| Location | Status | Source | Acquired | Donor | Preparation | Current location | Notes |
| BELFAST | Horizontal mount (25 years old) | Put down in the ‘1970s’ | Belfast Zoo | Ulster Museum | The bear (named ‘Peter’) was destroyed after it failed to settle with two new bears at Belfast Zoo. It was tranquilized using darts and finally given a lethal injection by the head of the biology dept at the Museum. A number of stories describe how it was thought to have recovered and either ‘rampaged’ through the Museum or at least alarmed security guards by moving noisily about the freezer to which it had been taken. | ||
| BLAIR ATHOLL | Standing skin/mount | 1786 | skin stretched crudely over a wooden frame to give the impression of taxidermic mount | Blair Castle | probably the oldest surviving bear in a british collection | ||
| BRISTOL | Born 1958 Copenhagen Zoo | Bristol Zoo | Known at the zoo as Nina. Both bears (Nina and Misha) were put down in 1991. Nina 33 years old | ||||
| BRISTOL
|
From a circus. Prior to this he was captured ‘in the wild’ | 1980 | Bristol Zoo | Known at the zoo as Misha. Both bears (Misha and Nina) were put down in 1991 | |||
| DOVER | Vertical mount | Franz-Joseph Land 1894 – 97 | Shot by Dr. Reginald Koettlitz (1860-1916) in Franz-Joseph Land whilst serving as medical officer botanist and geologist to the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition to Spitzbergen and the Arctic 1894-97 - ship named the Windward. Until 1960 it remained in the London Road (Dover) surgery of his brother, Dr.Maurice Koettlitz | Koettlitz family | Dover Museum | one of 60 shot during the expedition. Before its time at his brother’s surgery it was placed in a shop window to advertise his series of lectures in Dover town hall and Dover College. It was later converted for use as a lamp stand and the light-fixing stub can still be seen clutched in its right paw. Koettlitz went on to serve as surgeon to Captain Scott's Discovery South Polar Expedition 1901-04. It has been used as the logo of the Museum since about 1979 | |
| DUBLIN | Baffin Bay, Canada (1852) | Shot by Captain Leopold McClintock (1819-1907; Royal Navy, retired at rank of Admiral) | The Royal Dublin Society passed its collections into the care of the National Museum in 1877 | National Museum of Ireland | The polar bear shooting is described in M Clintock's article F.LO. 1857. Reminiscences of Arctic Ice-Travel in search of Sir John Franklin and his companions. J.R. Dublin Soc., 1: 183-238 | ||
| EDINBURGH | Adult female, sitting mount, 'Jim' | Edinburgh Zoo, 25th September 1947 to 1976. | Donated or sold to Edinburgh Zoo by Captain Koran | Royal Zoological Society of Scotland | National Museum of Scotland. | ||
| EDINBURGH | Horizontal mount | Not known | Purchased for £6 as a skin from Mr. Robert Kinnes of East Whale Lane, Dundee. | Taxidermist Rowland Ward | National Museum of Scotland. | Mr. Rober Kinnes also sold 12 other specimens of Arctic mammals to the museum (seals, whalebone) and presumed to be involved in the Dundee whaling industry. | |
| EXETER | Adult female mount. Horizontal | Franz-Joseph Land lat.79° 20 N | shot by Charles Victor Alexander Peel in summer of 1912 (1908 date previously given) (together with 2 two year old cubs) | Donated by the above and housed (in Exeter in an extension to the museum) by means of a donation by Sir E Channing Wills. Annexe was known as the Peel Hut | Royal Albert Memorial Museum. | In the summer of 1912 Peel went on a short hunting expedition to the Arctic with a party of 12 men. The party bag for ten days amounted to 21 polar bears plus one cub which was kept alive and later given to Hamburg Zoo, a small walrus and several seals, Specimens (presumably, 1 adult and 2 cubs) were originally displayed in Peel's private museum of big game in Oxford. Old photographs exist of the original display of the adult and cubs together. Peel wrote a book entitled Hunting Polar Bears (pub. Henry Walker, London) | |
| FYVIE | Half polar bear (on table with seal pup) | probably bought at auction around 1900 by Lord Leith of Fyvie | Taxidermied half-bear set on table top with small seal between front paws. | Fyvie Castle (National Trust Scotland) | He bought the castle around 1890 | ||
| GLASGOW | Standing mount.juvenile | Purchased in 1901 from a Capt Milne for 30 shillings each | Perthshire Natural History Museum to Kelvingrove, September 1988 | stuffed by Glasgow taxidermist Charles Kirk in 1904 (cost £3 17s 6d) | Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum Kelvingrove. | one of two cubs, the other no longer in the collection | |
| GLASGOW | cub. | born and died in captivity in Glasgow Zoo. Died 2nd September 1965 | Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove. | ||||
| GLASGOW | Adult vertical mount. | no data | no data | Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum Kelvingrove | |||
| HALIFAX | Horizontal mount | Arctic Regions, (4.11.1904) | Mounted b y P. Henderson, Dundee (Albert Institute) | Presented by John Maclauchlan, Dundee, Eureka, Halifax | Eureka (museum for children) Halifax | Eight feet long in skin | |
| HULL | Horizontal mount | No date but is believed to have been brought back by a 19thC Dundee whaler | 1975 | Dundee Museum | Hull Maritime Museum | On indefinite loan from Dundee Museum. Until 1975 it had been in storage for some time | |
| KENDAL | Vertical mount- freestanding and uncased. |
Shot by the Earl of Lonsdale 1888/9 | 1947 | A gift to the museum from Col. E.G. Harrison | Originally believed to be the work of Rowland Ward, London. In 1983 the nose, tongue etc were cleaned and remodelled by conservator Ian Hughes |
(World Wildlife Gallery), Kendal Museum | |
| LEEDS | Standing mount - adult male? | purchased in 1828 subscription by members of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society - probably purchased from Gerrards of London | Leeds Museums and Galleries, (photographed (2001) on loan in North Lincolnshire Museum, Scunthorpe). | ||||
| LEICESTER | Vertical mount | Greenland | 1933 | bought from Roland Ward taxidermy studios for - £90 using a V&A purchase grant | Museum and Art Gallery Leicester | ||
| LIVERPOOL | Horizontal mount | Bought from Salford Mining Museum | National Museum and Galleries on Merseyside | Until 1970/71 it had been in storage in Salford, for some time. The bear was subsequently put on display in Liverpool Museum in the Arctic and Tundra exhibit for twenty five years | |||
| LONDON | Horizontal mount. | 1999 | Deyrolle, Natural History Shop and Museum 46 Rue De Bac, Paris 75007, France | Lady and Lord Putnam | |||
| LONDON | Horizontal mount | National History Museum London. | |||||
| MASHAM | Head and shoulders | The White Bear, public house | |||||
| MANCHESTER | Vertical mount. | Captain Milne of the Eclipse | John MacLauchlan, Secretary at the Albert Institute and Victoria Galleries, Dundee, Scotland in 1906 | The bear came as a skin, with leg bones and all left in. Taxidermist Harry Brazenor from Manchester | Manchester Museum, University of Manchester | Correspondance in Manchester Museum about the request for and donation in 1906 | |
| NEWCASTLE | Horizontal mount. | Davis Strait, Greenland | Warham, Capt 1835 on the whaling ship Lord Gambier | traditional technique, mature complete: skull in mount. Standing head lowered slightly probably skinned and salted down on boat | Hancock Museum | This specimen was formerly on loan from the Hancock Museum, Newcastle, to Cumberland House Natural History Museum, Southsea | |
| NORWICH | Vertical mount | Wiches Land, East of Spitsbergen | shot by Sir Saville Crossley, Bart (first Lord Somerleyton) | donated by Sir Saville Crossley | Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery | ||
| PETERHEAD | Horizontal mount. | Captain David Gray, s.s. Eclipse | Peterhead Sentinel, 22 August 1877 AN ARCTIC BEAR FOR THE MUSEUM.-- We note, with pleasure, that Captain David Gray, s.s. Eclipse, has kindly presented to the Arbuthnot Museum the skin of a large-sized Arctic bear. The same has, by order of the Magistrates, been stuffed and set up, and is now on exhibition at the Museum. | ||||
| RAWTENSTALL | Juvenile, horizontal mount, juvenile | Unknown | 1932 | Bootle museum, Merseyside | Conservation treatment (essentially basic cleaning) has been carried out on the bear in 1964 and again in 1990 | Rossendale Museum, Rawtenstall | Around the time of the Museum's acquisition of the polar bear, a number of natural history specimens were gathered from other museum collections as a consequence of the reorganisation of their displays |
| SHEFFIELD | Vertical mount (mature) Female, ‘Janie‘ | Canada (as a cub) | Koran, Capt� donated to Edinburgh Zoo 25.09.1947 | Edinburgh Zoo (Died July 1976) | Came to Sheffield in 1985 | ||
| SOMERLEYTON | Vertical mount X2 | Wiches Land, East of Spitzbergen | shot by Sir Saville Crossley, Bart (first Lord Somerleyton) | owned by Sir Saville Crossley | by Roland Ward, taxidermist - London | Somerleyton Hall | One of two bears mounted ‘symmetrically’ and standing in the entrance hall at Somerleyton Hall. Glass slides exist of the expedition which suggest that at least one bear may have been brought back alive. A list of slide names gives an indication of the shooting and capture of respective bears. |
| SUNDERLAND | Standing mount (horizontal) | purchased in February 1888 from Mr J. Egglestone for - £12 | Sunderland Museums & Wintergardens | ||||
| TRING | Sitting mount. | the Siberian Trading Company | Lord Rothschild on 1st March 1912. | Walther Rothschild Zoological Museum | |||
| WORCESTER | standing vertical mount. | a local glove factory Dent, Allcroft on June 1st 1949 | mounted by taxidermist G. Masters jnr. of Westminster Bridge Rd London | Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum | Along with the polar bear, the following were presented: a cerval, a badger, two foxes, a colobus monkey and a wolf. |