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.