Edward Henry Bostock

From Bostock.Net

It was Edward Henry Bostock, the fourth child of Emma and James, who now imposed his considerable presence on the menagerie. It is said that he joined the original menagerie aged fifteen, and immediately made an impression by rescuing Harriett Wombwell from an attack by an aggrieved hyena. He bought up the menagerie in 1889, but this was only to be one part of a growing entertainment empire, which was to incorporate circuses, theatres, cinemas and rinks (as reported by Dr. Middlemiss in ‘A Zoo on Wheels’, from which much of the information about the Bostocks and the last phases of the menagerie is sourced).

Edward Henry acquired hippodromes in Glasgow, London, Norwich and Ipswich, where there is to this day a Bostock road, named in his honour.  He was a member of the Glasgow City Council between 1908 and 1911, and a fellow of the Royal Zoological Society.  He married his cousin, Elizabeth Bostock and they had eight children. Bostock, when not travelling, tended to spend a lot of his time in Glasgow, and located part of the menagerie there on the New City Road in permanent residence at the ‘Zoo Building’. This building was later to be commandeered in the first world war and subsequently demolished. 

In 1920, he handed the menagerie over to his son, Jack. Unfortunately Jack, in a somewhat symbolic collision of newer and older technologies, managed in December 1920 to run his car into the back of the menagerie road train, and died of his injuries. 

Edward took the menagerie over once more, and temporarily leased it to his brother-in-law, and then to his cousin, ‘Little Frank’ Bostock who stayed with the menagerie right until its end in December 1931. In Edward’s time, the menagerie toured extensively not only in Britain but across Europe also. 

Of course, the times really were a-changing. Not only did the menagerie have to face the lengthy interregnum of the First World War, but all the implications and consequences of mechanisation. In the first instance, this led to the relatively simple decision to use steam engines to transport the menagerie across the country, but as the road system developed, hauling an extensive zoo up and down the country was always going to become less and less of a realistic option. And of course, modern transportation and advanced technology were changing the face of the entertainment world in any case. No longer were the towns of Britain ticking off the days of their calendars in eager anticipation of the next visit of the menagerie. A whole host of other entertainments now beckoned, and as Bostock himself recognised very early in the next era, the onus would be on people to visit the zoo, and not the zoo to visit the people.