The Museums of Todhunter and Wallace
William Todhunter
William Todhunter, a bookseller, hatter and later taxidermist , founded his museum in Hawkshead in the 1780’s — a display of his collection in a room at the back of his shop.
Todhunter’s collection appears to have been centred around local and natural history, unlike the exotic curios of the Keswick museums.
The clientele was similarly localized. While Hutton and Crosthwaite were competing for grand names, Todhunter’s establishment was often frequented by local grammar school boys — and possibly William Wordsworth.
Todhunter’s museum eventually moved to the more high-profile town of Kendal, where he established a new museum on the corner of Fishmarket and Crock Lane: “the highest point on Kendal’s main street”. He published an advertisement in the Carlisle newspapers, describing the scope of his collection, which included “Minerals, Shells, Petrications, Incrustations, Crystalisations, Spars, Marles and many curious fossils, Mosses, Lichens and plants of spontaneous growth and a variety of Birds, Quadrupeds, Fishes and Coins”.
John Wallace
John Wallace set up his Cumberland Museum in 1850 based in his home in Distington, near Whitehaven.
The handbill announcing the museum’s opening claimed Wallace’s collection
“contains upward of 10,000 Specimens in the different Classes of
Zoology, Geology and Mineraology, Antiquities, Curiousities of Art,
and the Weapons, Implements, Dresses &c., Illustrative of the
manners, customs, and productions of the less civilized parts of
the world”.
Wallace had gained these artefacts from “the less civilized parts
of the world” during his time at sea, having worked as the cargo
sales man on his brother-in-law’s ship Zeno which sailed to the American
West Coast and the Pacific Islands.
He appears to have used connections made during this time to supplement his collection; for example, “crustacean, corals of all hues, birds, land crabs and specimens of woods and shells” were collected for him from China by the Captain of the Corea.