The Booth Museum of Natural History

Between the death of Edward Booth and the 1930s the museum was well cared for by a succession of wealthy and knowledgeable gentlemen whose own collections were added to the museum, notably Alderman Griffith, Dr Herbert Langston, J Gordon Dalgliesh and Major Blackiston. During this stage many more collections of other groups of animals were added to the collections prominent amongst which were the Hall, Tonge and De Rhe Philip collections of lepidoptera, the Holmes and Willett collections of fossils and the M J Nicholl collection of bird skins. Many more cases of mounted birds were added to the Booth display; these were prepared by Brighton taxidermists Brazenor Bros, Swaysland & Sons and Pratt & Sons.

During World War II the museum was closed and used for general museum storage. Happily the building survived the war intact, unhappily all the collections did not. The newly acquired insect collections suffered at the hands of other insects, specifically the larval form of the Carpet Beetle. Fortunately a warder, Ray Hiles, hitherto employed by the 8th Army took it on himself to fumigate the collections and was able to save much. In the 1970s the council started to employ professionals to care for the museum and the collections. In 1975 all the zoological and geological collections housed elsewhere in Brighton were moved to Dyke Road. They included the F W Lucas collection of vertebrate skeletons, which were displayed in a new gallery in the Booth Museum. The next development was an ecology gallery and an insect gallery, which is also used as a classroom.These were followed by the fossil and mineral gallery displaying some of the earliest known dinosaur bones.

In 1998 the Booth Museum was one of the first regional museums in the country to be designated as having collections of national importance.