Nominee: Jane Catharine Tost
Date of birth: March 16, 1817
Date of death: April 24, 1899
Place of birth: London, England
Burial place: Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney Australia
Jane Catharine Tost (c.1817-1889), Jane Catherine Tost, was born into the prominent English family Herbert and Catherine Ward, a name synonymous with English taxidermy. The Wards had bred and stuffed birds for English gentleman collectors in the early 1800’s and had an established reputation. Jane along with her two brothers Edwin Henry (1812-1878) and Frederick were trained by their parents Herbert and Catherine, and eventually would work for such famous naturalists such as John Gould and John James Audubon.
Jane Tost’s nephew Rowland Ward, was to later became internationally renowned for his big game taxidermy methods as The Wards of London and his “Wardian” animal furniture.
Jane Ward married Charles Gottleibe Tost on April of 1839, a Prussian-born pianoforte maker. They were to have six children. During the 1840s and 1850s Jane was employed at the British Museum for a period of some 15 years, preparing specimens under the likes of John Gould during an era where new and exciting species were being discovered back in the colonies that required classification and illustration. In 1856 Charles and Jane Tost along with their 6 children, up-rooted from England and sailed from Liverpool to reached the colony of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, where Jane took up a position stuffing and mounting specimens for the Royal Society of Tasmania at the Hobart Town Museum [now part of Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery].
In 1864 Jane departed the Hobart Town Museum for the mainland to further herself in her career as a taxidermist, and took up a position at the Australian Museum [Sydney] employed within the taxidermy department, its first ever professional female staff member.
Jane was also the first woman to receive the equal pay of her colleges of 10 pounds per month, a salary that was testimony to her high level of skill as a taxidermist.
Five years later In 1869, Jane left the Australian Museum, but remained in a sound business relationship with that museum which arranged for the purchase of specimens from her during the following year of 1870, and thus begin an association with her enterprise that would keep the institution well supplied with collection items for the next 50 years.
By 1872 Jane Tost entrepreneurial skills enabled herself to establish (along with her widowed daughter Ada Coates) the work shop and taxidermy enterprise of “Tost & Coates Berlin Wool Depot and Taxidermists” at 60 William Street, Sydney, Australia.
Catering to a growing middle-class taste for fancy work and stuffed material in interior decoration, as well as to scientific collectors and museums the business was a great success supplying and dealing in all manners of natural history and tribal artefacts during the boom years of collecting throughout the world.
Jane and Ada also offered lessons in taxidermy and fancy work, a first in the developing colony of New South Wales. Women’s diaries and ladies’ art manuals show that taxidermy was a leisure activity for some middle and upper-class women in the 19th century.
Following Ada’s marriage in 1878 to Henry Stewart Boventure Rohu, a Scottish-born upholsterer and curio collector, the firm became Tost & Rohu. The business grew, selling an eclectic mix of furs, stuffed animals, and Aboriginal and Islander artefacts.
For thirty years Jane Tost and her daughter, now Ada Rohu, were the most successful New South Wales exhibitors at international shows, winning over 20 medals. Their exhibits, ranging from a stuffed black swan to a wallaby fur muff, were prized not only for the skill displayed, but also for the ingenious adaptation of the taxidermist’s art to Australia’s fauna. Her works included such famous designs as fashionable and decorative fire screens incorporating mounted birds, elegant ladies fans of her signature species, the Laughing Kookaburra and a host of other Australian species.
They promoted their business by exhibiting examples of their work (often of Australian native animals), in London (1862 and 1886), Paris (1867), Sydney’s Garden Palace (1879), Calcutta (1883), Melbourne (1888), The company founded by Jane Tost became known as Tost and Rohu and eared the title which would remain with it for over 50 years as “The Queerest Shop in Australia.”
Remarkable for her taxidermy skills, industry and business acumen, Jane Tost blazed a path for many working women to come. Jane Tost died on 24 April 1889, and was buried in the Church of England section of Rookwood cemetery Sydney Australia. Two sons and a daughter survived her. Ada and her family carried on with Janes life work until the bookseller James Tyrell bought out the business in 1923.
Gary Pegg, an Australian World Champion taxidermist graciously provided a videotaped acceptance speech for the honor of Jane’s induction into the Hall of Fame in 2023:
