Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds is a wax museum in London with branches in a number of major cities. It was founded by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud. Madame Tussauds is a major tourist attraction in London, displaying waxworks of historical and royal figures, film stars, sports stars and infamous murderers.

Marie Tussaud was born Anna Maria Grosholtz in 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius in Bern, Switzerland, who was a physician skilled in wax modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling.

Tussaud created her first wax figure, of Voltaire, in 1777. Other famous people she modelled at that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During the French Revolution she modelled many prominent victims. She searched through corpses to find the decapitated heads of executed citizens, from which she would make death masks. Her death masks were held up as revolutionary flags and paraded through the streets of Paris. Following the doctor's death in 1794, she inherited his vast collection of wax models and spent the next 33 years travelling around Europe. Her marriage to François Tussaud in 1795 lent a new name to the show: Madame Tussaud's. In 1802 she went to London to exhibit her work alongside his show at the Lyceum Theatre, London. She travelled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection.

By 1835 Marie had settled down in Baker Street, London, and opened a museum.

Madame Tussauds indoor on Baker St

One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors. This part of the exhibition included victims of the French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers and other criminals. 
(from Wikipedia)