Webster Chester—the founding father of Biology at Colby—worked at the college from 1903 to 1948. He created the Biology department and helped to advocate for them to get their own space and labs. Chester worked on getting his students the best education possible, and that improvisation in some areas. In his memoir written to Professor A. Scott in 1970, Chester mentioned how he loved to provide real life animal examples for the students to learn Biology with. However, many animals were expensive or difficult to procure. In order to get cats for his students to dissect, Chester would “rescue” them from animal rescues in Massachusetts and drive them to Maine where he used his “cat killing machine” to kill them. Then, Chester would embalm the cats himself to prepare them for dissection. One of the items included in this section is a cat skeleton from a cat that was most likely killed by Chester. He used these skeletons to teach lessons on anatomy. Many of the cat skeletons he used while teaching are currently still at Colby, although not all of them are necessarily handmade by Chester. All of these cat skeletons are headless, and nobody at Colby knows why. Either Chester killed the cats by beheading them, or the skulls were taken for anatomy lessons after Chester left.
A few images have been included in this exhibit section which show the skeletons in use in Webster’s classroom! There are a multitude of stuffed birds (prepared by the Hamlins) in the original cases seen in the background of the photo; many of these are still at Colby today. There are also many specimens on the tables that Chester used as models to supplement his teaching.
Webster Chester was a strange man in that he would use any animals as anatomy lessons for his students. As he wrote in his memoir letter, a student once gave him a tortoise to use for dissection. However, Chester still had to kill the tortoise. He had no reservations in using chloroform to kill the animal right on the front lawn of the college. Chester ended up essentially riding the turtle around the lawn trying to get it to inhale the chloroform. Chester even tried to keep frogs in the basement of the biology building. He found a small area that had a leak and let the frogs live there, coming to collect one whenever he needed it.
Chester was committed to teaching his students everything about anatomy that he could, and he pioneered Colby’s use of animals in the classroom as teaching aids. This new manner of thinking laid the groundwork for animal research long after he had left.
Captions for the images:
Figure 1: These sets of images were found with Lyndell Bade in Colby’s personal archives. They are cat skeletons that were most likely killed and prepared by Webster Chester himself. We can see the old tag that he would use to identify the cat number.
Figure 2: This image, taken from Artstor (cited above), shows Chesters museum. You can see the original specimens on the table, and in the background there are the old wooden-lined cases that are still used in Colby today and are currently on show in the Arey basement.
Figure 3: These pictures show the same room from different angles. You can see the large bird skeleton that Chester would use during his lectures. There are students studying skulls. In the background we can see the Hamlins’ stuffed birds!
Citations:
Chester, Webster. Webster Chester to A. Scott, January 22, 1979. Letter. Colby College Special Collections.
Webster Chester Museum (Biology Department’s collection of specimens,) Date Unknown. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/HCOLBIANA__1186_184009
Curated by Lily Chapman