Wax museum

The making of life-size wax figures wearing real clothes grew out of the funeral practices of European royalty.

In the Middle Ages it was the habit to carry the corpse, fully dressed, on top of the coffin at royal funerals, but this sometimes had unfortunate consequences in hot weather, and the custom of making an effigy in wax for this role grew, again wearing actual clothes so that only the head and hands needed wax models.

[1] The Westminster Abbey Museum in London has a collection of British royal funeral effigies made of varying materials going back to that of Edward III of England's wooden likeness[2] (died 1377), as well as those of figures such as the naval hero Horatio Nelson, and Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, who also had her parrot stuffed and displayed.

[citation needed] Nelson's effigy was a pure tourist attraction, commissioned the year after his death in 1805, and his burial not in the Abbey but in St Paul's Cathedral after a government decision that major public figures should in future be buried there.

[4] The 'Moving Wax Works of the Royal Court of England', a museum or exhibition of 140 life-size figures, some apparently with clockwork moving parts, opened by Mrs Mary in Fleet Street in London was doing excellent business in 1711.

In 1783 this added a Caverne des Grands Voleurs ("Cave of the Great Thieves"), an early "Chamber of Horrors".

He bequeathed his collection to his protégée Marie Tussaud, who during the French Revolution made death masks of the executed royals.

Several stars attended the unveilings of the wax incarnations and some added their handprints, footprints, and/or signatures in cement there ala Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

The museum was profiled on a number of television programs and occasionally referenced on TV dramas given its longtime success as a tourist attraction, no doubt in part due to the close proximity to Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland.

[6] Several of the wax figures are now on display in Darrow, Louisiana at The Great River Road Museum near Houmas House.

[8] The Royal London Wax Museum was open in downtown Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, from 1970 to 2010 in the Steamship Terminal building, it featured "royalty to rogues and the renowned."

Their exhibits also include other notable figures from history such as General George Custer, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Sitting Bull.

Their most revered exhibit is a depiction of George W. Bush standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center with NYFD fireman Bob Beckwith following the attacks on September 11, 2001.