EXETER
Status Adult female mount. Horizontal
Source Franz-Joseph Land – lat.79° 20 N
Acquired shot by Charles Victor Alexander
Peel in summer of 1912 (1908 date previously given) (together with 2 two
year old cubs)
Donor 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
Preparation
Current location Royal Albert Memorial Museum.
Notes In the summer of 1912 Peel went on a
short hunting expedition to the Arctic with a party of 12 men. The party’s
‘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)