The Death of Peto the Elephant

It did not take too long for the final denouement to unfold for the unfortunate Peto the elephant. As usual, finding others to blame for the calamities that he had played such a central role in engineering, George recorded that:

After some weeks finding that he was too vicious and dangerous for the menagerie it was decided to destroy him and he was sold to Mr C Rice the naturalist for his skin and bones.

Mr Rice was preparing to have him destroyed but Mr Smith would not allow it on his premises and bought it himself believing he could tame him by kindness – but to no purpose. I told Mr Smith that unless the den was kept constantly clean the animal would have fever in the feet and die – it so happened and this was the end of the Indian elephant “Peto”, the old companion of the now giant African elephant Jumbo.

Mr Rice was probably Charles Rice, recorded as a competitor of Jamrach's in the Victorian animal import business, so the purchase was most likely for commercial rather than scientific purposes. It is interesting also that George manages to provide two different versions of Peto's demise in two successive paragraphs, firstly suggesting that Peto had to be put down as a menace to society, and immediately after, managing to put the blame squarely on Mr Smith for allowing Peto to develop 'foot fever', an accusation for which for once he might possibly have had some justification. 

We may comfortably assume that the price paid by Charles Rice for the corpse of Peto the elephant can hardly have compensated Mrs Wombwell for her investment in bringing Peto to England, nor for her familial loyalty in entrusting George with the task of bringing her a new elephant. Skipping forward five years from George's dating of the Peto the Elephant saga to 1866, the 1871 census finds George in Stockton, Durham:



Passing over the fact that George's age varies quite wildly between records, presumably thanks to a liberal dose of imaginative self-reporting, he has now become a 'musician'. Barely fifty years of age, he has - just as he reported to the Daily Mail - been reduced to playing his cornet in the circus and menagerie bands. Anything to keep him away from the animals.