Emma Wombwell and James Bostock

Originally from A Zoo on Wheels
by J.L. Middlemiss. Also at the Bostock website

Emma Wombwell was the last of William’s daughters, born much later than Harriett, in 1834. In 1852, she married James William Bostock, and thus was set in motion what would be the last but lengthy chapter of the menagerie saga. James himself was initially a waggoner in the Harriett Wombwell menagerie, and worked his way up to become a contract and advertising manager. He left in 1867 to set up his own menagerie. He died in 1878. At the time of their marriage James was thirty-eight, and Emma just eighteen. 

In 1866, that strange year when George Wombwell junior was unsuccessfully trying to convey a live and healthy elephant back to the menagerie, and Harriett’s husband, James Edmonds was being convicted for ill-treatment of a camel, Emma gave birth to Frank Bostock, very possibly whilst the menagerie was in Darlington. 

Frank was one of eight children, all x1 removed fourth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen, and through Frank’s elder brother, Edward, what was basically about to happen was a merger between the two branches of the family, and the creation of a new brand for the menagerie, from then on to be known as Bostock and Wombwell’s menagerie.

Harriett Wombwell and James Edmonds

This Harriett Wombwell is not to be confused with Harriett, the daughter of Maria West. 


Rather, she is the second daughter of William Wombwell, and grand-daughter of George’s elder brother, Samuel. Harriett was born in 1815 in Braintree. She married James Edmonds. It was to this Harriett that George Wombwell was to bequeath Menagerie Number Two in his final will. 

And so under new management, the caravan wheels rolled on, the census returns scattered over the atlas of Britain, women giving birth on the road, and - in this strangely egalitarian community - assuming roles from the bottom to the top of the organization. 

Below in the 1881 census, is Harriett, aged sixty-six on the road in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

James himself had worked his way up through the menagerie hierarchy. There is a report concerning him from 1866, albeit not of a particularly impressive nature:


This was the very same year that George Wombwell junior had been dispatched to Paris to replace one of the menagerie elephants that had just died, and the very same James Edmonds who had purchased Jamrach's famous Bengal tiger, the tiger that 'ate the boy on the Ratcliffe Road'. 

In 1884, the management of the menagerie passed to the son of James and Harriett, James Charles Edmonds, Coincidentally, James Charles had married, in 1879, Albertina Jamrach, daughter of Charles Jamrach, properly, Johann Christian Carl Jamrach, for the owner of the famous East London animal emporium was in fact an immigrant from Hamburg, Germany.

George Wombwell Junior: His Obituary

The final George Wombwell junior clipping from the Harold Eldridge family boxfile is his obituary, published on March 3rd 1909, and summarizing his somewhat chequered career:

Mr George Wombwell was found dead in bed on Friday at his residence in Edmonton. Mr Wombwell was the son of Zacharias Wombwell, and was born about 1817. When ten years old he went to live with his uncle, the founder of the famous traveling menagerie.

The original Wombwell died in 1850, and was then the owner of three menageries. One, dispersed in 1872, was left to his widow; another to his niece, afterwards Mrs Edmonds, whose sister was the mother of E.H. Bostock, proprietor of the Scottish Zoo and Glasgow Hippodrome; and the third to his nephew, whose experiences as a showman on his own account were short. His stock was decimated by disease; and from a paragraph in The Times of April 30, 1855, it is clear that what was known as “George Wombwell’s Show” was sold by auction on Friday, April 27, at the Nova Scotia gardens, Hackney – the last place where it was exhibited. Then there were only five vans, and the stock consisted of a jaguar, a leopard and leopardess, a nylgau, a hyena, a jackal, six monkeys, an Alpino wolf, a raccoon, baboon, civet cat, some birds, a Russian bear, and two dogs. Including tilts, banners, paintings and usual paraphernalia, the sale did not realize 200 pounds. Some fear was entertained by Mrs Wombwell and her friends lest her menagerie, with which she was then traveling in Devonshire, should be confounded with that of her nephew, and a letter from “A Son-in-law of Mr Wombwell”, stating the facts of the case, appeared in our issue of May 2, 1855.

In other words, not only did George’s career as an independent menagerist last a mere five years, his companion menagerists and relatives felt compelled to publicly disassociate themselves from his enterprise.

The obituary concludes:

It is generally believed that Mr. George Wombwell exhibited the first gorilla known to have been brought alive to this country as a black chimpanzee. This belief is supported by a categorical statement of Waterton, into whose possession the body undoubtedly passed. Another account makes Mrs. Wombwell the owner of this animal, the skin of which, mounted by Waterton as a grotesque monster, is now at Alston Hall, near Preston. After the dispersal of his stock Mr Wombwell ceased to be a showman, and gained his living as a bandsman till illness and age compelled him to seek the refuge of the infirmary. When his unfortunate case was made public, he was placed in a home by the kindness of Mr E.H. Bostock, whose wishes were carried out by the Rev. T. Horne, chaplain to the Showman’s Guild.

Representation of Jenny the Gorilla. The young gorilla briefly travelled with Wombwell's menagerie.
The gorilla was not kept with the other animals but dressed in
human clothes and had a 'governess' rather than a keeper. This was in 1855.
The life of the extraordinary taxidermist Charles Waterton,
who mounted the gorilla is another tale in itself.
The Rev. T.Horne was an ex-showman himself,
turned priest, who maintained his contacts with the showmen fraternity. 

It is on this melancholy note that the life of George Wombwell junior comes to a ignominious close, dependent finally on family charity through his Bostock relatives, by then running what had become known as the Bostock and Wombwell Travelling Menagerie. 

Charles Jamrach

Charles Jamrach originally set up business in the East of London at 164 Ratcliffe Highway. When he died in 1891, he left over 7000 pounds to his son Albert who continued to run the exotic animal business until 1919, when it closed down finally, presumably at least partially due to the damage done to the trade by the First World War.

Jamrach himself was born in Hamburg in 1815, and it was from there that the family brought their business to London and turned it into an emporium that was to be the main supplier of zoos, menageries, and circuses in the UK. The London operation had three premises, including a bird shop and museum on the Ratcliffe Highway, a menagerie in Betts street, and a warehouse in Old Gravel Lane.

Jamrach feeding his animals.  A daughter of Charles Jamrach was to marry into a branch of the Wombwell family.

Employing agents across the UK and abroad, Jamrach sought to corner the market for exotic wildlife imports, which could then be sold on to the likes of the Wombwells, and later, it would seem, also be used as raw material for wild animal themed furniture, or what became known as Wardian furniture. To exemplify, one later commentator advised that elephants' feet 'make fine footstools, liquor stands, or, if cut long in the leg, umbrella stands'.

Jamrach’s own version of the Bengal Tiger story was actually published in ‘The Boys’ Own Paper’ in 1879. In Jamrach’s version, the purchaser was not George Wombwell junior, but Mr Edmonds of the Wombwell Menagerie, and relative of George. This would have been James Edmonds, husband of Harriett Wombwell (note: not the Harriett Wombwell who was the daughter of Maria West) who had inherited from the original George, Menagerie Number Two. This would not of course though preclude George junior’s involvement in the transaction. 

It should be said though that distinguishing fact from fiction in the Wombwell story is a fool’s errand. Theirs was an operation that could have taken out a patent for Chinese whispers.

But here are Jamrach's own final words on the Bengal Tiger incident, together with some masterly comments from the presiding Judge, who had nothing but praise for the charismatic Jamrach for saving the boy's life, regardless of the minor detail that it was he who had been responsible for endangering it in the first place.  

The boy was taken to the hospital, but with the exception of a fright and a scratch, was very little hurt. I lost no time in making inquiry about him, and finding where his father was, I offered him £50 as some compensation for the alarm he had sustained. Nevertheless, the father, a tailor, brought an action against me for damages, and I had to pay £300, of which he had £60, and the lawyers the remaining £240. Of two counsel I employed, only one appeared ; the other, however, stuck to his fee right enough. At the trial the judge sympathised very much with me, saying that, instead of being made to pay, I ought to have been rewarded for saving the life of the boy, and perhaps that of a lot of other people. He, however, had to administer the law as he found it, and I was responsible for any dangerous consequences brought about in my business. He suggested, however, as there was not much hurt done to the boy, to put down the damages as low as possible. The jury named £50, the sum I had originally offered to the boy's father of my own good will. The costs were four times that amount. I was fortunate, however, to find a purchaser for my tiger a few days after the accident ; for Mr. Edmonds, proprietor of Wombwell's Menagerie, having read the report in the papers, came up to town post haste, and paid me £300 for the tiger. He exhibited him as the tiger that swallowed the child, and by all accounts made a small fortune with him.

All in all, quite an interesting little illustration of mid-Victorian values in action.