Anatomy Museum

[PhilipG]

Hi MissInformed

Here are a few bits of information:

"Due to the large number of seafarers who visited the port of Liverpool it developed areas nicknamed ‘Sailortowns’ or ‘Fiddler’s Greens’. Here large numbers of sailor pubs and boarding-houses could be found. One reason why so many pubs were needed was that fires and candles were banned on board ships in the docks so sailors needed somewhere to eat. Paradise Street was at the heart of 'Sailortown' in Liverpool’s south-end whilst Union Street was its north-end equivalent. 'Sailortowns' were also home to places of entertainment such as music halls and waxwork museums where many seafarers spent their spare time." [emphasis mine]

From "Liverpool sailor pubs and other leisure activities" in the E. Chambré Hardman Archive

Of course such displays of grotesque objects and freak shows were a regular phenomenon in the nineteenth century. During the time of the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, there was actually an entrepreneur who set up shop in Whitechapel Road opposite the London Hospital showing waxworks of the victims. And the Elephant Man, the grotesquely deformed man who has been the subject of a stage play and movie starring John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, was himself exhibited also in a store opposite the hospital before he was rescued in 1884 by Sir Frederick Treves and allowed to live out the rest of his years in comfort in a basement room at the hospital.

All my best

Chris

Chris

There was Reynolds Waxworks in Lime Street (see my piece in "Some Liverpool Cinemas") and they also exhibited freaks.
The Tivoli in Lime Street (the site of the Palais de Luxe) was a waxworks even before Reynolds, and later (1890s?) it is known that "The Elephant Man" appeared there.

The Museum of Anatomy in Paradise Street was only a few doors away from the Queen's Theatre, later Kelly's Theatre, but it wasn't anything like a music hall or theatre, because I've seen the Licensing Records for such places and it doesn't appear.

It sounds like it was a serious sort of place - as I said, probably for medical students.