Hornimans Museum was one man's dream, and he fulfilled it. Fredrick John Horniman was a tea trader who started collecting Natural History and other artifacts from all over the world for his family home in southeast London in 1860. However his collection outgrew his home, so he had a new Museum designed and built in 1898, which was opened to the Public in 1901. At first it was for Natural History specimens and musical instruments, but he acquired art & crafts, fossils and Egyptian mummies. He donated the museum and gardens to the people of London, "as a free gift to the people of London forever for their recreation, instruction and enjoyment." It is now as it was then, a free museum and gardens.