Very Rare. There is a copy at the John Soane’s Museum and another - coloured by hand - in the London Metropolitan Archives. The British Museum have George Scharf’s original drawing.
A remarkable privately printed illustration of Joshua Brooke’s extraordinary menagerie in the garden of his house and home of his collection of anatomical and zoological specimens, the so-called Brookesian Museum. The print is partly an insight into the astonishing life and collection assembled by Brooks but also a poignant tribute as it was published just months after he was forced to sell the majority of his specimens and artefacts due to financial constraints.
The image shows a smartly dressed man and woman examining the “vivarium” in the garden at Brookes’ house. A large ornamental mound is depicted (said to be constructed, “principally with large Masses of the Rock of Gibraltar”) on which various exotic (live) animals are posed including a large owl, a tortoise, a wild cat, and various birds (one of which is clearly chained to the rock.) Water spurts in a fountain from the top of the mound and flows through the stone head of a crocodile into a large shell below. In a grotto behind the couple is a memento mori tableau comprised of a skull, cross and hour glass
Joshua Brookes (1761-1833) studied anatomy under William Hunter and set up teaching the discipline from his house in Blenheim Street, London. Brookes - who was “completely devoted to anatomy” - taught thousands of students and offered lessons in anatomy and dissection all year round (then unusual) and used many of the specimens in his collection as aids in his teaching .
“Over the course of thirty years Brookes assembled a vast collection of human and comparative anatomical specimens, including more than 6000 preparations, models, and casts. The museum was crammed into the upper two floors of his house in Blenheim Street. There were more than 3000 specimens of the human body in both the healthy and diseased state preserved in spirits in jars, including heads, limbs, and organs. He also made casts, paintings, and models of uncommon conditions, including an extensive series on the human gravid uterus. His collection included several mummies, one of which he made himself, and a large selection of human crania, as well as the skulls of quadrupeds and birds.” (ODNB)
Brookes was forced to sell the majority of his collection in two sales, the final one in March 1830. The catalogue of the final sale, Museum Brookesianum (sold by Wheatley & Adlard, 1st March 1830) is a fascinating and horrifying list of the items in the collection. Lot 1 is a “Great toe amputated in consequence of a wound that produced locked jaw,” lot 28, “Several lacerated fingers torn from the hand of a young man by the bursting of a blunderbuss that he was firing in Oxford-street during the night of the rejoicings after the capture of Salamanca, which fingers were blown across the street and transfixed to the window over the door of a musical instrument maker’s shop. The remains of the mutilated hand were successfully amputated at the wrist-joint by Mr. Brooks.” The sale - full of similar lots - was conducted over 23 days.
The vivarium pictured here was visible to passers by in the street and presumably (as shown by the two attendees in this print) was available to view in person and close-up. Brookes’ brother operated the menagerie in the Exeter Exchange and so Joshua would have been well aware of the public spectacle he was creating in his garden and which co-existed alongside his own scientific research and practice.
Despite his renown as a teacher Brookes is said to have been lax in his personal habits, a contemporary noted, “Joshua Brookes was without exception the dirtiest professional person I have ever met with; his good report always preceded him, and his filthy hands begrimed his nose with continual snuff. In his ordinary appearance I really know of no dirty thing with which he could compare—all and every part of him was dirt” (quoted in Adrian J Desmon, The politics of evolution: morphology, medicine, and reform in radical London, (1989) p.161)
