Shooting A portrait of innovative taxidermist John Hancock by H H Emmerson c 1890. for the sake of science
As technology, engineering and geographical exploration rolled on through the 19th century, academics and the British public at large developed a huge appetite for information about the flora and fauna of the emerging world. Naturalists of every sort accompanied the military and exploratory expeditions through which Victorian Britain cast her imperial net to open up and annex previously unknown territories.
Birds were especially attractive and accessible. It was a stark fact, however, that the only way to obtain examples of those new and exotic birds was to shoot them. Propelled by an insatiable desire to be the ones who would reveal the secrets of new regions, ornithologists armed themselves with notebooks, sketching materials,
