‘Obliging and curious’: Taylor White (1701–1772) and his remarkable collections

Abstract

Taylor White (1701–1772) was by profession a barrister and judge, active in public life in London. His life as a jurist and as the long-serving treasurer of the Foundling Hospital is documented in the records of his public appointments and in his own official correspondence. This article reveals the other Taylor White, a Fellow of the Royal Society (1725), and an active participant in the practice of science in the mid eighteenth century. White accumulated a significant collection of specimens and drawings of plants, insects, birds and mammals. Over 900 of the zoological drawings are preserved in the Blacker Wood Natural History Collection at McGill University in Montreal. White's passions for natural history and collecting are revealed tangentially through the very few letters in his hand, the notes he made about his own collection, and infrequent references in the books and letters of his friends and fellow naturalists. This article seeks not only to document the sources of White's collection, but also to extract a narrative of acquisition, transport and exchange of specimens that reveals the informal networks of eighteenth-century naturalists, which included not only scientists but also sailors, merchants and curious lawyers. It also explores the work and motivations of the collector engaged in building a reference collection of animal portraits, painted in their true colours and ‘the size of life’. Close study of this collection positions Taylor White within the community of eighteenth-century naturalists and provides a deeply textured exploration of natural history and collecting in the age of Linnaeus.