Edward Thomas Booth

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

After over a year of pandemic enforced closure, the Booth Museum will re-open on the 30th July. It first opened to the public back in 1891, after being bequeathed to the city by its founder Edward Thomas Booth. 

Edward Booth

Booth was born in Buckinghamshire, on 2 June 1840, to Edward and Marianne Booth – both from wealthy families. They relocated to Hastings, where Booth learned taxidermy and shooting. 

In 1854 they moved to Vernon Place, Brighton. He schooled at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent most of his time at Cambridge shooting on the Fens and was ‘sent down’, never completing his studies.

Both of his parents died when Booth was still young, and as their only child he inherited their fortune, allowing him to pursue his hobby full time. He built a mansion on Dyke Road and in 1874 built the museum in the grounds. 

Booth Museum of Natural History

His wanted to display examples of every species of British bird, posed in recreations – dioramas – of the habitat he’d observed them in. As these dioramas were in place when the museum opened, they are the first examples of full-size dioramas in museums, pre-dating the 1889 Carl Akeley displays in the Milwaukee Museum (often credited as the first dioramas). Booth’s Museum of British Birds was private, though he did open for charitable events.

Booth also published three volumes of books, which demonstrated his detailed knowledge of birds. The illustrations, by Edward Neale, are all based on the Museum dioramas.

Booth’s birds

Booth’s diaries tend to focus on his collecting and explore little of this very private man’s life. He records his dog’s names not his wife’s. He enjoyed whiskey, Crosse & Blackwell’s soup and the company of ghillies. He writes about shooting at another gunner who came too close on the Norfolk Broads and is rumoured to have fired his shotguns at the postmen.

The Booth Museum. Brighton

In his back garden was an aviary where he raised fledgling gannets for his displays. He writes that whilst on a Sussex pleasure cruise he shot a Gannet, assuming it had escaped from his aviary (as they are not normally seen along the Sussex coast). However, on returning home he discovered all his birds were still present. 

The Booth Museum. Brighton

It’s not recorded when Booth’s first wife became ill and died. Her nurse, Bessie, became his second wife. He himself died on 2 February 1890 following a 2-hour epileptic fit. He was buried in Hastings.