John Edmonstone was a taxidermist and teacher of taxidermy in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was an influential Black Briton. [1]
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John Edmonstone was a taxidermist and teacher of taxidermy in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was an influential Black Briton. [1]
Born into slavery on a wood plantation in Demerara, British Guiana (present-day Guyana, South America), he was given the surname of his slave-owner, Charles Edmonstone, who owned the plantation and also owned the Cardross Park estate at Cardross, near Dumbarton in Scotland. Around 1812 the plantation was visited by the naturalist Charles Waterton, who spent considerable time teaching John Edmonstone taxidermy. [3] [1] [4] [5]
In 1817, Edmonstone went to Scotland with his master, possibly to become a servant to the Edmonstone family at Cardross Park. Having come there, he was freed, and he took employment in Glasgow, then moved to Edinburgh, where in 1823 he set up shop as a "bird-stuffer" at 37 Lothian Street. From this shop, he taught taxidermy to students attending the nearby University of Edinburgh, including Charles Darwin in 1826, when Darwin was aged 15. Having worked in hot climates, Edmonstone had learned to preserve birds rapidly before decomposition set in, a skill that may have benefited Darwin in preserving his Galapagos finches. [6]
Edmonstone also undertook work for the Royal Museum of the University. [3] [2] He moved his taxidermy shop to Edinburgh's main shopping thoroughfare, opening at 29 and then later 66 Princes Street. In the 1840s, he moved shop again to 10 South St David's Street. [7]
Edmonstone gave Darwin inspiring accounts of tropical rain forests in South America and may have encouraged him to explore there. The taxidermy that Darwin learnt from Edmonstone helped him greatly during the voyage of HMS Beagle. [1] [4] However, Darwin does not mention him by name, so the identification of Edmonstone as Darwin's teacher is not completely certain and is based on the research of R. B. Freeman. [8]
In 2009, a plaque to commemorate Edmonstone was commissioned by the London arts venue Kings Place, to be made by the Wedgwood porcelain firm. [9] The plaque was put up at Negociants Bar, in Lothian Street, Edinburgh, although it has since been lost. [9] [10]
Edmonstone is regarded as one of the "100 Great Black Britons". [11]
A poem narrated from the perspective of John Edmonstone appears in the Winter 2019 issue of African American Review . [12]
John James Audubon was a French-American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is the eponym of the National Audubon Society, and his name adorns a large number of towns, neighborhoods, and streets across the United States. Dozens of scientific names first published by Audubon are still in use by the scientific community. In recent years, his legacy has become controversial for his involvement in slavery and his racist writings, as well as allegations of dishonesty.
West Lothian is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and was one of its historic counties. The county was called Linlithgowshire until 1925. The historic county was bounded geographically by the Avon to the west and the Almond to the east. The modern council area occupies a larger area than the historic county. It was reshaped following local government reforms in 1975: some areas in the west were transferred to Falkirk; some areas in the east were transferred to Edinburgh; and some areas that had formerly been part of Midlothian were added to West Lothian.
Walton Hall is a country house in Walton near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England. It was built on the site of a former moated medieval hall in the Palladian style in 1767 on an island in a 26-acre (11 ha) lake. It was the ancestral home of the naturalist and traveller Charles Waterton, who made Walton Hall into the world's first wildfowl and nature reserve.
Charles Waterton was an English naturalist, plantation overseer and explorer best known for his pioneering work regarding conservation.
Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body by mounting or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word taxidermy describes the process of preserving the animal, but the word is also used to describe the end product, which are called taxidermy mounts or referred to simply as "taxidermy".
Princes Street is one of the major thoroughfares in central Edinburgh, Scotland and the main shopping street in the capital. It is the southernmost street of Edinburgh's New Town, stretching around 1.2 km from Lothian Road in the west, to Leith Street in the east. The street has few buildings on the south side and looks over Princes Street Gardens allowing panoramic views of the Old Town, Edinburgh Castle, as well as the valley between. Most of the street is limited to trams, buses and taxis with only the east end open to all traffic.
Demerara is a historical region in the Guianas, on the north coast of South America, now part of the country of Guyana. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state from 1792 until 1815. It was merged with Essequibo in 1812 by the British who took control. It formally became a British colony in 1815 until Demerara-Essequibo was merged with Berbice to form the colony of British Guiana in 1831. In 1838, it became a county of British Guiana until 1958. In 1966, British Guiana gained independence as Guyana and in 1970 it became a republic as the Co-operative Republic of Guyana. It was located around the lower course of the Demerara River, and its main settlement was Georgetown.
Bathgate is a town in West Lothian, Scotland, 5 miles (8 km) west of Livingston and adjacent to the M8 motorway. Nearby towns are Linlithgow, Livingston, and West Calder. A number of villages fall under the umbrella of Bathgate, including Blackburn, Whitburn, Stoneyburn, Armadale,Torphichen and Fauldhouse.
Morningside is a district and former village in the south of Edinburgh, Scotland. It lies alongside the main arterial Morningside Road, part of an ancient route from Edinburgh to the south west of Scotland. The original village served several farms and estates in the area. In the 19th century, it developed as a residential suburb, its growth being stimulated by the arrival of a railway service and other transport improvements.
Charles Darwin's education gave him a foundation in the doctrine of Creation prevalent throughout the Western world at the time, as well as knowledge of medicine and theology. More significantly, it led to his interest in natural history, which culminated in his taking part in the second voyage of HMS Beagle and the eventual inception of his theory of natural selection. Although Darwin changed his field of interest several times in these formative years, many of his later discoveries and beliefs were foreshadowed by the influences he had as a youth.
Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish merchant, planter and Tory politician best known for being the father of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. Born in Leith, Midlothian, through his commercial activities he acquired ownership over several slave plantations in the British colonies of Jamaica and Demerara-Essequibo; the Demerara rebellion of 1823, one of the most significant slave rebellions in the British Empire, was started on one of Gladstone's plantations.
The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) was established in 1729, and is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. The new buildings of 1879 were claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later on, the Empire. The hospital moved to a new 900 bed site in 2003 in Little France. It is the site of clinical medicine teaching as well as a teaching hospital for the University of Edinburgh Medical School. In 1960 the first successful kidney transplant performed in the UK was at this hospital. In 1964 the world's first coronary care unit was established at the hospital. It is the only site for liver, pancreas, and pancreatic islet cell transplantation in Scotland, and one of the country's two sites for kidney transplantation. In 2012, the Emergency Department had 113,000 patient attendances, the highest number in Scotland. It is managed by NHS Lothian.
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Peter McLagan was a British Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1893. He was Scotland's first non-White and first Black MP.
Henry Erskine, third Lord Cardross, was a Scottish peer and covenanter.
William Dunlop was a Covenanter, adventurer, and Principal of the University of Glasgow from 1690 to 1700. An advocate for the use of enslaved labour in America, according to Howe, William Dunlop was the first Presbyterian minister in South Carolina.
Walton Hall was a 17th-century historic country house, set in a 300-acre (1.2 km2) estate, which was demolished in the early 20th century. Sometimes referred to as Walton Old Hall, it was situated at the centre of the Walton Hall Park in Walton, Liverpool. Its former residents were Liverpool merchants and the last two families to reside at Walton Hall profited from the Atlantic slave trade. In the 19th century it was the home of Thomas Leyland during his second and third term as Lord Mayor of Liverpool.
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