Peto the Elephant Disembarks

Finally, George Wombwell junior and his new elephant sailed up the Thames river and into London. For what ensued next, George firmly blamed the Captain of the 'Esther'.  

On arriving at St. Brides Wharf, the Captain said the tide was too low to land “Peto” but during my absence of two hours, he tried to do so. (He) had got the cage about 8ft from the deck when the chain broke. The cage fell and broke through the deck and skylights. Nearly standing on end, “Peto” was standing as well as he could on his hind legs and partly kneeling on his front to try and make himself level. – A fresh chain was got which also broke – but by the aid if two other cranes – “Peto” was at last landed.

Leaving behind one wrecked steamer and one fuming captain, George Wombwell junior, without so much as a backwards glance, moved into the next phase of his operation no doubt still bemused as to why Peto the Elephant was proving to be so persistently bad-tempered. 

Page 2 of the Peto the Elephant Saga.

Adventures in Paris

George Wombwell junior then made his way to France, his mission to bring Peto, a bad-tempered Parisian elephant to London. George's first problem was to locate a ship to transport Peto. The Captain of the ship however was not prepared to delay his departure on behalf of the uncooperative Peto, and hence George was now left stranded in Paris for two weeks, trying to persuade Peto to stay in his cage.

Picture of Victorian Paddlesteamer copied from TheOtherSide. The site
reports that  in the 1850s most ships were still powered by sail - paddle steamers
also kept masts and sails in case the engine broke down. Small steam ferries
could make a fast crossing whatever the wind direction - but were tossed around
on the waves.

A contract was entered into with the owners of the steamer “Esther” trading between Paris and London. A cage was made with roller wheels for “Peto” but like “Jumbo”, he declined the polite invitation to enter and the steamer started without him. As a fortnight would elapse before the steamer would start again we used all sorts of stratagem and by depriving of food (except in the cage) to entice him to get used to the cage.

In an echo of his previous escapades with elephants, naturally, the rescheduled departure started with an accident on the road:

The night before the steamer was to start “Peto” had a food supper of cooked oats, bran and carrots, was got into the cage, and both ends were made fast. Twelve horses were engaged to drag him away and we started at 4 o’clock in the morning but a stop was soon put to our journey. Some time previously a tree had been taken up to widen the pathway – the off (side) front wheel sank into the hole where the tree had been and over went the cage, “Peto” and all. “Peto” soon smashed the cage, strong as it was, all to pieces, and made his way back to his old den.

The next, and one would have thought, foreseeable problem was that there was not enough room on the deck for the cage, forcing the removal of both a mast and a pump. It can be imagined as the 'Esther' finally made its way along the Seine, that it was not just Peto the elephant that was in a bad temper: 

A fresh cage was made but “Peto”, was very cautious and sagacious about entering it tho’ by keeping him without food we finally succeeded in trapping him. A fresh start was made for the steamer… but the steamer was reached in safety. On the cage being slung it was found there was not sufficient room on deck so one of the masts and a pump had to be removed – the Captain had to exercise great caution in passing under the numerous bridges down the river Seine.

Introducing Peto the Elephant

If all the suppositions are correct then, some time in the 1890s, George Wombwell junior sat down with one of the Bradley daughters or grand-daughters of Harriett Wombwell to test-drive one of his many elephant stories. It seems quite likely that having used one of his relatives as a transcriber,  he might just also, having enjoyed their hospitality, delegated to her the business of tracking down a publisher. At a guess, no great efforts would have been made in this regard, and this would explain why the letter remained in the family possession. 

To return to the story. The year was 1866, and George Wombwell junior was now entrusted by one of his Wombwell relatives to oversee the purchase of an elephant for one of the two surviving menageries. The story begins:

Sir, 

Thinking it might be interesting I forward the following particulars regarding an old companion of “Jumbo”.

About the year 1866 while the collection was in North Wales, the late Mrs Wombwell lost her large elephant named “Tom”. In order to replace him, she arranged to purchase another from Paris.

Photo copied from Annone the Elephant site, giving some
indication of the practicalities involved in
transporting elephants.

At that time there were five elephants at the Jardin de Plants Paris - two of these were to be parted with -one the giant Indian elephant “Peto” – which was over ten feet high and weighed five tons – the other, the now celebrated African Elephant “Jumbo” then about four feet high was sent to the zoological gardens London in exchange for a rhinoceros.

The means of conveying large animals were not so easy then as at present as the following narrative will explain.

The Elephant “Peto” was bought by Mrs Wombwell. I went to Paris and brought him to London. “Peto” had a very bad temper and the authorities of Paris would not allow him to walk through the streets.

Even at the outset of the story, the signs look ominous, as George starts to lay out his excuses in advance. This, it would seem, is not to be a story with a happy ending.

A Letter Gets Left Behind

As George Wombwell junior struggled on towards the turn of the twentieth century, it occurred to him, perhaps even as a result of the interest of The Daily Mail, that there might be some money to be made if he were to put some of his numerous stories to paper. It is one of these stories that made its way in the original into Harold Eldridge’s box file, and must have come down the family line through Hetty Jane Owen and before that through her Bradley and Robinson ancestors. 

At a guess, George must have been dropping by the homes of his relatives, perhaps to avail himself of their hospitality, but probably also to seek help in writing up some of his anecdotes. For although the letter we have is clearly signed off in his name, there is every chance that it was actually put to paper by a more literate relative, and then somehow got left behind, to be filed away and passed down the family line. George, it should be remembered, was adopted by his famous uncle at the age of ten, and from then on would have been on the road with the menagerie, receiving a unique schooling in life, but not very much of a formal education. 

Anyway, the letter George junior left behind in his relative's house tells the tale of Peto the Elephant, and as the opening lines make clear, he was evidently hopeful that this reminiscences would be published.

Page 1 of George's Peto the Elephant Letter.

The George Wombwell Subscription Fund

The 1897 Daily Mail profile of George Wombwell Junior comes to an end with a plea for funds, and further reveals that the accident-prone George had also at some point contrived to lose one of his fingers. There was a very small clipping in Harold Eldridge's box file, dated March 5th 1897, and also, presumably from The Daily Mail. As can be seen, the subscription raised three pounds and 15 shillings, which cannot really be described as a resounding success. The Mail concluded its George Wombwell profile thus:

Of narrow escapes, George Wombwell had many to tell. He has been attacked by lions, tigers, and elephants, as well as other beasts. At times he was severely mauled, and the stump of a finger on one hand is the evidence of a fight with a tiger. It is his opinion, however, that the elephant is the most treacherous animal to deal with.

But the old man’s days with lions and tigers, and elephants are over. His only difficulty now is to keep the wolf from the door. Perhaps this perfunctory reference to his present condition may meet the eye of some who have a kindly remembrance of him, and the pleasure which his menagerie afforded them. If so, it may not have been written in vain.’

Queen Victoria is Very Much Amused

It seems that the Daily Mail journalist assigned to track down George Wombwell junior in his basement room near the City Road might have had some problems in editing down his story for public consumption. But then, as now, he would have known that the public would certainly appreciate a royal family angle on the story. And George was only too happy to oblige: 

Of his experiences as a menagerie proprietor, there was no end. One incident after another was recalled by the old man, as if the recollection of them were a solace to him in his present destitute state.

Asked if he had ever appeared before Royalty, the venerable showman, with a touch of honest pride, mentioned that he had had the privilege of putting a baby tiger into the arms of the Prince of Wales.

“We were at Windsor,” he explained, “for the October fair. Two tigers and five lion cubs had been born in the menagerie just before. A message came from the Castle that her Majesty desired to see them. We took them in a basket to the riding school, together with the Newfoundland bitch who was the foster-mother. The Queen, Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales (who was then six years of age), and Princess Royal were among those present. 

Wombwell’s Menagerie at Windsor Castle. From: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017. dated 1847, and probably the occasion when George Wombwell junior met the Royal Family.

I remember her Majesty and the others were very much amused at the way in which the young lions rolled over one another in order to get near their foster mother. When the young tigers were brought out of the hamper, The Prince of Wales, said something to his father. Prince Albert turned to me and asked if they would hurt. I assured him they would not, and he then said the young prince would like to have one in his arms. I then stooped down and placed one in the arms of his Royal Highness. I think I am right in saying that that was the Prince’s first acquaintance with a tiger.”

It was not however by a long stretch the last acquaintance of the future Edward VII with a tiger. When he made a state visit to India in 1875, there was enough time available between ceremonial events for the Prince's party to shoot twenty-eight tigers to death. For Edward, this would merely have been one outing in a career characterised by the ritual slaughter of the wildlife of the British Empire.  

Meanwhile, the young Princess Royal, Edward's elder sister, who was also observing this touching scene, was in due course to marry the German Emperor, Frederick III. In 1859, she gave birth to the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. 

Yes, they were all happy enough to be good Europeans in those days. And it must have been gratifying that Queen Victoria was not just amused by this charming cameo, but very much amused. When invited however to view one of the female lion tamers at work in the cage, she reverted to type, and declined outright, distinctly, not amused.

Born to be a Wild Beast

To return to the Daily Mail of the 4th January, 1897, and going back to earlier days, the investigating journalist paused to note that:

George Wombwell’s uncle was the original menagerie proprietor of that name. Singularly enough, George himself was born in what at one time had done duty as an elephant house, but which had been converted by his father into a living room.

“It made a capital room”, said the old man, “and stood for years by the side of our cottage. People used to say I was born to be a wild beast then and sure enough, when I was ten years old, it was agreed that my uncle should adopt me.” 

Reading between the lines, it rather seems that George's parents, Zachariah Wombwell and Mary Webb, were not displeased to be rid of their 'problem child'. It seems also that Zachariah may well have been working for the menagerie and at one point at least, looking after Wombwell elephants before embarking on one of the more unusual home conversion projects of his or anyone else's time and transforming the elephant house into his living room.

George junior was born in Stoke Newington in around 1822. His mother was still there in 1841, and duly recorded in the census of that year, the very first national census of our times. The Wombwell home, and hence the original elephant house were almost certainly in Lordship Road, just off Church Street. 

From a website devoted to the villas that were built along Lordship Road, beginning around 1835. As a rural area just north of the city, the location would have been ideal as a transit and storage point for the Wombwell menagerie in its early days.

And on that very same census day, the recording officials also duly noted the details for the family living next door. It is just possible that they may have detected in the elderly lady they encountered there a hint or more of an Irish accent. Either way, she was giving no more away than she needed to, and the census record that survives suggests that she was originally from Middlesex. 

All this was very far from being the case however. The lady in question, also carrying the Wombwell surname, was in fact the daughter of an Irish freemason, Godfrey West and grand-daughter of a distinguished Downpatrick doctor and army lieutenant, Seneca Hadzor. Her line stretched back to Norman Irish barons, and to eminent Anglo-Irish families in County Down, from whom roughly a decade earlier she had inherited substantial holdings through her cousin, Elizabeth Carson.

In short, Maria West of Downpatrick would have been very well acquainted with that 'wild beast', who in 1897 was relaying his own memories to the Daily Mail.       

Bankruptcy Proceedings

It seems then that George Wombwell junior was now to languish at the pleasure of a majesty who not a decade earlier had hosted him at Windsor Castle. His involuntary stay at Whitecross Prison may not have been too protracted though, for the Gazette recorded the date of his court appearance as July 30th, 1855, less than a couple of months after his initial incarceration: 

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/21745/page/2730/data.pdf

There is no information as to what happened next. But, at a guess, those Wombwells who were still very much engaged in operating two major menageries cannot have been thrilled with the fact that the namesake and nephew of the extremely famous founder of the menagerie was now generating extremely unfavourable publicity as an indigent and bankrupt.  It would have made sound business sense, as well as showing extended family loyalty to bail him out, and put his skills and experience into play as an employee in their own enterprises.

It is not altogether surprising that this humiliating sequence of events did not emerge in the Daily Mail reportage of 1897. Poor George Wombwell junior was a wounded man, and there were certain things that he very much preferred to keep to himself.   

From Bad to Worse

In reporting his run of bad luck to the Daily Mail in 1897, there were one or two minor details that George Wombwell junior omitted to mention about the events surrounding the sale of Menagerie Number Three in Novia Scotia Gardens.

The auctioning off the menagerie for a ‘trifle’ as the Standard Newspaper reported on April 28th, 1855, did not in any way alleviate George’s financial problems. By now his debts must have been significant indeed, and his creditors were homing in.

On June 18th 1855, The Gazette, as it was accustomed to doing, published a full list of court decisions relating to the insolvent. The relevant portions for our purposes read as follows:

COURT FOR RELIEF OF INSOLVENT DEBTORS. The 18th day of June, 1855. ORDERS have been made, vesting in the Provisional Assignee the Estates and Effects of the following Persons:

George Wombwell, late residing in a travelling van, within a yard adjacent to Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea, Middlesex, Feeder to a Menagerie of Trained Animals – In the Debtors Prison for London and Middlesex.

'Relief' in mid-nineteenth century judicial practice apparently comprised a stay in the London and Middlesex Debtors' prison, or Whitecross Prison as it was more commonly known. And that is where George Wombwell junior now found himself.

The images below are 1843 illustrations of Whitecross Prison from the Getty Collection.

Embed from Getty Images

Charles Jamrach

Charles Jamrach originally set up business in the East of London at 164 Ratcliffe Highway. When he died in 1891, he left over 7000 pounds to his son Albert who continued to run the exotic animal business until 1919, when it closed down finally, presumably at least partially due to the damage done to the trade by the First World War.

Jamrach himself was born in Hamburg in 1815, and it was from there that the family brought their business to London and turned it into an emporium that was to be the main supplier of zoos, menageries, and circuses in the UK. The London operation had three premises, including a bird shop and museum on the Ratcliffe Highway, a menagerie in Betts street, and a warehouse in Old Gravel Lane.

Jamrach feeding his animals.  A daughter of Charles Jamrach was to marry into a branch of the Wombwell family.

Employing agents across the UK and abroad, Jamrach sought to corner the market for exotic wildlife imports, which could then be sold on to the likes of the Wombwells, and later, it would seem, also be used as raw material for wild animal themed furniture, or what became known as Wardian furniture. To exemplify, one later commentator advised that elephants' feet 'make fine footstools, liquor stands, or, if cut long in the leg, umbrella stands'.

Jamrach’s own version of the Bengal Tiger story was actually published in ‘The Boys’ Own Paper’ in 1879. In Jamrach’s version, the purchaser was not George Wombwell junior, but Mr Edmonds of the Wombwell Menagerie, and relative of George. This would have been James Edmonds, husband of Harriett Wombwell (note: not the Harriett Wombwell who was the daughter of Maria West) who had inherited from the original George, Menagerie Number Two. This would not of course though preclude George junior’s involvement in the transaction. 

It should be said though that distinguishing fact from fiction in the Wombwell story is a fool’s errand. Theirs was an operation that could have taken out a patent for Chinese whispers.

But here are Jamrach's own final words on the Bengal Tiger incident, together with some masterly comments from the presiding Judge, who had nothing but praise for the charismatic Jamrach for saving the boy's life, regardless of the minor detail that it was he who had been responsible for endangering it in the first place.  

The boy was taken to the hospital, but with the exception of a fright and a scratch, was very little hurt. I lost no time in making inquiry about him, and finding where his father was, I offered him £50 as some compensation for the alarm he had sustained. Nevertheless, the father, a tailor, brought an action against me for damages, and I had to pay £300, of which he had £60, and the lawyers the remaining £240. Of two counsel I employed, only one appeared ; the other, however, stuck to his fee right enough. At the trial the judge sympathised very much with me, saying that, instead of being made to pay, I ought to have been rewarded for saving the life of the boy, and perhaps that of a lot of other people. He, however, had to administer the law as he found it, and I was responsible for any dangerous consequences brought about in my business. He suggested, however, as there was not much hurt done to the boy, to put down the damages as low as possible. The jury named £50, the sum I had originally offered to the boy's father of my own good will. The costs were four times that amount. I was fortunate, however, to find a purchaser for my tiger a few days after the accident ; for Mr. Edmonds, proprietor of Wombwell's Menagerie, having read the report in the papers, came up to town post haste, and paid me £300 for the tiger. He exhibited him as the tiger that swallowed the child, and by all accounts made a small fortune with him.

All in all, quite an interesting little illustration of mid-Victorian values in action.

Jamrach and the Bengal Tiger

As George Wombwell junior lurched from one loss to the next, and his animals fell victim to fire, snow, and disease, for a while it would seem from his account to the Daily Mail, that he simply and expensively replenished his stock, including according to his own account from that doyen of animal suppliers, Charles Jamrach.

The most famous story concerning Jamrach dates back to 26 October 1858 and the escape of a Bengal tiger from the London docks while en route to Jamrach’s shop. Most intelligent observers on that day, unused to seeing Bengal tigers strolling down the Ratcliff Road quickly chose to make themselves scarce, with the exception of one astonished and slightly less intelligent eight-year old boy who was intrigued enough to try and make a closer acquaintance. 

The story is continued on Geri Walton’s Blog: 

The boy’s stroke was returned with a playful tap. That tap “knocked the child upon his face stunned; and, picking him up by the loose part of the jacket” the animal was proceeding up the road with the boy when Jamrach discovered the tiger’s escape and sprang upon it. Jamrach was a powerful man and attacked the tiger from behind. He grasped its “throat with both hands, [and] drove his thumbs into the soft place behind the jaw,” which caused the tiger to choke and loosen its hold, letting the boy fall. Jamrach also delivered several heavy blows with a crowbar, which “cowed the great beast, who turned tail and meekly trotted back … into the lair prepared for him.”

Once Jamrach had paid off a handsome £50 to the boy’s family for damages, he did not take long to find a willing buyer for the tiger. Geri Walton reports that George Wombwell junior then paid £300 for the beast, and in true Wombwell style it went on tour advertised as “the tiger that had eaten a boy alive in Ratcliff-highway.” 

A likely story! Jamrach fighting the tiger. 

There was no such thing as bad publicity in the menagerie business, and never any need to stick to the literal truth. The episode of the escaped Bengal tiger is by no means unique, and it is an open question as to what extent such dramas were deliberately manufactured to create publicity. In the end however, the menagerie had acquired at no small expense, a highly dangerous predatory cat. Charles Jamrach on the other hand had turned over a profit of £250 and will not have been sorry, it may be taken, to see the tiger in question to depart with its new owner.

As for George Wombwell junior, if he were involved in the purchase, it was not for his own menagerie, and it suggests that after his bankruptcy he sought employment with those relatives who had inherited the other parts of the original menagerie, after the death of his uncle in 1850.

A Run of Bad Luck

The menagerie that was sold off in the midst of the slums of Novia Scotia Gardens was in any case a sadly depleted one, as George junior explained to the Daily Mail:

“Did I get anything out of the sale of the menagerie? Not a penny. I had a run of bad luck. I can’t tell you the particular years; but my misfortunes commenced one winter’s day on a hill about a mile and a half out of Peebles. Six wagons were blown over, and we were obliged to let them remain on the ground, with the animals in them, until the wind abated. Meanwhile, in the town itself, we could see a big fire raging. It was the stables in which my horses were. Thirty were injured and twelve had to be killed. That was one of the worst things possible to happen, because we could not get to the places taken in advance in other times at the time stated.”

Photo from Hannah Velten's Pages, where other incidents with elephants on the road are described. Add some high winds and snow-storms and it is not hard to see how accidents may have occurred as the menagerists fought against the elements to keep to their schedules - to the point probably of foolhardiness on the part of George Wombwell junior.

“Then the carnivorous animals kept dying off, and although I was continually replacing them from Jamrach in London, and from Liverpool and Bristol, still they died. I could not account for it, until at last a specialist told me it was a sort of rinderpest. At that time I had a splendid group of lions. I lost eight out of nine. Another misfortune was the loss of my elephant. A menagerie is nothing without an elephant,” observed the aged showman parenthetically. “We were going from Huddersfield to Ashton-under-Lyne. On the top of a steep hill we were caught in a severe snow storm. The elephant wagon became fixed in a cutting. We had to leave it. The next morning we could not get within a mile and a half of the spot owing to the snow. It was twelve days before I could obtain any tidings about the elephant. Then I was told it laid down to take its mash. The next day my brother-in-law said it was dead. I had been offered 650 pounds for it only a short time before. That crippled me badly.”

Clin Keeling in a short but fascinating study of Menagerie Number Three dates the onset of this sequence of disasters to 1855. The final sale raised around 100 pounds leaving George with losses of around 5000 pounds, and bankruptcy. In short, he was ruined. Amongst the bargains to be picked up at the auction, were five 'beast wagons', two leopards, a jaguar, six monkeys, a bear, a wolf, a hyena, a baboon, and a nyalghai. The Russian bear went under the hammer for just three pounds fifteen shillings.

Leaving aside the cruelty inflicted on the animals themselves, George Wombwell junior seems to have had little first-hand knowledge either of how to keep his stock healthy, or transport it from one location to another with minimal risks. He quite literally ran his menagerie into the ground. Or, to put it in his own words to the Daily Mail:

“Afterwards things seemed to go from bad to worse. I got into debt. As soon as I lost my elephant I lost my show, and at last I was sold up, and then everything was gone.”

______________________________________________________

Excerpt from: Glimpses of Peebles

Wombwell's Menagerie of wild beasts came to Peebles on gth February 1850. " On the way to the town several of the caravans were blown over at Lyne's Mill by the violence of a gale which was 
blowing; and, while putting their horses right for the night in the Crown Inn stables, fire broke out and burned the building. However, six horses were got out with great difficulty by Mr Macpherson, the landlord, and those who came to his assistance." 

The dates of course do not match, but this may be due to an error in the text, as this account seems to chime with George's own version. 

________________________________________________________________________________

Memories from a Dark and Lonesome Room

As George Wombwell junior recited his woes to the Mail correspondent, there is just an inkling that starts to emerge that his continuing misfortunes may have owed as much to bad judgement as to bad luck: 

How is it, it may be asked, that George Wombwell – a man, who in his day, spent hundreds and thousands of pounds in the purchase of animals for his menagerie has been reduced to such a miserable state of existence” Drink? No. The old man, himself, said that even now when he is playing in the streets he has many offers of drink, but he always declines them. And those in the neighbourhood who know the old fellow had a good word to say for him. They had never seen him the worse for liquor. No, it was a series of misfortunes – illness, loss of animals by disease, fire, and a variety of other causes that sent George Wombwell under.

The old man’s eyes filled with tears as in his dark and lonesome room, he recalled some of the incidents of the past.

“It is more than twenty years now,” he said; “since my menagerie was sold up on the spot where Columbia market now stands. What have I been doing since then? Going about the country, playing in circus bands until I got past it. Now I go out of an evening and play outside four public houses where they know me.”

When the original George Wombwell died in 1850, the menagerie had already been divided into three operations. It was Menagerie Number Three that he left to his nephew, George junior. Since, by 1861, George was living in Bow, and recorded in the census of that year as an artist and photographer, his menagerie must have already been sold off by this time -  more like forty years before the Daily Mail interview than the twenty that George himself suggested. 

The 'spot' which by 1897 had become Columbia Gardens was in earlier days known as Nova Scotia Gardens, a notorious slum and criminal haunt. For the Victorians of the time, Nova Scotia Gardens were best known for the exploits of the London Burkers. The Burkers' business model involved supplying and selling fresh bodies to the medical profession, where they were urgently needed to advance the cause of medical science. The practice of removing recently buried bodies from their graves for this purpose was not actually a very uncommon practice, but in the interests of supply chain efficiency, the Burkers of Nova Scotia Gardens felt that there was room for a more innovative approach to the project. 

The Nova Scotia Cottages that were the Burkers' Business Centre. Picture copied from: http://www.sarahwise.co.uk/italianboy.html, where there is a wealth of information about the Burkers and their activities,

Their brand new business model foundered however when it was noticed that the bodies they provided did not actually appear ever to have been buried. A number of the Burkers' corpses were it seemed 'fresher than fresh', their owners having been generously provisioned with laudanum and rum, and then tipped down a Nova Scotia well until ready for their final trip to one of the major London teaching hospitals. The two main partners in this gruesome enterprise were executed at Newgate in 1831, and, then subjected to the entirely poetic justice of having their own corpses dispatched for dissection. The inspiration for their venture had clearly come from Burke and Hare, who had first piloted the scheme through a series of sixteen murders in Edinburgh culminating in Burke's hanging in 1828. The weak point was that the authorities must already have been alert to copy-cat crimes of this type.

The Novia Scotia slums were eventually purchased by a famous Victorian philanthropist, Angela Burdett-Coutts, and Columbia Market opened in 1869. 

The point to be made here however is that in putting his menagerie up for sale in Nova Scotia Gardens, George Wombwell junior, for whatever reasons, was selling off his stock in a location where most respectable Victorians would have thought twice, three times or more before even approaching. 

As we shall see, when we return to the Daily Mail profile, this proved to be yet another misguided decision.

The Wolf at the Door

The Eagle Pub on the City Road. George Wombwell junior spent his last years playing his cornet outside such pubs for whatever pennies he could. The sign above the name of the pub, quotes the lines from the nursery rhyme for which it is famous, rather ominously under the circumstances:

Up and down the City Road
In and Out the Eagle
That's the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel.

Photo from: By User: Justinc - Photographer: User: Justinc, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=338765

The first part of the Daily Mail article of January 4th 1897, introduces a George Wombwell junior, who has pretty much reached the end of his tether, living in a basement room somewhere near the City Road, and relying on his old and battered cornet to bring him in some petty cash to help him survive. The Mail headline summarises his predicament succinctly enough. It is, the paper concludes, 'A Pathetic Story'.

After facing lions in their dens for many years, poor old George Wombwell, the famous showman, now finds the wolf at his door; and the man who has risked his life by daily contact with wild beasts is by way of dying through the ravages of the worst beast of them all – starvation.

George Wombwell’s name as a menagerie proprietor has, in his day, been known from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Now he is nearing four score years in age and the showman who in his time has given pleasure to thousands in all parts of the country, who has gained admiration and applause for his deeds of daring with lions and tigers, and who still bears the marks of desperate encounters, now finds it difficult to scrape together a few shillings to obtain the barest necessities of life.

It was in a little underground room in a street leading off the City-road that the showman of a bygone age told the story of his chequered life to a representative of the “Daily Mail” on Saturday. The surroundings were dismal enough, in all conscience. The old man was alone; his wife, he said, was in the infirmary. The rent of the room is paid out of pence collected at public-houses, outside of which the old fellow stands and plays his worn-out and leaky cornet. What is left goes for food and, if possible, a bit of firing.

It was in the afternoon that the representative saw him. The “guv’nor,” as he was once familiarly called, had just finished tidying up and an hour or so later would have seen him wending his way through the dense fog with his instrument in an old black bag tucked carefully under his arm to the spots where, perchance, a few coppers would reward his efforts.

“But I have no teeth,” was the old man’s lament, “and my instrument is patched up with cobbler’s wax, or I could play much better than I do.”

How the 'guvnor' had been reduced to such an impecunious state, was the next question that the Daily Mail journalist proposed to answer.

The Daily Mail, January 4th 1897

In 1897, Queen Victoria was to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee. It was also the year when the very first conviction was issued for drink-driving, the year Oscar Wilde was released from prison and Marconi sent the very first wireless communication. Over in Africa, the British Army responded to insurgence in what is now Nigeria, by burning the entire historic city of Benin to the ground. The Marquess of Salisbury was Conservative Prime-Minister, the very last Prime-Minister to lead the government from the House of Lords. 

New Year had just dawned in 1897 in London in this era of transition and change when an enterprising Daily Mail reporter caught up with George Wombwell junior, and made him the subject of an extensive profile, detailing his journey to fame and glory and back into poverty and humiliation.

It would almost certainly have been one of Hetty Jane Owen's Bradley relatives who cut the story from the paper, and added it to her family scrapbook, from where it made its way eventually into Harold Eldridge's box-file. 

Courtesy of the Mail, which even in 1897, seemed to have a highly developed penchant for sensationalism and rhetorical hyper-ventilating, the story of George Wombwell junior can be told as least to some extent in his own words.

Back into the Family Box File

An early nineteenth-century illustration. From: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menagerie.wombwell.jpg

In disentangling the story of Hetty Jane Owen’s Irish ancestors, the key starting point was a document comprising eight pages of details regarding the sale of Irish fee-farm rental lands in County Down. 

In the same family box file, passed down through the generations until it reached Hetty Jane Owen’s son, Dr. Harold Eldridge, were three newspaper clippings, together with an original handwritten letter telling the story of an elephant named Peto. These items form the starting point for the investigation into Hetty Jane Owen’s Wombwell relatives. 

In particular, they enable us to put some flesh on the life of George Wombwell junior, the nephew of the George Wombwell who was the founder of the famous Wombwell’s menagerie.