Final Days on the Road for Menagerie Number One

The 1871 census below records the family, both Fairgrieves and Blights camped out in Kingston-upon-Thames, their days on the road fast approaching their end. It is a sobering thought that when the menagerie was sold, there were to be a lot of ex-Wombwell personnel faced with the difficult task of finding employment elsewhere.

Elizabeth Wombwell, Ann’s younger sister, who also travelled with the menagerie, died in 1870.

The Elephant Who Walked to Manchester

There was a famous postscript to the selling off in Edinburgh of Menagerie Number One by Alexander Fairgrieve. This concerned Maharajah, the Indian Elephant, who at seven foot tall was the largest lot on offer, and was picked up for 680 pounds by James Jennison, who was the proprietor of the Belle Vue gardens in Manchester.

In an echo of Peto the elephant's refusal to board ship for George Wombwell junior in Paris in 1866, Maharajah refused to board the (Northern) British Railway train from Edinburgh to Manchester. The keeper, Lorenzo Lawrence, did not panic. He simply walked Maharajah the two hundred miles to Manchester, where Maharajah died, aged eighteen, in 1882.

Copied from https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/05/10/elephant-walked-manchester/Heywood 

Heywood Hardy’s 1875 painting A Disputed Toll, from Manchester Art Gallery, portraying Lawrence and the toll-collector in dispute. The story was that the elephant pulled the gate up from its hinges, and that the pair marched on.

The story of Maharajah is the subject of a book by David Barnaby.

The End of Menagerie Number One

Of the other children of Elizabeth Wombwell, mention must be made of Harriet Blight, who was born in London in 1836 and died in Edinburgh in 1908. In 1862, she married Alexander Fairgrieve (1836-1906). It was to Alexander that Menagerie Number One made its way once Ann Wombwell finally decided to retire to the quiet, leafy, tiger-free environment of Hampstead in around 1865.

Alexander continue to run the menagerie until April 1872, when he decided to auction off the entire collection at the old Waverly Market in Edinburgh. An article from The Scotsman Newspaper tells us more:

Waverly Market, Edinburgh. 

The auction of the menagerie animals was such a novel event that a large audience gathered in Princes Street to see the last appearance of the elephants, camels and other animals as part of Wombwell’s Menagerie. The sale had ‘excited considerable international attention’ and the capacity crowd in the Waverley Market included ‘well-known naturalists, circus proprietors, and representatives of zoos in Britain, America and France’. The animals offered for sale included various breeds of monkey and baboon, a wombat, porcupines, hyenas, a gnu, boa constrictors, zebras, a variety of bears, two elephants, eleven lions, a Bengal tiger, seven camels and three ‘beautiful glossy’ leopards. Cockatoo sold for £8 The sale started with the monkeys, which were recommended as ‘lively, frisky, intelligent and clean pets’, and competition was brisk for some of the rarer species. The vultures, pelicans, emu and condor were sold to dealers while the parrots and cockatoos ‘provided lively interest amongst local bird fanciers’. One cockatoo fetched £8 due to its excellent talking abilities. The Earl of Rosebery bought a racoon for £1, and the Tasmanian Devil was sold for 65 shillings. Auction raised £250,000. There was fierce competition among dealers for the larger animals such as the polar and Tibetan bears and the performing elephant. ‘Hannibal’, a black-maned lion, the ‘handsomest and largest specimen in Britain’, was purchased for £270 by Bristol Zoo. As a testament to the excited caused by the auction, many of the animals were sold for considerably more than their usual market value. The total amount raised for the auctions 90 unusual lots was £2,900 – roughly £250,000 in today’s money.

From: http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/lost-edinburgh-wombwell-s-royal-menagerie-auction-1-3317481

Unlike George junior, Alexander had cashed in handsomely. And that was the end of Menagerie Number One.

The Inquest Concludes

One of the medical gentlemen in attendance on that fatal day in Chatham was probably Richard Cooper Todd, a Royal Artillery surgeon who was present at the scene. The inquest report stated that:

He saw the deceased enter and going in the tiger did not appear to be very friendly with her; she struck him on going in and he laid down. She then proceeded to her performance with the lion and afterwards turned round and again struck the tiger. It appeared angry and immediately seemed to turn upon the deceased; rearing upon his hind legs and seizing her by the neck, she fell on her back and the tiger crouching over her, he [the surgeon] saw no more of her until removed from the den, when he hastened to her assistance. She was perfectly insensible and had lost a great deal of blood and her face and lips were very pale. She was still alive, the heart was beating, but she was perfectly unconscious. Witness placed his hand on the wound in the neck to stop the bleeding and administered some brandy to deceased, but she was unable to swallow it and in a very few minutes her heart ceased to beat. There were four wounds on the left side of the neck, a slight wound on the right leg and another on the chin, caused by the teeth of the tiger, the under jaw of the animal having caused a very large wound under the chin, which aided by the shock her system had sustained, produced death.

The jury returned a verdict to the effect that deceased was killed by a male tiger whilst
exhibiting in its den and expressed a strong opinion against the practice of allowing persons to perform in a den with animals.

38 Daily News (London, England) Monday, January 14, 1850; Issue 1135
Copied from: http://www.georgewombwell.com/articles/TheLionQueens.pdf

Ellen Blight was just seventeen at the time. George Wombwell died almost exactly a year after this incident. And Ann, as we have seen from the censuses, from then on kept the Blight family close to her as the menagerie continued to criss-cross the country. There must have been some very raw and guilty consciences in the higher echelons of the menagerie management.

Wombwell Menagerie, 1847. From http://vichist.blogspot.com.cy/2012/03/travelling-menageries.html

Death of the Lion Queen

Figurine of the The Death of The Lion Queen in Guildhall Museum, Rochester. Copied from: http://wanderingwords.org.uk/writing/the-lion-queens-deadly-performance/

In November 1849, the menagerie reached Chatham in Kent, and it was here that disaster struck as reported by the Daily New, when the inquest took place the following January:

Stephen King, the first witness examined, said he had been in the employ of Mr Wombwell as keeper for the last six years. The deceased was a niece of Mr Wombwell's and daughter of John Bright [Blight], a bugle player in the band. It was the business of the deceased to go into the dens and perform with the beasts, which she had been in the habit of doing several times daily for the last twelve months. On Friday evening, shortly after nine o'clock, she went into the den in which a lion and tiger were kept, for the purpose of performing, as usual; the tricks played by her being principally with the former animal. She had only been in two or three minutes, but had gone through the main part of the performance, excepting that of making the lion sit down in a particular part of the cage, when the tiger being in her way, the deceased struck it slightly with a small whip which she carried in her hand. The beast growled as if in anger and crouching close to the bottom of the den stretched out its paw, as if at her leg or dress causing the deceased to fall sideways against the cage, the animal at the same moment springing at her and seizing her furiously by the neck, inserting the teeth of the upper jaw in her chin and in closing his mouth, inflicting frightful injury in the throat by his fangs. He then appeared to change his position, making a second grip across the throat of his victim. A keeper who was standing on the step of the den armed with a whip, immediately rushed to her assistance, but the animal did not loose its hold until struck over the nose violently with an iron bar and whilst King held the animal, the unfortunate female was removed from the cage bleeding profusely and life all but extinct. She was taken into one of the caravans where she was immediately attended by two medical gentlemen who happened to be present at the time of the occurrence.

Such were the margins involved between entertaining the public and loss of life.

Elizabeth Wombwell and the Blight Family

Another daughter of Samuel Wombwell was Elizabeth,  a younger sister of Ann Wombwell, born in 1796 and dying in 1870. She married John Joseph Thomas Blight in 1821 in Holborn, and as we have already seen, the Blight family almost as a whole, were menagerie regulars. One Blight in particular though succeeded in indelibly marking herself into the history books. This was Ellen Blight, otherwise known as ‘The Lion Queen’. 

For sure, Ellen must have been one of the feistier of the Blight children, and when George’s first ‘lion queen’, Ellen Chapman moved on to join Sanger’s circus and indeed marry its proprietor, casting around for a replacement, the Wombwell eye fell on young Ellen. The outcome was tragic.

The death of Ellen Blight, x2 removed third cousin of Hetty Jane Owen.
From: http://vichist.blogspot.com.cy/2012_03_01_archive.html

Ann Wombwell Carries On

To return to Ann Wombwell: She would seem to have been a formidable operator, and when George left her Menagerie Number One in his will, she proved well capable of taking the business forward. Nor was this merely a matter of efficient desk-bound delegation. The menagerie required hands-on management and this meant heading off on the road in the touring caravans and supervising the operation in person. In the 1861 census, Ann was in Doncaster, aged 73, aboard the menagerie caravans, and with a full complement of the Blight family accompanying her. The Blights, as we shall see, were also relatives, with one member in particular having a very special claim for fame. She did not pause for breath too long either after the death of the founder, George Wombwell, in 1850. In the 1851 census, she is again to be located on the road, this time in Lancashire. The census image is indistinct, but reveals enough:

Ann and her Blight relatives were living in adjacent caravans in Wardleworth, Rochdale, the Menagerie Number One show very much on the road. 

Photo from the SleepingGardensBlog

Ann did finally retire however, passed her menagerie on to a relative, and lived out her days in Hampstead in Belsize Park Road. She died in 1876, aged eighty-eight. Just in case it has not been noticed, if nothing else the Wombwells were for their time, an exceptionally long-lived family. Her memorial inscription is also to be found beneath Nero the sleeping lion in Highgate Cemetery.

The Children of Ann Wombwell and Henry Morgan

Ann Wombwell’s children through her marriage to Henry Morgan were all, again, x2 removed third cousins of Hetty Jane Owen, and were:

i) Jane Morgan (1805-1879)
ii) Maria Morgan (1807-1849)
iii) Elizabeth Morgan (1810-????)
iv) Caroline Morgan (1812-1881)
v) Henry Morgan (1813-1871)
vi) Amelia Ann Morgan (1815-1904)

These children, for the most part, married, had children and produced lengthy lines. They did so without using the Wombwell name and may or may not have carried a residual store of resentment both at Ann’s cavalier disposal of the family name, and her decision shortly after their father’s death to hit the menagerie trail.

The notable exception is Amelia Ann Morgan, the youngest child, born around the time of her father’s death. This is the Amelia who married George’s business partner, Edmund Bramston, and who, once widowed, returned to live with her mother in Hampstead in her retirement, and who - with her mother - took in George Wombwell junior’s daughter, from his first marriage, Ann Fanny Wombwell, prior to her departure to China. 

Edmund was a close enough friend of George to merit a memorial inscription on his Highgate Cemetery grave, along with Amelia Ann:

Image from PInterest

Ann Wombwell

Of the children of Samuel Wombwell, we have already encountered Ann Wombwell, the companion of George Wombwell, whom he adopted into his circle after the death of her husband, Henry Morgan, in 1815. Ann remains a major - if slightly puzzling - figure in the history of the menagerie.

Ann Wombwell, from Shaun Everett's Website

There is a strong possibility that there may have been more than a certain sleight of hand involved in George’s adoption of his elder brother’s daughter into the menagerie. Ann had lost her husband Henry Morgan by the time she joined the menagerie, in around 1815, and had already given birth to six children. 

In all the references to her, she is however named simply 'Mrs Wombwell', seemingly having reverted back to her maiden name whilst retaining her married title. Small wonder that ever since researchers have acted on the presumption that she was George’s wife and strained themselves in the futile exercise of trying to uncover a marriage certificate.

Of course, it is not entirely inconceivable that George might have embarked on some kind of semi-incestuous relationship with his niece, but the most likely explanation yet again is that his main concern was with the branding of his business. A Mrs Wombwell would meet the bill very nicely, much more so than a widowed Mrs Morgan. And if the public and media chose to assume that he and his niece were a married couple, that would do just fine as well. And so it did, with researchers down the years all mistakenly identifying Ann as George’s wife. The name ‘Morgan’ meanwhile was quietly consigned to the Wombwell recycling service. 

As it happens, and as described in Shaun Everett’s biography, George had in fact got married to one Mary Linn back in 1800 at St. Giles in the Field Church in Soho. It was this Mary who was at home on that fateful day in 1809 when Thomas Soaper came calling and had his unfortunate encounter with the rattlesnake. George himself was nowhere to be seen on that occasion. No children have ever been recorded and Mary disappears without trace from the story, either dead, abandoned, or having absconded. And, as noted, George himself was more than happy for his niece Ann to be seen as the official holder of the Mrs Wombwell title.

The Line of Samuel Wombwell

Braintree in 1851. From Wikipedia.

Samuel Wombwell, the first son of James Wombwell and Sarah Rogers, married Elizabeth Boynton in Braintree in 1783, and there they apparently stayed until their deaths in 1841 and 1831 respectively. Eight children resulted, all x3 removed second cousins of Hetty Jane Owen. It should be noted that Samuel was considerably older than George, meaning that as George set up business in London, Samuel’s children were at a perfect age to be offered opportunities for an exciting new life and career in the wild animal industry, along also with their grandchildren as time went by. The children were:

i. Joseph Wombwell (1784-????)
ii. Sarah Wombwell (1786-1851)
iii. Ann Wombwell (1788-1876)
iv. William Wombwell (1790-1854)
v. Mary Wombwell (1794-1880)
vi. Elizabeth Wombwell (1796-1870)
vii. Frederick Wombwell (1802-1837)
viii. Richard Wombwell (????-1814)

The Children of James Wombwell and Sarah Rogers

The human resource operation involved in running the menagerie was – to put it very mildly – not inconsiderable, and George, whether recklessly, charitably, or just on a purely practical basis was perfectly prepared to involve his extended family, all of whom he must have reasoned could bring their experience of looking after animals in the Clavering area to benefit his operation. Before proceeding with the outcomes of this approach, a glance at his tree is in order.

The children of James Wombwell (born 1739) and Sarah Rogers (born 1737), all born in or around the Clavering area were:

i. Samuel Wombwell (1760-1841)
ii. Sarah Wombwell (1762-????)
iii. William Wombwell (1764-????)
iv. Josiah Wombwell (1771-????)
v. Elizabeth Wombwell (1773-????)
vi. John Wombwell (1774-1845)
vii. Ann Wombwell (1777-1855)
viii. George Wombwell (1777-1850)
ix. Zacharias Wombwell (1780-1833)

Again, a word of warning: The lines that both precede and follow are complex, and reliant on previous researchers’ suppositions. If more or less correct however, all these children are first cousins x4 removed of Hetty Jane Owen. George, the menagerie founder, was apparently the eighth child. The ninth, Zacharias was the father of George junior whose story was told earlier.

Wendon Lofts marked in outline. Duddenhoe End is just to the south.

Various places are named as the birthplace of George senior, including Beckwith Green, Wendon Lofts, Duddenhoe End, Cressing, Elmdon and Braintree, Shaun Everett opting for the former, and quoting reports that the family moved from Beckwith Green after their cottage burned down in around 1772.

The Royal George

Grave of George Wombwell in Highgate Cemetery

The Wikipedia entry for George reports that he was invited five times to exhibit his menagerie to the royal family, three times by Queen Victoria, including the visit to Windsor in 1847 reported by his nephew, George Wombwell junior.

The same entry then reports the following possibly apocryphal story:

On one occasion Prince Albert summoned him to look at his dogs who kept dying and Wombwell quickly noticed that their water was poisoning them. When the prince asked what he could do in return for this favour, Wombwell said, "What can you give a man who has everything?". However, Wombwell requested some oak timber from the recently salvaged Royal George. From this he had a coffin fashioned for himself, which he then proceeded to exhibit for a special fee.

It was in this coffin that George was supposedly buried in 1850, underneath his sleeping lion in Highgate Cemetery.

Menagerie Management and Marketing

Creating a brand. From the BBC.

The Wikipedia entry for George Wombwell dates the establishment of the travelling menagerie to 1810, and states that by 1839 it comprised fifteen wagons and a brass band. The article notes the difficulties faced in keeping creatures from such far-off climes alive and healthy. George though was also alert to principles of waste management and recycling. Dead animals were sold on to taxidermists, to medical schools, or even exhibited in their own right, as the following famous story recounts:

Wombwell frequented Bartholomew Fair in London and even developed a rivalry with another exhibitor, Atkins. Once when he arrived at the fair, his elephant died and Atkins put up a sign "The Only Live Elephant in the Fair". Wombwell simply put up a scroll with the words "The Only Dead Elephant in the Fair" and explained that seeing a dead elephant was an even a rarer thing than a live one. The public, realising that they could see a living elephant at any time, flocked to see and poke the dead one. Throughout the fair Atkins' menagerie was largely deserted, much to his disgust. 

The story, whether true or not, is a reminder that George was not the only entrepreneur to seek his fortune in the menagerie business. Competition was not only fierce, but unprincipled. The first volume of Shaun Everett’s biography of George is based entirely on the story of Wallace the lion, the first lion to be successfully bred in captivity in Britain. A fight was set up, so it is said, between Wallace and six bulldogs to be staged in Warwick in 1825. Even at this time, the savagery of such a spectacle raised consternation, and George came in for excoriating criticism in the press. Shaun suggests however that in fact the terrible fight may never have taken place. George had exploited the idea, and the attacks that were then made on him as free advertising to promote his menagerie further. All this is in line with boa constrictors being bought for seventy-five pounds, and, much later, the Bengal tiger bought from Jamrach that ate a boy on the Ratcliff Road. In the Wombwell marketing code, the truth was never allowed to stand in the way of a good story.

The Start-Up

So the story goes that George Wombwell arrived in London around the turn of the nineteenth century and set up business as a cordwainer in Soho. He did have an older first cousin already in London who had somehow succeeded in attaching himself to an Irishwoman, one Maria West, who, if her stories were to be believed, had something of a pedigree in County Down. There was every chance that it was this cousin, Richard Wombwell, who helped George adapt to London life. Richard had already set up as a grocer and chandler near the docks, and George, ever curious, purchased for himself at no small expense, apparently, a pair of boa constrictors from one of the incoming ships. 

How he acquired such funds however is another mystery. It has been speculated that Maria West may have been the source. However, we know that Maria’s father, Godfrey West left Ireland and went to Liverpool as a result of his own business failure. For sure, three decades later, Maria was to inherit a portfolio of rental lands in County Down from her cousin, Elizabeth Carson. But there is no evidence that at this point that she had any disposable capital or income in hand. Had this been the case, her relationship with Richard Wombwell becomes even more unlikely. And even if accepted, the idea that she would then invest her savings in a pair of boa constrictors at the behest of the younger cousin of her husband looks simply preposterous. 

An alternative explanation of course is that the purchase price of the boas was retrospectively vastly inflated, to conform with the brand of the menagerie in bringing to the British public exotic and valuable species from the distant reaches of the known world. George may just have picked up the snakes from an incoming ship for next to nothing from sailors who were only to pleased to be provided with a few pennies in return for getting shot of them.  

Whatever the truth of the matter, Maria West remained close enough to George over the years to make him the executor of her will, and George, reportedly, maintained a particular affection for snakes throughout his career. 

The sad case of Tom Soaper, reported in the second volume of Shaun Everett's biography of George Wombwell does not seem to have altered this. With the nascent menagerie now based in Picadilly, Tom Soaper took the unwise decision one day in 1809 whilst in a state of intoxication to try and make a closer acquaintance with a Wombwell rattlesnake. He died shortly after in St. George's hospital, the first but by no means the last human victim of the Wombwell operation. 

Planet Wombwell

The 1850 obituary in the Times for George Wombwell concluded that:

Mr Wombwell, from being a planet, had always satellites revolving around him in the shape of minor shows. With these he would have very willingly dispensed; but, though potent in inclination, lacked the necessary power. Go where he might, they watched his motions, and profited by the fair the menagerie created. To a certain extent his own idea of the matter was, “that he beat the bush, and they caught the bird.”

Windsor. From: http://vichist.blogspot.com.cy/2012/03/travelling-menageries.html

Stirring stuff indeed from the Times, though full of hints that George latterly felt that too many people were creaming off profits from what was his labour. The running expenses of the business were unsurprisingly massive, which must have meant that attracting large crowds was essential for survival. The success of the menagerie indeed can only have been founded on huge levels of public enthusiasm. And thus other smaller-time entrepreneurs must then have sensed the opportunity to make easy pickings of their own as the Wombwell menagerie rode into town. George, it seems, had engineered the 'trickle down' effect much beloved of modern capitalism and liberal economic ideology. In contemporary terms, he was a job creator and wealth generator.  George himself didn't quite see it this way by the look of it. What he apparently saw were parasitic engorgements, making good on his own individual entrepreneurial efforts and creative energies, but giving absolutely nothing back. 

Menagerie Economics

The 1850 Times obituary of George Wombwell also provides some interesting information about menagerie economics of the time:

The value of wild animals, like everything else, varies, according to supply and demand. Tigers have been sold as high as 300 pounds, but at other times they can be had for 100 pounds. A good panther is worth 100 pounds; hyenas, from 30 to 40 pounds; zebras from 150 to 200 pounds. The rarer kinds of monkeys are very valuable; and lamas and gnu always exceedingly high. Upon lions, lionesses, and elephants it is impossible to fix any price. Two cubs is the usual litter of the lioness, but Wombwell formerly had an old one which repeatedly dropped four. In these cases she nursed two and neglected the others; but Mr Wombwell had a beautiful pointer bitch, which in her lifetime suckled four lions.

The cost of Mr. Wombwell’s three establishments was enormous – on an average, at least 35 pounds a day each. His caravans amounted to upwards of forty, and his stud – the finest breed of draft horses – varied from about 110 to 120. The expenses of his bands were estimated at 40 pounds per week; while the amount he paid for turnpike tolls in the course of a year formed a prominent item in his expenditure. Even the ale of one of his elephants came to something throughout the twelve months, to say nothing of loaves (the best bread), grass, hay; and the capacious maw consumed the latter article at the ratio of 168 lb. per diem.

To put all this in context, and running these costs through a couple of websites: Stephen Morley's calculation system puts 100 pounds in 1850 at a value of 11, 600 pounds in 2017. The Measuring Worth calculator suggests a minimum value for 100 pounds in 1850 to be just under 10,000 pounds in today's terms.

This by any accounting was a massively expensive operation, and can only have survived if public interest and willingness to pay was at a premium level. And if - unlike George Wombwell junior - you were able to keep your animals alive long enough to justify the original purchase price.

Nothing to do with the Wombwells as such but their caravan life would not have been very different.
http://www.heardfamilyhistory.org.uk/images/circus%20caravans.jpg

Breeding and Health

The Times obituary of 1850 also reports on the many animal fatalities that occurred in the menagerie:

Wombwell, of late years, had been very successful in breeding, and possessed at the time of his death more than twenty lions and five elephants, in addition to an unrivalled collection of other wild animals. Some time since, and it is the only instance on record, one of his lionesses had a litter of two white cubs.

The proprietors of menageries experience a great loss from disease, mortality, and accident; and Wombwell calculated that he had lost, from first to last, a fortune of at least from 12,000 to 15,000 pounds by mortality among his wild beasts, birds and animals. Not many years since, a fine ostrich, worth 200 pounds, which could have picked crumbs from a ceiling twelve feet high, thrust his bill between the bars of his cage, gave it an unlucky twist, and in attempting to withdraw it literally broke his neck. Monkeys become exceedingly delicate when imported into England. They are soon affected by cold, and when they begin to cough very generally fall into consumption, and exhibit all the symptoms of human beings labouring under the same complaint.

From Shaun Everett's George Wombwell site. Note the date given
for the founding of the menagerie.

For conservationists of the twenty-first century, the Wombwell operation looks on the surface may look like an undiluted horror story of ill-treatment of animals that had been torn from their natural environment to provide some highly profitable titillation of the nineteenth century public. The evidence and data we have however are largely anecdotal. We have little to go on in terms of survival rates or life expectancies. However, it should be noted that for the menagerie business to flourish, the animal stock needed to be looked after properly. It was not in the interest of the likes of George Wombwell to mistreat their stock, or to do anything but than discover the best possible ways of ensuring the health and happiness of their animals. Such skills as were required for this needed to be developed, and investments made accordingly. In their own way, successful menagerists loved and cared for their animals. It made no sense to do otherwise.

When George Wombwell's nephew, George junior inherited Menagerie Number Three from his uncle, we are presented with an object lesson in how ignorance of business realities combined with failure to look after stock properly ended in very short time indeed in bankruptcy and ignominy. George Wombwell senior looked after his business, and as far as was possible in those days and under those conditions, this meant that he had to look after his animals. By extension, he needed to have a hands-on approach to management, and a grasp of detail of his operation from bottom to top. Failure of any links in the chain could lead to disaster. 

The Times Obituary

When George died in 1850, The Times remarked that no man had ever done more to introduce the British public to the study of wildlife. Its obituary continued:

“…Mr Wombwell, when a boy, devoted much of his time to the breeding and rearing of birds, pigeons, rabbits, dogs and other domestic animals, and beyond this had no idea of becoming the proprietor of a menagerie. In fact, he became one by force of accident, rather than of circumstances. At the London Docks he saw some of the first boa constrictors imported into England. Most of the “show folks” were afraid of and ignorant of managing them, and from this cause prices gave way a little, and Mr. Wombwell at length ventured to offer 75 pounds for a pair. They were sold to him, and in the course of three weeks he realized considerably more than that sum by their exhibition – a circumstance which he always confessed made him partial to the serpent species, as it was his first introduction to the “profession”. From this time, he became a regular “showman.” At about this period, Mr Wombwell, who was by trade a cordwainer, kept a bird and shoemaker’s shop in Compton-street, Soho, and subsequently exhibited with great success his boa constrictors in Piccadily, near to St. James’s Church.

Where it all started? Old Comptom Street, 2017.

This story of the boa constrictors, and their unlikely pricing at 75 pounds for the pair is the one that is commonly told. Passing that by, it would be no surprise that George made such a purchase in the London docks, for as we already know, this was exactly where his cousin, Richard Wombwell was running his own chandler's business. The dockland connections were thus already in place.

Founding a Travelling Menagerie

It is perhaps worth considering the menagerie that George Wombwell established just after the turn of the nineteenth century from a contemporary business perspective. The model he was developing, when broken down into its component parts, would look something like the following:

a)     Source and purchase exotic, fascinating animals from different parts of the known world, with an emphasis on the large, fierce and dangerous.
b) Establish the conditions in which such animals can be kept alive and healthy, including the diet and general care that will be required to justify the investment.
c) Find and establish premises that can be used when the animals are disembarked or purchased, and holding premises and pastures where they can be safely kept when not travelling.
d) Source the foods required to keep the animals healthy and maintain an ongoing efficient flow.
e) Set up transportation mechanisms and accompanying logistical support including food and accommodation to enable the menagerie to travel across the United Kingdom.
f) Train and upskill workers to look after the animals, train them, and subsequently work with them to put on shows that will attract paying customers.
g) Advertise and market the enterprise so as to command enough interest to make the venture profitable.
h) Reinvest and expand.

Picture of George Wombwell from:
http://thegreenockian.blogspot.com.cy/2015/07/greenock-fair.html

In today’s terms, this plan might be identified as resting on a dangerously extended supply chain and as an astonishingly high risk venture, particularly given that the founder’s start-up skills rested on no visible capital base, and extant knowledge only of domestic animal husbandry in the county of Essex. 

Had George been applying for bank loans or young entrepreneur grants, one can well imagine the raised eyebrows that such a business plan would provoke, for all his protestations that what he was proposing constituted a genuine niche business opportunity. 

Somehow though, George Wombwell had, as has been suggested, an instinctive grasp of the business cycle, and possessed the agility and flexibility required to continually to react to circumstances in an uncertain market and time and turn them to his advantage. The story of the Wombwell menagerie is, apart from anything else, one of the more extraordinary business stories of the nineteenth century.

George Wombwell Senior

George Wombwell, 1777-1850. Public Domain. See: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menagerie.george.wombwell.jpg


Much has been written about the founder of Wombwell’s menagerie, and his life is still the subject of ongoing and energetic research, conducted in large part by his descendants. The first two volumes of a three volume biography were published by Shaun Everett in 2016 and 2017, and he also maintains a website, www.georgewombwell.com dedicated to exploring the life of George and the history of menageries. And as Shaun himself notes, it is fairly obvious going through the available sources that the George Wombwell story is a murky combination of fact, supposition, and mythology. Apocryphal stories abound with no possible way of verifying them, but all are invested with high drama of one kind or another. 

It has to be suggested that a prime source of many of these confabulations may well have been George himself, along with his immediate circle. But if so, this was not due to a mere excess of personal vanity, much as that may have played a part, but more part of an acute and intuitive grasp of marketing principles, in which the true story always had to be subordinate to the best story.

From Hetty Jane Owen to Richard Wombwell

The direct ancestral line from Hetty Jane Owen back to Richard Wombwell is as follows:

Hetty Jane Owen (1883-1953) m. Charles Eldridge (1890-1968)

Parents: 
Maria Rosetta Bradley (1860-1945) m. Edward Owen (1858-1887)

Grandparents: 
Maria Robinson (1829-1879) m. Henry Bradley (1825-1880)

Great-Grandparents: 
Harriett Wombwell (1804-1871) m. Charles Robinson (1790-1868)

x2 Great-Grandparents: 
Maria West (1765-1846) m. Richard Wombwell (1757-1833)

x3 Great-Grandparents: 
Richard Wombwell (1736-????) m. Elizabeth Negus (1735-????)

x4 Great-Grandparents: 
John Wombwell (1712-1784) m. Mary Hare (1712-1752)

x5 Great-Grandparents: 
John Wombwell (1686-1741) m. Elizabeth Twynne (1690-1714)

x6 Great-Grandparents:
Richard Wombwell (1660-1723) m. Mary Brown (1662-1737)