12 Nicholson, Inaugural Address. 



Museum to other circumstances than their value as speci- 

 mens of Natural History. 



One of the specimens which in a Natural History 

 Museum would be classed with mammalia was the mummy 

 of Miss Beswick. She was an i8th century lady with 

 fear of being buried alive. With this fear in her mind she 

 left, so it is said, her body and her money to her medical 

 man, Mr. Charles White, with the condition that she was 

 to kept above ground for a century. Mr. White mummi- 

 fied her, and eventually tiie mummy was placed in the 

 Museum. If Miss Beswick had known that her corpse 

 would be gazed at by Manchester crowds in a Natural 

 History Museum she would, I fancy^ have preferred the 

 risk of being buried alive to the ungenteel fate of being 

 a specimen in a museum. 



At the dissolution of the Museum it was decided that 

 she should be buried, and as the authorities of the ceme- 

 tery could not bury her without a certificate of her death, 

 signed by a medical man, it was necessary to appeal to 

 the Secretary of State for an order for her burial, which 

 took place in the Harpurhey Cemetery on 22nd July, 1868. 



Another mammal, Napoleon's Arab-charger, was 

 appropriately presented to the French Emperor Napoleon 

 ni. This quaint relic of the First Empire was placed in 

 a cellar at the Louvre and remained unpacked for 36 years ! 

 The authorities found it in 1904, and it is now in the Army 

 Museum at the Invalides in Paris. There has been some 

 doubt as to whether this horse was " Vizier " or " Marengo," 

 both famous chargers of the great Emperor. When, in 

 1842, it was presented to the Museum it was described 

 merely as " Napoleon Bonaparte's cream-coloured Ara- 

 bian charger," but as in the 1849 valuation (when it was 

 valued at £yS) and in Dr. Ashton's " Visits to the 

 Museum " it is called " Vizier," there can be no doubt as 



