Edward Thomas Booth and His Museum of Natural History

History Notes by Marion Bance

In April the Booth Museum of Natural History on Dyke Road announced that it was temporarily closing, only opening for monthly special event days, whilst essential improvements to both its collection and infrastructure are completed.

This will obviously be a blow to those planning to visit the museum during the school summer holidays, but it will, hopefully, act a reminder to the wider community of how valuable this resource is to us all.

A former volunteer and lifelong advocate of the Booth Museum, Lavender Jones, summed up that importance when she wrote: “It is not just a tiny museum of stuffed birds....It houses over half a million specimens and boasts an extensive library of natural history literature extending back over three centuries. The collection has been designated of national importance, and it is widely recognised as a source of expertise in the field of natural science. Like other major natural history collections, behind the scenes it also forms a foundation for research on some of the fundamental phenomena of biological and environmental science: from evolution and ecology to climate change.”

And it all started with the Victorian naturalist and collector, Edward Thomas Booth, whose particular interest was ornithology, the study of birds.

Booth was born in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, on 2 June 1840. By 1850, his family had moved to Hastings and a year later, when the 1851 census was taken, Booth was resident at a small school in Brighton.

His home life in Hastings was one of wealth and privilege where recreational hunting and shooting were, presumably, part of the family’s seasonal activities. Certainly, from an early age, Booth was taught taxidermy by Robert Kent – the celebrated bird-stuffer of Hastings and barber from St Leonards!

As a boy, Booth spent a lot of time on the marshes near Rye studying native birds, collecting and preserving all that he shot. He mounted each of these specimens in a separate case and, using sketches made in the field, he arranged objects and painted backgrounds to display the birds in recreations of their natural habitat - these are today recognised as the first full-size diorama presentations in the world.

In 1854 the family moved to Vernon Place, Brighton and Booth was enrolled at Harrow School, one of the most famous and oldest British boarding schools for boys, and then Trinity College, Cambridge. However, the draw of the Fens and the opportunities they presented for shooting proved too much for Booth to resist and he did not complete his studies.

Failure to meet academic requirements resulted in Booth being ‘sent down’ (expelled) from Cambridge, but, considering his circumstances, this was probably not the dramatic event we imagine. Inheriting his parents’ fortune when he was still young meant Booth never had to concern himself with career prospects or social standing and could pursue his hobbies full-time. As a man of independent means, Booth enjoyed the freedom to hunt at leisure, often on the Norfolk Broads and the Scottish Highlands and it was not long before his house in Vernon Place was too small for his growing collection. To remedy this, Booth bought some land on Dyke Road and built a house which he named Bleak House and a special building in the grounds for his birds.

This bird house became the Booth Museum of British Birds and in 1876 it contained 306 cases with each specimen meticulously catalogued with particulars of the location where ‘obtained’. Originally the museum was not open to the public, but this gradually happened with charitable fundraising events taking place and the public paying one shilling entrance fee.

By this stage, Booth had formulated his great ambition to build up his collection and exhibit one example of every migratory and resident British bird, plus vagrant anomalies.. Rumours abound as to how he accomplish this, including keeping a locomotive under steam for an entire week to enable him to travel to Scotland the moment he got word that white-tailed eagles had been spotted. Also that he raised fledgling gannets in an aviary in his back garden to enable him to kill them when they reached the level of plumage required for his display.

Eccentric, well yes, but he was also a product of his time and class. He was by nature a private man, someone who chose to name his dogs in his diaries, but not his wife - Frances Corke whom he had married in 1877; he enjoyed whiskey, the company of his ghillies and Cross & Blackwell’s tinned soup.

Frances died in February 1885 and Booth married her nurse, Bessie Helen Rose, in the spring of 1887. But Booth himself was not in great health, he had damaged his spine in a fall leading to partial paralysis and ultimately his death on 2 February 1890, at the age of 50. It had been his wish to bequeath his museum to the London Museum of Natural History, but this did not happen and Brighton Corporation became the beneficiary and has remained so ever since.

Over the years, the museum has experienced Council cut-backs and even had to battle through the threat of closure. Despite these challenges, it continued providing exhibitions, talks and events for children and adults alike and, in response to evolving trends and attitudes, made some very positive changes. Most notable of these is in the still contentious and debated area of taxidermy.  Booth’s Victorian-era taxidermy has, happily, gone and all work is now carried out to the highest legal standards with all specimens ethically sourced. 

The museum’s focus is firmly on modern day concerns of conservation and protection and, according to Brighton and Hove Museum(s) Trust, the ambition for the 21st century is for the Booth to “become a city hub to celebrate all things wonderful in our natural world and connect people to the city and the wildlife surrounding us”.

When the doors reopen in the autumn of 2026 (coinciding with the museum’s 150th anniversary) we will, no doubt, see the next chapter in the long life of the Booth Museum of Natural History.

All images courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton and Hove