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.