker 1: what deprivations he had to endure. Our young compatriots had
Speaker 1: to face the dangers of living in the midst of
Speaker 1: natives in this zone of Africa, who are ferocious as
Speaker 1: well as black, as well as the fawn colored wild
Speaker 1: animals among which they live, about which we do not
Speaker 1: need to tell. We want to speak only about the
Speaker 1: triumphs of their collecting, and do not know which to
Speaker 1: admire more They're intrepidity or their perseverance. Humans, quadrupeds, birds, fish, plants,
Speaker 1: mineral shells. All of these they have studied. They're hunting
Speaker 1: has given them tigers, lions, hyenas, and admirable lubal, a
Speaker 1: crimson antelope of rare elegance, a host of other small
Speaker 1: members of the same family, two giraffes, monkeys, long pitchforks,
Speaker 1: very curious rats, ostriches, birds of prey which have never
Speaker 1: been described before, A great quantity of other birds of
Speaker 1: all sizes, colors and species. They also have a collection
Speaker 1: of birds nests which could be the object of a
Speaker 1: charming descriptive essay. Roots like onions and other plants of
Speaker 1: remarkable shape and extraordinary size, snakes, a cashelo, and a
Speaker 1: crocodile of a type previously unknown, but their greatest curiosity
Speaker 1: is an individual of the nation of the Bejuanas. This
Speaker 1: man is preserved by the means by which naturalists prepare
Speaker 1: their specimens and reconstitute their form, and, so to speak,
Speaker 1: their inert life. He is of small stature, black of skin,
Speaker 1: his head covered by short, wooly and curly hair, armed
Speaker 1: with arrows and a lance, clothes in antelope skin, with
Speaker 1: a bag made of bush pig, full of small glass beads, seeds,
Speaker 1: and of small bones. Another thing that we are rather
Speaker 1: embarrassed to find a suitable to term to characterize is
Speaker 1: the very special accessory of modest clothing worn by the
Speaker 1: best Juanas, which we find most striking. Monsieur Verro have
Speaker 1: deposited their scientific riches at the stores of Monsieur de
Speaker 1: Lasserre rue Salfiac number three. They are generously put on
Speaker 1: display for the public without charge. It would be well
Speaker 1: of the Gardin de Pilante, which is the botanical gardens
Speaker 1: took this opportunity to extend its collections already so beautiful,
Speaker 1: to become even more desirable, and to use the skills
Speaker 1: which they did not already possess of Monsieur Verrot with
Speaker 1: the time, the talent, and the energy necessary to go
Speaker 1: out Africa to catch nature in the act. It's so
Speaker 1: crazy of this weird grossness. It really, well you say
Speaker 1: weird grossness, Like this part turns my stomach where they're
Speaker 1: talking about this part that it's a man. Isn't it
Speaker 1: great that they did this? You guys. It's such a bizarre,
Speaker 1: uh like way to sell it to my mind, you know,
Speaker 1: like my sensibilities are very like troubled that they're like,
Speaker 1: what we really want to talk about is how amazing
Speaker 1: these two guys are. Yeah, and then they talk about
Speaker 1: the specimen of the Botswan and with such delight and
Speaker 1: right like, oh, it's the neatest thing, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's a person. So listeners, sometimes this is what happened
Speaker 1: when we just want to talk about adorable lemurs, as
Speaker 1: we find horrifying things instead. So the middle brother, Edward
Speaker 1: brought this human display and an assortment of other samples
Speaker 1: to Paris in eighteen thirty one, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them were delivered into the hands of museums that were
Speaker 1: really eager to expand their collections. So we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back to this particular piece of taxidermy in a bit,
Speaker 1: because the story of this mounted human specimen reaches all
Speaker 1: the way up to very recent history. But as for
Speaker 1: the Verreaux brothers themselves, when Edward returned to South Africa
Speaker 1: the following year, so that would be thirty two, he
Speaker 1: also brought their third brother, Alexei, with him. It's believed
Speaker 1: that Alexei never left Africa after his arrival and lived
Speaker 1: out the rest of his life there, assisting with jules
Speaker 1: collection efforts. Jules and Edwards seemed to have done some traveling,
Speaker 1: although there's no definitive record on exactly where they went,
Speaker 1: and the list includes usually places like the Philippines in China,
Speaker 1: it does appear that it point in late eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: a shipment of their specimens was lost on its way
Speaker 1: to Paris when the whole ship that was carrying the
Speaker 1: collection sank. Yeah, that's usually if you look at different accounts,
Speaker 1: that's usually consistent. Uh. And then getting into the eighteen forties.
Speaker 1: It's consistent. But during that period of the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: particularly the early half, there will be accounts of them
Speaker 1: being in two different places at the same time, in
Speaker 1: different like you know, journals and accounts that other people
Speaker 1: have given. We will say, oh, they were in China then,
Speaker 1: and it's some other one says it's like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: even acknowledge that one exists. They may not have known that,
Speaker 1: but it's like, oh, and then they were here in
Speaker 1: this part of the world, and they could not have
Speaker 1: been in both of those places. So it is a
Speaker 1: little bit hard to actually track their movements. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty two, Jules Verreaux made his way to Australia and
Speaker 1: he wanted to expand his preserved sample of offerings to
Speaker 1: include more specimens from outside of Africa. He explored New
Speaker 1: South Wales and Tasmania and he gathered all kinds of botanicals, insects,
Speaker 1: birds and mammals, and again he gained some the possession
Speaker 1: of some human remains. Yeah, they you know have It
Speaker 1: comes up periodically that they had multiple samples of human remains.
Speaker 1: It it's usually believed by most people. I think that
Speaker 1: they really only did the one mounting of a human
Speaker 1: and that the rest were sort of like bones that
Speaker 1: have been discovered along the way. They may have. We
Speaker 1: talked about them disentering some bodies in South Africa, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the skeletons, but just for context, there was
Speaker 1: just the one taxidermy human that we know of. One
Speaker 1: too many, it is, but I just want to make
Speaker 1: that clear that this wasn't like a They weren't making
Speaker 1: a career of taxidermyng people. So, after five years of
Speaker 1: exploring Australia, Jewels returned to Paris and for several years
Speaker 1: he worked on organizing and naming the collection, both the
Speaker 1: new things that he had brought as well as you know,
Speaker 1: sort of placing them in contact with other specimens that
Speaker 1: he had collected through the years. He was eventually employed
Speaker 1: as an assistant naturalist at the Paris Museum of Natural History,
Speaker 1: and that started in eighteen sixty two, so it had
Speaker 1: been more than a decade that he had been kind
Speaker 1: of working on classifications and and descriptive catalogs of all
Speaker 1: of his various pieces that he had gathered throughout the world.
Speaker 1: Jules had continued to work on his taxidermy throughout his
Speaker 1: whole life in his travels, but it's in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties that he made one of his most famous
Speaker 1: mounted tableau, and it was entitled Arab Courier Attacked by Lions.
Speaker 1: In this display, a mannequin outfitted in the black cape
Speaker 1: that was typical of the Arab and our address of
Speaker 1: North Africa is featured in the fictional moment that he's
Speaker 1: pulled off of the camel he's riding by two Barbary lions.
Speaker 1: An Arab courier won the Gold Medal for Excellence at
Speaker 1: the Paris Exposition in eighteen sixty seven, and during the
Speaker 1: seven months it was on display there, more than fifteen
Speaker 1: million spectators came just to see it. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: a really dramatic shift from most of the taxidermy that
Speaker 1: had come before it, and certainly different than almost anyone
Speaker 1: had seen before, because prior to that, it was pretty
Speaker 1: common even if you were setting up a scene of
Speaker 1: taxidermy that it would kind of just be multiple mounts
Speaker 1: kind of in a line. But this is the first
Speaker 1: time that it really was sort of an action scene
Speaker 1: that depicted like an event happening. After the Paris Exposition closed,
Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History bought Burrows display and
Speaker 1: it wasn't available for public viewing for some time. Once
Speaker 1: museum officials saw the piece in person, they thought it
Speaker 1: was a little too ghost to be part of their collection,
Speaker 1: so they kept just kept it in storage for thirty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically was in a warehouse in New York for all
Speaker 1: that time. Eventually, though, in it was sold. It was
Speaker 1: sold to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was
Speaker 1: fairly new at the time, for the tidy sum of
Speaker 1: fifty dollars, and it eventually became a prominent part of
Speaker 1: the collection there. There is one story that it they
Speaker 1: were going to be charged. I think it's forty five
Speaker 1: dollars for them to actually transport it from its storage
Speaker 1: place to the museum, and I think that ruffled some feathers,
Speaker 1: like we just paid fifty dollars for this, and we
Speaker 1: gotta pay another fifty just to get it here. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it did eventually make its way to the collection.
Speaker 1: And while there have been rumors throughout the years that
Speaker 1: the man on the camel was an actual human, it
Speaker 1: is not. And that's one of those things that has
Speaker 1: been debated. There was a restoration point where it was
Speaker 1: worked on because there had been, you know, some degradation
Speaker 1: of the the specimen. But even so, I think most people,
Speaker 1: in most museum curators that have been involved with it,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was ever an actual human, but
Speaker 1: because of the precedent of the Botswanan man, they there
Speaker 1: have always been some suspicions. And as a side note,
Speaker 1: Barbary lions went extinct not long after the Verreaux assembled
Speaker 1: this tableau, So if you're interested in seeing Arab courier
Speaker 1: attacked by lions, it's still on display at the Carnegie Museum.
Speaker 1: The museum modeled a snow globe after it in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. Yeah, they started like an interesting program
Speaker 1: where they were doing snow globes of some of their
Speaker 1: most interesting and famous pieces, and that was the one
Speaker 1: that kicked off the collection. So I have never seen
Speaker 1: one of the snow globes and how it actually turned out,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of fascinating. I had this brief moment
Speaker 1: where I was like, I want one. I should start
Speaker 1: a snow globe collection, and then immediately where are you
Speaker 1: going to put a snow loocalections, That's the problem always uh. So,
Speaker 1: both Edward and Alexei died in eighteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventies, so that was right after this big
Speaker 1: sort of triumph at the Paris Exposition of Jules's Peace.
Speaker 1: And in eighteen seventy Jules Verreaux left France as the
Speaker 1: franc Oppression more began and he fled to England and
Speaker 1: he lived there for three years before he died. And
Speaker 1: when he had sold the Arab courier piece to the
Speaker 1: American Museum of Natural History, he sold with it to
Speaker 1: them the vast majority of the collection of Maison Vaux.
Speaker 1: And there's been some speculation that he actually knew his
Speaker 1: health was already pretty dicey at that point and he
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that collection went somewhere and somewhere
Speaker 1: that was a museum that would understand what exactly they
Speaker 1: were getting, because it's been discussed by some historians that
Speaker 1: he probably was already pretty sick from the ongoing exposure
Speaker 1: to chemicals used in taxidermy that he had basically been
Speaker 1: doing since he was a child. So, uh, he was
Speaker 1: not in great health at that point. Despite some claims
Speaker 1: that there was a child born out of wedlock, when
Speaker 1: Jules was still very young. This was the end of
Speaker 1: the Verreaux brothers liege. And while there are a number
Speaker 1: of species that bear the Verreaux name as a consequence
Speaker 1: of all the exploration and collecting that Jules and Edward
Speaker 1: did and that Alexei assisted them with, there has also
Speaker 1: been some confusion about certain species based on some incorrect
Speaker 1: labeling that Jules is believed to have done to some
Speaker 1: of their collected pieces. And there's been some speculation that
Speaker 1: he may have purposely mislabeled some specimens uh and the
Speaker 1: locations where they had been found to make them appear
Speaker 1: more exotic and therefore more valuable to museums and collectors.
Speaker 1: We don't know whether or not that was the case,
Speaker 1: but regardless of the cause of this labeling UH sloppiness,
Speaker 1: those poorly cataloged items kind of did a bit of
Speaker 1: a disservice to science. There have been a couple of
Speaker 1: points of confusion over the years. Was like, wait, this
Speaker 1: animal isn't really native to this place, like uh, And
Speaker 1: eventually they realized like, no, this is just wrong. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I want to point out that that poor or
Speaker 1: inaccurate labor labeling is like not unique to these guys. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. There are frequently stories that will come
Speaker 1: across our radar, which is like a museum found something
Speaker 1: really stunning in their collection that they didn't know they had.
Speaker 1: And yeah, a lot of times people are ready to
Speaker 1: go whoever made that mistakes should be fired. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like that guy made that mistake in about
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. Well moreover, I mean, I uh, not that
Speaker 1: it excuses it, but when you're bringing back hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of things at a time, I could imagine it
Speaker 1: would be easy to lose track of something, or you know,
Speaker 1: even if you're attempting to be meticulous, you could just
Speaker 1: write down the wrong note in your book as you
Speaker 1: go to keep track of uh. And I promised we
Speaker 1: would return back to the taxidermy man, and we will,
Speaker 1: but first we're going to have a word from a sponsor.
Speaker 1: If that's cool with Tracy. I think we should have
Speaker 1: a break before we get to this scene. So back
Speaker 1: to our story and to the part that I promised
Speaker 1: we would come back to you. You're probably wondering what
Speaker 1: happened to that taxidermy man from Botswana. Uh. Well, in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, a Spanish taxidermist and veterinarian named Frances Darter.
Speaker 1: It's probably pronounced differently, but usually uh said that way
Speaker 1: when people are just discussing it in the sources. I
Speaker 1: looked at purchased the piece, uh, And originally he was
Speaker 1: gonna he put it on display at the Spanish Exposition,
Speaker 1: and then after he passed, it landed in the Darter
Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History, which is in Spain. So this
Speaker 1: exhibit was simply labeled El Negro and it drew crowds
Speaker 1: for years and not just a few years. Years. The
Speaker 1: most shocking part of this story lies in the fact
Speaker 1: that this tax that are made human being was on
Speaker 1: display until the late nineteen nineties. Yeah, nin nineties, so
Speaker 1: a very long time to be standing there. I think
Speaker 1: the part that really gets me is that this was
Speaker 1: not a person like I could almost see a taxidermy
Speaker 1: to human being on display if that had been their wish,
Speaker 1: Like they're certainly people that have donated their bodies, and
Speaker 1: I get this is like a grave robbed situation. And
Speaker 1: then this person just stayed on display forever, which is troubling. Uh.
Speaker 1: So in the museum was asked if they would consent
Speaker 1: to return the body to Botswana to be respectfully put
Speaker 1: to rest at last, after being an African novelty for
Speaker 1: Europeans on display for more than a hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 1: And initially the museum refused. If this were happening today,
Speaker 1: the internet would jump all over. So, writing for The
Speaker 1: New York Times in two thousand, Rachel Swarns stated the
Speaker 1: significance of the display piece and here's a quote to Africans,
Speaker 1: he was a symbol of racism lingering from the turn
Speaker 1: of the century when blacks were paraded as freaks in
Speaker 1: the vaudeville shows and natural history museums of Europe and America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was certainly not the only instance of this happening. Uh,
Speaker 1: But this really became a case where people thought, like
Speaker 1: this is correctable, like we can at least make this
Speaker 1: a better situation. And so the Spanish government and the
Speaker 1: organization and of African community really worked in collaboration to
Speaker 1: try to convince the Darter Museum to just acquiesce to
Speaker 1: this request and finally let Elne grow go home. Curators
Speaker 1: at the museum it seemed like they almost based on
Speaker 1: what I've read, I mean, I haven't seen interviews with
Speaker 1: these people are seen their firsthand accounts, but the way
Speaker 1: it reads, it sounds almost like they were just kind
Speaker 1: of briskly that they were hurt that they had been
Speaker 1: called racists, and so is that really tricky thing where
Speaker 1: they were like, no, we're really respectful about this display,
Speaker 1: and we put it in context. Uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about the history and the nature of exploration and
Speaker 1: specimen collection in the early eighteen hundreds, and but eventually
Speaker 1: they kind of saw the error of that whole logic loop,
Speaker 1: and so they did give into this request and the
Speaker 1: body was finally released. A medical examination was performed on
Speaker 1: a preserved body, and it's believed that elniegrow died of
Speaker 1: a lung infection at the age of about twenty seven
Speaker 1: and eight. Dater X exhibition brochure claims that the Verreau
Speaker 1: Whethers attended the man's funeral and then stole his body
Speaker 1: later that night, although there's no way to verify these claims. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know if that was written to be like
Speaker 1: a sensational museum card or if that's the actual case.
Speaker 1: It certainly does line up a little bit with Jules
Speaker 1: Verreaux's letter to the Parisian uh museum head where he
Speaker 1: kind of says, like we had to sneakily get this
Speaker 1: while his body was being guarded, but we don't really
Speaker 1: have a solid exact timeline of how that all played out. Well,
Speaker 1: and then like, in my mind, if that part is true,
Speaker 1: if that's really what they did, like that makes it
Speaker 1: even worse. Yes, exactly, because like there are lots of
Speaker 1: times in history where where people of one group have
Speaker 1: sort of felt like people of another group were not
Speaker 1: human beings. That doesn't make it okay. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's okay or that that justifies anything. But if you
Speaker 1: have just literally watched somebody have a funeral for their
Speaker 1: fallen kinsman and then you go and steal his body,
Speaker 1: like there is no way that you're justifying to yourself
Speaker 1: that that that was not a human being, right, it
Speaker 1: just becomes really reprehensible at that point. It's like it
Speaker 1: was represensible already, and but now it's like fifty times
Speaker 1: more than it already was. Exactly, It's really it's just yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So, while it was never confirmed either whether or
Speaker 1: not the man had originally been from Botswana, he was
Speaker 1: returned there in two thousand to be reinterred, and he
Speaker 1: was buried in a state funeral in Gabarone after several
Speaker 1: days of visitation, during which huge crowds of people turned
Speaker 1: out just to pay their respects to this unknown man.
Speaker 1: At the funeral, Foreign Minister Lieutenant General mom Patti Murafe
Speaker 1: said in his speech today, a hundred and seventy years later,
Speaker 1: we're gathered here not only to re enter the body
Speaker 1: in African soil, where it likely belongs, but also to
Speaker 1: cleanse that act of desecration, restore the dignity of a
Speaker 1: common ancestor, to appease the spirits of Africa, and above all,
Speaker 1: to correct or wrong, which has no statute of limitations.
Speaker 1: So I thought it was going to be about cute lemurs,
Speaker 1: and it was about something, and then it became different,
Speaker 1: which is really sort of a more important story. It's
Speaker 1: not sort of. It really is a more important story
Speaker 1: to tell. It just wasn't what I thought I was
Speaker 1: getting into at the beginning. But I'm glad that that
Speaker 1: came to light as I was researching, because I remember
Speaker 1: the oh I got to do something on the Robe brothers,
Speaker 1: their taxidermists. They discovered all these animals whoa they did
Speaker 1: horrible things. WHOA. You and I have these conversations sometimes
Speaker 1: while you're researching at your desk and I'm researching at
Speaker 1: my desk, and we have these instant message things where
Speaker 1: like one of us is expressing horror or delight or
Speaker 1: surprise or whatever, and I like, I got this. I
Speaker 1: think it was I am and I am from you.
Speaker 1: You were like this turned out really really upsetting. I
Speaker 1: didn't think this was happening. But again, like I said,
Speaker 1: that's an important story to tell. And you know, we
Speaker 1: were certainly around when all of this was happening in
Speaker 1: the late but I don't really remember seeing anything about it.
Speaker 1: Well I don't remember, which could just be me. I
Speaker 1: wasn't tuned into it, but yeah, and I think I
Speaker 1: probably I don't know if I heard specifically about it
Speaker 1: or not. Like there has been enough in the last
Speaker 1: few decades, uh, controversy and debate about repatriation of various
Speaker 1: artifacts and things, um that it's like I don't know
Speaker 1: if among hearing about those stories, I also heard about
Speaker 1: this one or not. It definitely I don't remember specifically
Speaker 1: hearing about it. Yeah, I did not stick out of
Speaker 1: my mind. Uh, But how's the Scoop, Hey so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is
Speaker 1: out of the archive, if you heard an email address
Speaker 1: or a Facebook ur L or something similar over the
Speaker 1: course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our
Speaker 1: current email address is History podcast at i hear radio
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