God I love the Victorians: Object in focus at the Royal College ofSurgeons

Everyone knows that all museums have their star objects. The British Museum has the Rosetta Stone, the V&A has the Great Bed of Ware, the Natural History Museum has…dinosaurs. But what only insiders know are all their wacky and wonderful objects stories that don’t get featured in their institution’s displays. We think that’s the best part about museums, and I would say most people agree. They even made a show about it, it’s called Museum Secrets, and it’s awesome. In the past we’ve brought you John Dee’s angel and demon stones from the stores of the Science Museum, but today it’s all about those wacky death-obsessed Victorians at the Royal College of Surgeons.

As you may or may not know, the Royal College of Surgeons of England in Holborn houses the Hunterian Museum. If you do not know this, shame on you and get your ass over there ASAP to see it. Moving on. This is an object secret hiding in plain sight- it’s not kept in the museum but actually in the entrance hall of the building. As you enter into the grand foyer of the College, heading towards the sweeping staircase leading to Museum (because obviously that is why you are there) just take a quick look to your left and you will see…

Copyright the Royal College of Surgeons

THIS! Enormous bronze and green marble monstrosity. That’s not that weird, you might say. Everyone knows the Victorians loved funerary statuary, and this is obviously just some kind of memorial commissioned by someone close to the College. In green marble because you know, why not? You can clearly see a couple, lovingly leaning on each other in grief, looking at an urn containing the ashes of their child.

Well what if I were to tell you the ashes in that boxes aren’t their child, it’s those people themselves! Lovingly gazing at their…dead selves? What? This enormous piece of funerary statuary was commissioned by one Eliza Millard McLoghlin (1863-1928) in 1909 for her husband Dr Edward Percy Plantagenet Macloghlin (what a name). Edward was a GP and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. After she died she requested that her ashes be moved in with his. The only slightly odd this was that Eliza had a love affair with the artist Alfred Gilbert while he was making the sculpture. Gilbert is probably best known as the sculptor of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. Poor Alfred, in the throws of the kind of dramatic love only a Victorian can experience, built in an a hinge on the top of Eliza’s head for his own ashes to be stored.

Yes, we are seeing a creepy Victorian love-triangle forever enshrined in statuary. As it turned out, the Alfred-Eliza affair turned sour towards the end and he was buried elsewhere (ie not in Eliza’s head for the rest of time).

But aside from the completely ridiculous back story, the sculpture titled Mors Janua Vitae (Death is the gate of life) is an actual work of art. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool even has the model for making this monstrosity.

So over-the-top expensive decorations, a creepy love storyand a couple of deaths to boot, what’s more Victorian than that?

A memorandum on mystery objects for the Londonist

Ministry sources inform us that the Londonist has been poking around various museum curatorial departments. Do you have any mystery objects, they ask? Oh Londonist, you clearly don’t know museums very well do you. Let us guess, no one has been willing to give you a response? Here's why:

You are probably never going to find the arc of the
covenant in a museum store. Sorry to disappoint.

1) Museums do not want to tell you that they have mystery objects. Why would they? Museums are supposed to be places where we tell the public what stuff is. Why would they ever admit to you that they have no idea 90% of the time? When I mentioned your question to several museum friends of ours, all they could do was laugh at this question. All the objects are mystery objects they said with a rueful mirth. Really museums spend a large proportion of their time researching what they already have, trying to figure out what the bits in this box are, or what this gizmo does, who that shoe belonged to or whether this scroll as any historic significance. In fact, this aspect of museums has it’s own department: research and documentation or often, collections management. Solving the riddle of mystery object is literally a full time job. But museums don’t want you to know that, so they probably said something vague about collecting policies. Are we right or wrong?

We googled mystery object and got this.
About accurate we'd say.

2) The other reason why museums won’t give you an answer to this question is that mystery objects are genuinely not going to be interesting to you. If we do not know what they are, how are they interesting? It is not as if museums are hiding vastly complex pieces of alien technology that we have people in lab coats performing tests on. About 87% of the time, a number drawn from extensive research undertaken by the Ministry, mystery objects are just bits of other things that have fallen off and we don’t know where they go. Mystery objects are nuts and bolts, computer circuits, pieces of leather or broken ceramic, plastic things with point bits, or tangles of ship model rigging. We are very sorry to disappoint you Londonist, but museum store-rooms are not like the warehouse in Indiana Jones. They are not full of gold that we just haven’t found yet. Depending on the museum they are usually full of bones, bits of leather, dusty machinery, or paperwork in boxes. The museums aren’t telling you about their mystery objects because they know you won’t care even if you did know.

We will say as a disclaimer, from time to time museums un-earth beautiful mystery objects. Maybe it’s a piece of equipment that belonged to a famous scientist and we never knew. Maybe it’s a painting not correctly attributed. But we promise you a museum won’t tell you this either because they are already planning an exhibition about it.

We hope that clears some things up for you Londonist. If you want to get a proper answer out of a curatorial department, maybe ask them what their favourite object is that they can’t put on display. Or even better, what object they would steal from a different museum if they could. We are only trying to save you from yourselves, and being flooded with pictures of old gizmos and whirly-gigs that look like something you’d find in your granddads attic. You are welcome.