Much of the work of Pratt & Sons of Brighton can be seen in the quirky and unforgettable Victorian Booth Museum in Brighton that opened in 1874. It was the original setting for the Victorian diorama style which other museums later copied.

Edward Booth, it’s creator and benefactor, commissioned the Pratt brothers, amongst others, to create the original displays of cases of birds for the museum.  The museum was built in the grounds of Bleak House, the name of Booth’s house on Dyke Road.

Amongst the taxidermists who supplied the museum were T.E. Gunn, George Saville, Pratt & Sons of Brighton, Brazenore of Brighton and Swaysland of Brighton.

Edward Booth was a gentleman of private means, and Cambridge educated, although he was sent down before he could finish his studies. The birds in the Booth Museum were almost all shot by Edward Booth himself before the date of 1876 after which he started collecting exotic species from around the world.  His initial goal was to exhibit every species of British Bird, although he did not achieve that, but he collected so much stuff that he was compelled to build the museum to house it all.

There are also now 23,000 species of butterflies and moths and the mind boggles trying to imagine how they were all caught and displayed (reminds me of Rothschild of Tring).

Booth created his own catalogue of the contents of his museum. After his death he fully bequeathed the museum and its contents to the town of Brighton, although the museum wasn’t open to the public before his death; it was just a personal vanity project for Booth.

The birds of the museum included a wide range of specimens that were set up in displayed tableaux as studies of their natural habitats and behaviours, and included Booth’s written observations on the locations of the Golden Eagle, White Tailed Eagle, Swallows and Swifts, Plovers, Peewits, Martins, Warblers, Merlins, Kestrels, Owls and the like.