Described by a 1803 guidebook as “the completest and most interesting collection of natural curiosities in the metropolis,” the Leverian Museum (or Museum Leverianum) was the result of a collection of Sir Ashton Lever. A Mr. Parkinson purchased the collection and built “a very elegant and well-disposed structure for its reception”, a hundred yards from Blackfriar’s Bridge.
Most notable due to content acquired through Captain James Cook voyages, the collection was on display in London for three decades ending in 1806 when the collection was finally sold and broken up in auction.
The collection included over 5,000 samples of birds, as well as specimens of insects, fish, shells, corals, and fossils. Also on display were “curious reliques” and antiquities including weapons from places as far away as the South Sea islands.
Open during the early 1800s every day of the week from 10 am until 5pm for the modest admission of one shilling, the Leverian Museum contained over 30,000 objects from all over the world.
The guidebook Visits to the Leverian Museum describes the Blackfriar’s location as having over fifteen apartments (two circular), with items divided both by type and by location. I love this wonderful description which not only tells us of the museum but also of museums in general in the period: “The apartments are kept well aired by good fires and in the principal rooms there are sofas to repose upon, when fatigued with standing or walking about. The labels and names on most of the cases render it unnecessary to have any persons stationed in the Museum for the purpose of explaining its contents.”
The Leverian Museum was also a popular place for public lectures on topics related to natural history.
The ultimate failure of the Leverian Museum, it was later judged was that the location was “at too great a distance from the homes f that class of people most likely to support such an institution. As a consequence, the proprietor, not meeting with the encouragement he anticipated, was induced to dispose of the whole by auction, in several thousand lots…”. Of note, and controversy, was that the whole collection was offered to officials at the British Museum and refused.
Its not hard, however, to picture in its heyday a tutor and his errant young student in nankeens and a frilled shirt touring the halls and wondering over the assortment of finds which no doubt inspired many imaginations and adventures.
How said that the British Museum refused it.