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.