The Booth Museum and Edward Booth

The Booth Museum was founded in 1874 by naturalist and collector Edward Thomas Booth. The Victorians were passionate about natural history and Edward Booth’s particular interest was ornithology, the study of birds. During his lifetime he collected a huge variety of stuffed British birds and was a pioneer of the environmental type of display called ‘diorama’, displaying birds in their natural habitat. It was this collection of over 300 cases ,with the most of the dioramas have not been altered. The museum retains its unique charm of the quirky and eccentric with its focus on Victorian taxidermy and fossils, bones and skeletons. And yet it is also firmly focused on modern day concerns of conservation and protection of the planet.

Edward Booth

Booth was taught taxidermy in Kent as a young boy, the bird stuffer had an enthusiastic life of  wildlife and hunting. In 1854 the family moved to Vernon Place, Brighton, where he attended a private school. He went on to Harrow and finally to Trinity College Cambridge. Booth’s early hunting started in the marshes near Rye, increasing his range in later life to the Norfolk Broads and the Scottish Highlands. With the first Mrs Booth he moved to Dyke Road, Brighton, where he had built their home called Bleak House and in 1874 he built his museum on the grounds. At this stage the Booth Museum of British Birds was not open to the public, which occurred gradually with charitable fundraising events. By then he had formulated his ambition to exhibit one example of every species and recognisable stage of British bird.