ca1840 SHARPLES Museum STAR INN token CHURCHGATE BOLTON

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ca1840 SHARPLES Museum STAR INN token CHURCHGATE BOLTON Description PRESENTING A Vintage circa 1840's T. Sharples Concert Room and Museum Star Inn Churchgate Bolton Token / Medal I found the following interesting topics from a website relevant to this historic piece: The first museum in Bolton was not exactly a bastion of culture and learning, it was more akin to today’s tabloids, or Big Brother. Sharples’s Museum of Curiosities was privately run by Mr Sharples himself in rooms above the Star Inn on Churchgate. The Museum was a mixture of cabinet of curiosities, zoo, circus and sideshow, all under the one roof.We can imagine that for a modest fee, all sorts of wonders from all over the world were there to be witnessed. One contemporary Boltonian, a liberal dissenter named Robert Heywood certainly disproved of it claiming it was an ‘evil influence’ on the minds of the young. Sharples’ Museum of Curiosities was a distraction from the world of hardship and toil that was the reality for most people in Bolton. We are lucky to have a copy of the Sharples’ Museum catalogue, which gives us a lot of details about this first Bolton museum and provides an interesting insight into the popular culture of the day. Consumptive Monkeys The first section of the catalogue deals with the live specimens in the museum. It includes exotic parrots, cockatoos and even golden eagles. It also contains the first entry related to monkeys - there seems to have been a particular fascination with all things simian. The guidebook refrains from being too specific about the exact types of living specimens. It explains: The description of these animals would be very interesting but cannot be inserted here due to the generality of monkeys dying of consumption soon after their arrival into the changeable temperature of this country. Also among these many testaments to the strangeness and diversity of the natural world was a cat born with no forelegs that hopped about like a kangaroo. Waxwork murderers The back cover of the Sharples Museum catallogue, depicting the automata of the Sultan of Turkey The next section deals with waxworks figures which were unlikely to have been as sophisticated as Madame Tussards. Represented were Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington – whose successes in the Napoleonic wars would still be in the memory of many. Alongside the famous wax works were the infamous – several murderers were represented. Included, for example, was a likeness of Betty Eccles of Bolton ‘who was executed at Kirkdale, for the murder of her own children, in order that she might get money from a burial society.’ Then there were the natural curiosities – stuffed lizards, crocodiles and snakes, a polar bears paw, a two-headed duck, the hands of a monkey and two marmoset monkeys that had been born in the museum, and were ‘thought to be the first of that species born in Britain’. Yet another stuffed monkey on display had formerly been a rather popular violinist in Manchester. Slightly more disturbing was the human arm stripped of skin and preserved to show veins, tendons etc, and also a human head taken from Pompeii. Another feature of the museum was automata – moving clockwork figures. One described is pictured on the back of the catalogue: A group of moving figures, representing a scene in a Turkish harem. The Grand Sultan of Turkey sits smoking a hookah and occasionally looks over to his favourite wife. She sleeps, her ‘bosom heaves as though she was in the act of breathing – the motion being so accurate as to puzzle the beholder at first sight to determine whether the object he is looking at be flesh and blood or the handiwork of the artist. To keep the monkey theme going another automaton showed an older monkey teaching a young one to play the violin. Bolton Trotting There was also a collection of oil paintings. One series of these told the life of Dick Turpin, there were alsoviews of vario... read more

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