Dorman Museum

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Dorman Museum

Dorman Museum is a general museum located in Linthorpe within the borough of Middlesbrough and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. From its establishment in 1904 initial thematical leanings were towards the natural sciences, although galleries of the local Linthorpe Pottery, and of the history of industrial and wartime Middlesbrough, have since encroached on this emphasis. The remains of the original Victorian/Edwardian collection of stuffed and mounted animals is now in a single room, the Nelson Room, and appears to consist of the insect collections in the original cabinets, and various stuffed and mounted birds.

The museum was founded by Sir Arthur Dorman of the Dorman Long engineering company in honour of his son George Lockwood Dorman.

It is one of three institutions run by the Middlesbrough Museums & Galleries Service of Middlesbrough Borough Council along with the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Having undergone major refurbishment it reopened in 2003 and is home to a wide variety of collections.

[edit] Original collection

The original collection included items such as a stuffed and mounted Eagle Owl in the act of taking a hare, a stuffed Lion in a "rampant" pose, and many birds' eggs, butterflies, and insects preserved under glass and in drawers, with covers over the glass to avoid the effects of light on the specimens. One particular specimen case could shock the unwary, as it contained a model, at least 100 times normal size, of a human head louse. At about the same time, the museum possessed a fossil of an ichthyosaur. There was also a stuffed ribbonfish, of a species a few metres in length.

[edit] Other exhibits

A popular seasonal item in the 1960s was a beehive in an acrylic glass case with an exit through a side window, allowing visitors to the museum to see the bees at work in the hive.