Skip to main content
Open Book Publishers

27. Death and Dissolution

  • Adrian Desmond (author)
Chapter of: Reign of the Beast: The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution(pp. 531–552)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: No priced EPUB or PDF URL
  • ONIX 2.1
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: No work or chapter DOIs to deposit
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
Title27. Death and Dissolution
ContributorAdrian Desmond (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0393.27
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0393/chapters/10.11647/obp.0393.27
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightAdrian Desmond
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-05-08
Long abstractWhen Saull died in April 1855, the Metropolitan Institution, destined to house his museum, was still in the planning stage. Saull’s exhibits were stored away in wine-hampers. Unfortunately his will was ambiguous, as to whether his money and museum were to go to the Metropolitan or John Street Institution. In 1859 the courts decided the former. But Saull’s brother dying in 1855, and Saull’s wife in 1860, left no one familiar with the museum’s rationale. And when the Metropolitan Institution was built in 1861, the managers showed no interest in the hampered fossils. This despite the fact that Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) had kindled public interest in evolution, and T. H. Huxley’s spat with Richard Owen in 1861 over mankind’s ape ancestry was the talk of the town. The atheist John Watts was actually lecturing on the “Origin of Man” in the new hall in 1861, unaware that Saull’s fossils, tailor-made for such an event, were stored in another room. In 1863 the managers ditched the lot, selling off the best for knock-down prices, and watching the rest being carted off in van-loads. With the museum lost to posterity, Saull’s reputation followed. Obituarists, smarting at the criminal enormity of his atheism and socialism, ignored his venue-funding and political campaigning, side-stepped his objectionable evolutionism, and dismissed him as a “crochety” dilettante. The coup de grâce was given by the agnostic-hating Rev. T. G. Bonney, in the Dictionary of National Biography, which sealed Saull’s posthumous fate.
Page rangepp. 531–552
Print length22 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Adrian Desmond

(author)

Adrian Desmond was educated at University College London and Harvard University, where he was Stephen Jay Gould's first history of science PhD student. He has two MSc's, one in history of science, another in vertebrate palaeontology, and a PhD for his work on radical Victorian evolutionists. For twenty years he was an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He is the multi-award-winning author of nine books, which include: The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs, Archetypes and Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850-1875, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London, Darwin, Huxley: The Devil’s Disciple, Huxley: Evolution’s High Priest, Darwin’s Sacred Cause (with James Moore)