A gruesome addendum to an earlier story on this blog. You may recall I previously flagged up the excellent collection of scientific portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery. Stephen Curry later pointed out that the gallery includes a second room of scientists – this time from the Victorian era. I popped along a few weeks back to take a look, and wasn’t disappointed. Here you’ll find the famous likeness of Charles Darwin as well as Faraday, Owen, Huxley, Lister, Lyell and Brunel.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the room had once been caked in blood following a violent incident in 1909.

The gallery today opened an online archive of notes and correspondence from its 150 year history. Among the reports of rat infestations, war preparations and cleaver-wielding suffragettes was this report, detailing a murder and suicide in Room 27.

On the 24 February 1909, an elderly man shot his wife in the head before turning the gun on himself. After recounting the action taken by staff to remove the bodies, the report describes the cleanup operation. Blood had been smeared all along the East wing, as the body of the woman was carried from Room 27 to a waiting ambulance. The resulting stains required the attention of the gallery’s charwoman as well as a team of ‘scrapers’ from H. M. Office of Works. Just something to think about while you’re pondering Lister’s sideburns.

The report is also interesting for the language used. For example, its author refers to the lunchtime meal as ‘dinner’ (a term now mostly employed in the North of England), and affords The Police deferential capital letters.