Person

Leadbeater, John (1831 - 1888)

Born
1831
United Kingdom
Died
7 August 1888
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Taxidermist

Summary

John Leadbeater was a taxidermist employed at the National Museum of Victoria from 1858 to 1888. He was a descendent of a family of taxidermists from London. Having arrived in Melbourne in 1852, he established a short-lived business in selling natural history specimens. After joining the Museum his expertise with mammals and birds became apparent. His careful and painstaking work won acknowledgement from the Museum's Director, Frederick McCoy. Specimens on which Leadbeater worked, exhibited in Melbourne's 1868 Intercolonial Exhibition, earned particular praise. Among Leadbeater's responsibilities was to handle all material acquired from overseas. Leadbeater's possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) is a critically endangered endemic marsupial from Victoria's high country.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1858 - 1888
Career position - Taxidermist, National Museum of Victoria

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Book Sections

  • Clode, Danielle, 'The elusive Leadbeater' in A Museum for the people: a history of Museum Victoria and its predecessors 1854 - 2000, Rasmussen, Carolyn, ed. (Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 2001), pp. 253-5. Details

Journal Articles

  • Kemp, D. H., 'John Leadbeater (1831 - 1888): a naturalist in Victoria', Victorian historical journal, 50 (1) (1979), 36-41. Details
  • Kershaw, Jas. A., 'John Leadbeater of the National Museum', Victorian naturalist, 61 (1) (1944), 23. Details
  • Whittell, H. M., 'John Leadbeater of the National Museum', Victorian naturalist, 60 (11) (1944), 180. Details

See also

  • Pescott, R. T. M., Collections of a century: the history of the first hundred years of the National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne (Melbourne: National Museum of Victoria, 1954), 186 pp. Details
  • Rasmussen, Carolyn et al., A Museum for the people: a History of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions, 1854-2000 (Carlton North, Victoria: Scribe Publications, 2001), 420 pp. Details

Helen Cohn

Created: 27 June 2024

EOAS ID: biogs/P007410b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P007410b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260