John Evans

1817-1899

Fragment of a John Evans trade label

One of the most prominent taxidermists working in England during Victorian times was John Evans who established an international reputation for the preservation of rare birds and exotic animals during the latter half of the 19th century.

His clients included many famous people from among the titled and landed gentry, stately homes such as Burghley House, near Stamford, and Grimsthorpe Castle, near Bourne, and army officers serving in India who often sent home the skins of animals, including a tiger and a panther, for his attention.

John was born at Heckington, Lincolnshire, in 1817, the son of a carpenter, William Evans, who eventually moved to Bourne. After a spell in his father's business, first as a joiner and then as a timber merchant's clerk, his interest in natural history prompted him to take up taxidermy and by 1850 he was working from the family's shop premises in West Street, Bourne.

The first recorded example of his work comes from the summer of 1850 when a flight of curlews flew over Bourne and four of them were shot by a groundkeeper employed by John Walker Hardwicke, a farmer and grazier, of Dyke. After that, the variety of species John Evans was dealing with is illustrated by the various newspaper reports which gave some prominence to his work.

The list of rare and uncommon species continued and in the years that followed he preserved a red-backed shrike or butcher bird that had been shot at Bourne in 1864 together with a splendid specimen of a black and white blackbird and a cream-coloured house sparrow.

Others included two peregrine falcons, one hen harrier, one honey buzzard, one merlin, thirteen kingfishers, a grey shrike, two Bohemian waxwings, an all-white missel thrush, two stormy petrels, three chough, a Manx shearwater, a puffin, two Canada geese each weighing 12 lb. and measuring four feet long from bill to tail and six feet two inches expanse of wings, and a fine specimen of bittern that had been shot in Bourne Fen, an adult male bird in splendid plumage measuring three feet seven inches from toe to bill and four feet across the wings.

His reputation soon spread countrywide and he was frequently called on to preserve rare animals and birds from many parts of the British Isles, usually displaying them when finished in the front window of his shop for passers-by to inspect before sending them off to his customers.

John Evans must have produced hundreds of specimens of stuffed birds during his lifetime yet surviving examples are rare such as this kestrel that can be found in Peterborough museum.

John married Elizabeth Blay, a servant girl, in 1843 and they had two daughters, Betsy (1844) and Mary (1846). Mrs Evans died at Bourne on 2nd March 1886, aged 72, but he continued to work with the help of a manager, William Cullingford, although by the end of his career, protest groups were already springing up to prevent such practices, eventually leading to the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1899. Nevertheless, he continued working until 1898 when he moved to Ely to live with relatives where he died in 1899, aged 83.

After the death of John Evans, Cullingford took over the business in Bourne but he was troubled by ill health and unable to continue at West Street and by 1905, the premises had closed down. He died two years later in 1907, aged 56.

In 1872, Mary Evans married Joseph Minett, a grocer and draper, from Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire, and they had six children.

Betsy Evans became a schoolmistress and in 1877, she married William Cullingford's brother, Joseph. She died in 1873, aged 30, and in 1877, he married again, this time to Elizabeth Ann Bishop.

Although trained as a painter, Joseph had always been interested in natural history, no doubt influenced by the work of John Evans and his brother, and by 1881 he had moved to Durham where he was appointed first as sub-curator at the Palace Green Museum in the Castle Precincts, later becoming curator and taxidermist (birds) at the University Museum. By 1911, he had retired and returned to Ely where he died in 1921, aged 76.

Ironically, the work of Joseph Collingwood is regarded today as the finest taxidermy from the period and is eagerly sought by collectors. Few examples by John Evans have survived although some are believed to be in private homes in the area and a preserved kestrel can be found in the natural history section at Peterborough Museum.

REVISED JANUARY 2014

See also Birds of Bourne