The co-ordinates given are for the main entrance to the
Natural History Museum in Kensington, London. The plaque is in the Central area
in the museum's Green Zone. Non-flash photography is permitted. The museum is
free to visit.
The plaque is made from bronze. In relief in the top part is
the Royal Crest with '1881' to the left of it and '1981' to
the right. The inscription, beneath the crest, reads:
Her Majesty the Queen
Unveiled this
plaque on 27th May 1981
to mark the Museum's Centenary
in South
Kensington
The Christopher Long website (visit link)
carries an interesting article about the museum's centenary:
"The massive entrance to the Natural History Museum is
only the tip of an iceberg.
Celebrating the museum's centenary this year, museum
staff opened their departments to members of the press on a series of 'open
days' in order to show us that what we see in the displays and the seemingly
endless galleries is only a fraction of what goes on behind the intricately
carved facade.
In fact the museum is a scientific institution and about
80 per cent of its budget goes on scientific research behind the scenes. Over
300 staff including zoologists, entomologists, botanists, palaeontologists and
mineralogists are constantly at work.
Millions of specimens of animal and plant life,
meteorites and fossils are carefully catalogued and preserved in what must
amount to miles of mahogany cupboards and cabinets.
The volume of insects such as beetles alone is far
beyond the human brain's capacity to envisage. But, when one bears in mind that
the vast collection has been amassed from the original collection in Montagu
House, Bloomsbury and from the other collections of 19th and early 20th
centuries, it is amazing that despite time, wars, financially difficult times
and the vast constant stream of new material entering the museum each year, so
much has been preserved so efficiently by so few. An example of the problems
presented when looking after such a massive collection occurred during the
Second World War.
The war caused a depletion of the Department's staff so
that by July 1945, thirteen of the twenty five Technical Assistants and clerks
had been seconded to the Armed Services or to war work.
'We are packing all our spirit types for evacuation to
some caves just now so all our time has to be devoted to that,' replied one
member of the also diminished scientific staff to a correspondent. The Keeper
was soon able to report to the Trustees that '... type specimens in spirit were
removed from all Sections of the Department in the autumn of 1941 and deposited
packed in wooden boxes and sawdust in a disused hearth-stone mine at Godstone,
Surrey.'
The evacuation of the estimated 43,000 bottles presented
particular problems. It had been the usual practice to fix paper labels on to
the outside surfaces of specimen jars.
This procedure was a continuation of the method of
labelling that had been used at Bloomsbury although the damp of the spirit-rooms
there had destroyed many of these bottle labels necessitating '... adopting the
plan of painting the labels in oil colours'.
Some Sections, however, had taken the precaution of
inserting labels, written in spirit-proof ink, or in pencil, inside the jars
before despatching them for evacuation. This proved time-consuming as in one
Section alone it involved two officers sharing the copying of over 3,000
labels.
Such expediency was justified as it was soon discovered
that the labels on the jars and boxes exposed to the damp air of the mine were
quickly attacked by mould and the collection had to be overhauled and many
labels repaired.
Types and other valuable specimens of mammals and birds
were sent to various locations including Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and
Hampshire. The packing of these large collections, in which the Museum's
Housemen played an important part, would not easily have been accomplished
without the generous loan of large numbers of boxes from the Victoria and Albert
Museum.
Many of the remaining specimens in the Department and
galleries were transferred to safer quarters within the Museum. The fish spirit
collection, for example, was moved from the top to the lower floors; and the
bottles were pushed to the rear of the shelves and secured by lengths of stout
string.
It took five weeks of tortuous work to get the
collections out of the mines and back to the museums in 1945.
The post-war growth of the Department has been matched
by an increase in 'technical' staff. In June 1947 the Department employed 15
officers belonging to the Scientific Officer Class and a total of 26 represented
the Experimental Officer, Assistant (Scientific), Attendant and Taxidermist
Classes.
By January 1960 the complement of the Scientific Officer
Class had risen to 24 and that of the Experimental Officer, Assistant
(Scientific) Classes to 42, whilst in 1972 the department had a complement of 34
belonging to the higher grades of Senior Scientific to Deputy Chief Scientific
Officer (the latter grade being represented only by the Keeper) and 50 officers
belonging to the Scientific Assistant to Higher Scientific Officer
Grades.
Between 1956 and 1957 it was again necessary to move a
part of the spirit collections to allow additional metal shelving to be
installed on the mezzanine floors in the Eastern part of the Spirit Building
Storerooms. A major reorganisation of the molluscan shell collection took place
in 1961/62 and the entire molluscan wet collection was moved out of the Spirit
Building and rehoused in the SW Corridor during the late 1960s.
Between 1972-1974 the whole of the bird collection was
moved to the new Sub-Department of Ornithology at Tring in Hertfordshire and in
1979 a valuable collection was moved to its new storerooms at West
Ruislip.
During the last 100 years curating methods have not
changed significantly. Industrial methylated spirits (IMS) has replaced the
spirits of wine previously used. IMS is the general preservative used throughout
the Department for liquid preserved specimens although much of the coelenterate
collection is stored in diluted formaldehyde, whilst newer preservatives based
upon a propylene phenoxetol (less volatile than alcohol and less objectionable
to handle than formaldehyde) are used for storing large fishes.
Storage of these large, wet, preserved specimens still
presents problems.
Space in the department is now very limited and the
large slate storage tanks (holding more than 600 gallons of preservative and in
which large fishes and small cretaceans are stored) are no longer obtainable.
Containers made from Alkathene and fibre-glass must now be used for these
purposes.
The conventional pen has been replaced by a modern form
of stylograph for writing the parchment bottle labels in permanent spirit-proof
ink. The traditional 'crystal' museum jar with hand-ground stopper ceased to
become available some years ago and alternative types of containers had to be
found.
A plastic-capped jar with a double seal is now used for
storing small specimens and various types of polythene containers are employed
for medium-sized specimens.
The typewriter has now replaced the pen for many
clerical tasks and the visual display unit of the Museum's computer has made its
appearance alongside the more conventional card indexes and registers. These
enable staff to locate the whereabouts of specimens and to find information for
answering enquiries.
The diversity of research that the department now offers
is reflected in the broader range of curatorial work performed by staff in the
ASO-HSO Grades. 'Curatorial' duties now include operating data-retrieval
systems, culturing various invertebrates and even sub-aqua diving in addition to
the more traditional jobs of dispatching loads of specimens, incorporating new
collections, preparing and maintaining study material and making routine
identifications.
Conducting visitors to and from the various Sections of
the Department and attending to their requirements is still an important part of
the work of junior grades but staff are no longer required to undertake the task
of 'watching' or 'attending' to the blinds.
The long-term results of that 'beneficial change', made
by the Trustees in the new Museum that relieved 13 attendants of their gallery
duties for working on the collections, is seen in this exhibit. It shows that
the staff employed for curating the world's largest zoological collection
undoubtedly require, as Albert Gunther remarked a century ago, '... not only
skill in manipulating specimens, but considerable knowledge of the
collections...'"