Sir Roderick Impey Murchison at the Museum of Practical Geology

 BGS Image ID: P640912

Written on the back of the photograph is ' Sir Roderick Murchison (restoration)'.

It would be interesting to find out the story behind the mannequin - who was the wag who perpetrated this?

Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, London. c1855 -1900 GSM/MG/E/5.

Posted by Bob McIntosh

'Pennyworths of Science' - Popular science communication - Museum of Practical Geology 1857

Professor Richard Owen lecturing at the Museum of Practical Geology 1857. Image from Illustrated London News. 

The tiered lecture room at the Jermyn Street Museum was a popular venue in Victorian London and was considered to hold an audience of 600 for a series of 'penny lectures' - evening Lectures to Working Men. The 'penny lectures' lasted from 1851 to at least the end of the century. The Daily Mail of 1897 described them as' popular' - 'six lectures for sixpence' and called them 'pennyworths of science'. A typical enrollment in a year was over eighteen hundred. Some enrollment lists still exist and show the audience being numerous tailors, carmen, gilders, carvers, bag makers etc.

Syllabus for 1851-1852

Why fossils are collected by Professor J.W. Jukes
The utility of geological maps by A.C. Ramsay
Mode of occurrence of metals in nature by W.W. Smyth
On iron by J. Percy
Photography by Professor R. Hunt 

The lecture room was also used for the Metropolitan School of Science Applied to Mining and the Arts (later Royal School of Mines) which was an integral part of the Geological Survey. All Geological Survey staff were involved in lecturing e.g. in 1856 Thomas Huxley gave 50 lectures on natural history, Warrington Smyth gave 60 lectures on mining and 40 on mineralogy and Ramsay lectured on geology. In that year, the whole of the 600 tickets were sold within two days indicating their popularity.

Bob McIntosh

Thomas Henry Huxley

BGS image ID: P575773

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) is best remembered today for his enthusiastic support for Darwin's theory of evolution which resulted in him being called "Darwin's Bulldog". Huxley was Naturalist to the Museum of Practical Geology (1854-1885) and Professor of Biology to the School of Mines (1854-1895).

Andrew L Morrison

Painting of the Museum of Practical Geology



BGS image ID: P661605 

This watercolour of the interior of the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, London was painted by John Philipps Emslie in 1875. Emslie (1839-1913) was a topographical artist and folklorist. He studied at the Working Men's College in London where he was taught by, amongst others, Dante Gabriel Rosetti. 

Andrew L Morrison

Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, first floor

BGS image: P640479

The Survey had a museum from as early as 1841 at Craig’s Court, London, known as the Museum of Economic Geology. Its name reflects the nature of the collections. It housed a large number of specimens of building stones collected by the Commissioners appointed to find the most suitable stone for the new Houses of Parliament, as well as collections of cements, tiles, pottery and other man-made goods from natural stone materials. The collections and the Geological Survey soon outgrew Craig’s Court and a new Museum, the Museum of Practical Geology, was opened in Jermyn Street, London with a grand ceremony on 12th May 1851. The entrance was by all accounts very gloomy, and it led via stairs to the galleries shown in the picture with their neatly stacked shelves of rocks, minerals, ores, gems, fossils and economic exhibits. The museum also had a tiered lecture theatre reputedly capable of holding as many as six hundred people, where regular ‘penny lectures’ were given. The museum had a long life, eventually being replaced by the Geological Museum in Exhibition Road in 1935.

Bob McIntosh