JK GILLON

Madame Marie Tussaud was born in Strasbourg, France in 1761. Her mother worked as housekeeper to Philippe Curtius, a doctor and wax modeller who took on the child Marie as trainee. At the age of nineteen she was appointed art tutor to the sister of King Louis XVI and stayed at the Palace of Versailles until she was twenty-eight years old. During the French Revolution, Marie took death masks from the heads of prisoners who had been guillotined. In 1794, Doctor Curtius died and left his wax model exhibition to Marie.

Madame Tussaud first arrived in Britain in 1802 and, after a short stay in London, she brought her "Grand European Cabinet of Figures" to Edinburgh. She arrived in Leith, with her strange collection of 70 life-size wax figures, on May 10, 1803 and, eight days later, opened her exhibition in Bernard's Rooms, Thistle Street.

The exhibits included "exact replicas of the late Royal Family of France, a small model of the original French guillotine and a 3299 years old Egyptian mummy, perfectly preserved".

Fewer than 40 people visited the waxworks on the first day, but the handful of customers were "astounded by the remarkably high standard of the models and the artistry of presentation". Soon everyone wanted to see the wax portraits and business was so good that Madame Tussaud stayed in Edinburgh for six months. She noted that "the Edinburgh show gives a great deal of pleasure and everyone is amazed at my figures". This enthusiastic reception from the Edinburgh public established Madame Tussaud in Britain, and she never returned to France.

She visited Edinburgh several times after this and used the visits to keep her collection up to date. In 1829, she took the death-mask of Burke, just after he had been executed, and modelled Hare in prison. Madame Tussaud finally settled in London with her collection in 1835.