'Taxidermical work'

Looking at some photos of stuffed Australian animals that ended up in the UK, I started to wonder about who ‘prepared’ them – I think that’s the correct term, rather than ‘stuffed’ them.

Taxidermy was quite a significant industry in nineteenth century Australia, and it seems that some of the best practitioners were women. Jane Tost, for example, came of a prominent English family of taxidermists. In 1863 the Australian Museum, then engaged in a vigorous program of acquisition, hired Jane and her husband as taxidermists. Jane was the first woman to be professionally employed by the Museum. Notably, she was paid the same salary as her husband.

Jane’s career at the Museum unfortunately ended when her husband was sacked for allegedly misappropriating Museum property.

Subsequently Jane and her daughter Ada Rohu established this extremely successful taxidermy and curio business in Sydney. They built an international reputation, exhibiting their work and winning medals in London, Paris and Chicago. When the Chicago World Fair Committee was gathering examples of the work of women in NSW in 1891 they reported that ‘a good deal of bird and animal stuffing, done in Sydney, is performed by females’. Jane and Ada were the most prominent of these ‘females’ and when the bookseller James Tyrell finally purchased the business in 1923 it had become known as the ‘queerest shop in Australia’ - famous for its weird and wonderful stuffed inhabitants.