Haslar Museum attracted thousands of visitors from 1827 – 1860.
Most of them were local and lived in Gosport or Portsmouth, often connected to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines in some way.
On 19th January 1838, Arthur Adams visited the Museum. He was a medical student at Haslar Hospital training to be a doctor for the Royal Navy.
He was particularly interested in collecting and studying crabs (Crustacea) and molluscs (marine slugs, snails, clams, octopus, squid and nautilus – all animals that live in the oceans and most of which have shells). He may well have had a particular interest in looking at the natural history collections at Haslar Museum all those years ago.
He also travelled to China and Japan, wrote scientific books about molluscs with his brother, Henry, and had a fascination with spiders seen on his travels. He retired as Staff Surgeon aboard the flagship HMS Royal Adelaide at Plymouth in 1870 and died 8 years later.