Stoke Newington, 1841

1841 marks the date of the very first full UK census, and although George Wombwell junior is not to be found in Stoke Newington, or indeed anywhere else to date, his mother was still there. Mary Wombwell, was recorded in that census as a cow-keeper living on Lordship Road. She was the widow of George’s father, Zacharias (or Zachariah) Wombwell, who had died some years earlier. 

Next door, in the very next census entry, lived another widow, this time listed as a livery stablekeeper. This was Maria West, by now the owner of a lucrative portfolio of Irish fee-farm grants, and the wife of the deceased Richard Wombwell. 

The will of Zacharias Wombwell has survived. Proven in 1834, it names two children as beneficiaries, but not George Wombwell junior, who, after all, had been adopted by his uncle. It is also clear from the will that Zacharias was illiterate. Given that George junior was taken on the road by his uncle at around the age of ten, the case for the ‘Peto the elephant letter’ not being in George junior's own hand becomes more compelling still. 

It seems reasonable as well to suggest that the Richard Wombwell next door, a relative obviously, cannot have come from such a very different background to Zacharias.  On every inspection therefore, the relationship and marriage between Maria West of Downpatrick, County Down and Richard Wombwell seems more and more unlikely. 

It is unquestionable though that the Stoke Newington homes on Lordship Road were more than just family residences. They must rather have been a central part of the Wombwell menagerie supply chain, where animals were kept and fed, and the horses that pulled the wagons tended. We already know from George junior's own account that Zachariah converted an elephant house into the family living room, possibly deeming with a wisdom that his son evidently lacked that life in general would be vastly easier if their accommodation was not shared with the largest land mammals on the planet. 

When Zacharias died in around 1833, he left to his wife, Mary Webb, his cows, goats, horses, and other animals.

As for Maria West, just next door, she had taken over the stables, and in residence with her on census day, 1841, were both her daughter, Sophia Wallace, and a grandson, Charles Robinson, son of Harriett Wombwell.