Freed black slave from British Guiana (Guyana) who taught the evolutionist Charles Darwin the skill of taxidermy.
the 1790s – 1800s
1843
British Guiana.
British Guyanese
In 1826 Edmonstone was hired by Darwin to teach him taxidermy while Darwin was studying medicine at Edinburgh University. Darwin paid one guinea, for an hour every day for two months to Edmonstone, who showed him how to stuff birds.
John was born into slavery on a wood plantation in British Guiana. He was given the last name of the owner of the slaves and plantation (Edmonstone).
Edmonstone moved to Edinburgh in 1823. He earned a living stuffing birds at the Natural Museum and teaching taxidermy to students at the University. The Scottish Post Office Directories from 1824-1825 reports that John Edmonstone ‘bird-stuffer’ had set up a shop at 37 Lothian Street. Due to the fashion for taxidermy in the 19th century, he built a successful business.
Between 1826-1843 Edmonstone moved to a better location of South St David’s Street and Princess Street, presumably because this was a more prominent shopping location to place his taxidermy shop.
Edmonstone met the renowned naturalist and explorer Charles Waterton (1782-1865) through a family relation. Waterton visited the plantation where Edmonstone was a slave in 1812 at which time Edmonstone was between 12 to 16 years old . Waterton wanted to preserve as many examples of exotic birds as possible, and so he taught “John, the black slave or my friend Mr Edmonstone, the proper way to do birds” (Waterton, Wanderings in South America). Waterton stated that teaching Edmonstone taxidermy was a lengthy task.
Edmonstone was taken to Glasgow, Scotland by his slave owner in 1817. Edmonstone was then granted freedom since owning slaves was banned in Scotland in 1778, and he worked at the Edinburgh Zoological Museum.
Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1887
Brian W. Edginton, Charles Waterton: A Biography, 1996
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 22,” https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-22.xml
R.B. Freeman, ‘Darwin’s Negro Bird-Stuffer’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 33, No.1, August 1978
Poll Book for Councillors of the City of Edinburgh, 1835.
Charles Waterton, Wanderings in South America, 1825
Credits (where info sourced from)
P137 in book: The oxford companion to Black British History. Eds David Dabydeen, John Gilmore, Cecily Jones. Oxford university press, 2007.
John Edmonstone: the man who taught Darwin taxidermy | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)
John Edmonstone: Enslaved Man to (free as a) Bird-Stuffer | National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk)
John Edmonstone – the man who taught Darwin | Sky HISTORY TV Channel
How Scotland erased Guyana from its past | Slavery | The Guardian
