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Preserving John Edmonstone
A talented Black taxidermist taught Charles Darwin how to prepare specimens
© Sid Mosdell
John Edmonstone was born on a timber plantation in British Guiana, and enslaved by Scotsman Charles Edmonstone. He learned taxidermy techniques by accompanying a naturalist on expeditions. In Scotland, he became a free man and began working as a taxidermist. One of his students was a teenaged Charles Darwin, who would later use the skills he learned from John to preserve and study the Galapagos birds that formed the basis of his theory of evolution.
BirdNote®
Preserving John Edmonstone
Written by Adé Ben-Salahuddin
This is BirdNote.
Scotland may not be a place that comes to mind when you think of Black history. But in the early 1800s, a talented Black taxidermist made a name for himself in the developing zoology scene around Edinburgh, one specimen at a time.
[Guyana soundscape]
John Edmonstone was born on a timber plantation in British Guiana, and enslaved by Scotsman Charles Edmonstone. Occasionally, British naturalist Charles Waterton visited the plantation, and John accompanied both men on explorations of the countryside, learning Waterton’s new taxidermy techniques to preserve the animals they collected.
When Charles Edmonstone moved back to Scotland in 1817, John went with him and took advantage of the country’s anti-slavery position to become a free man. By 1824, he was working as a taxidermist for the University of Edinburgh. He specialized in birds, preparing and selling them to museums throughout the country.
[Common Chaffinch]
He also gave taxidermy lessons to students, including a teenager named Charles Darwin, and it’s likely that John’s natural history accounts of the American tropics helped inspire Darwin to eventually make his own voyage. Darwin would use the skills he learned from John to preserve and study the Galapagos birds that formed the basis of his theory of evolution.
[Green Warbler-Finch]
Little else is known about John Edmonstone, including whether any of his work survives today in museum collections. This makes it all the more important that we tell his story, so that we can at least preserve his legacy.
For BirdNote, I’m Adé Ben-Salahuddin.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Environmental ML225077 recorded by Brian O’Shea, Eurasian Wren ML167839881 recorded by Ramit Singal, and Green Warbler-Finch ML46244 recorded by Robert I. Bowman.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote November 2023
Narrator: Adé Ben-Salahuddin
ID# edmonstonej-01-2023-10-16 edmonostonej-01
