Peto the Elephant: The Alternative Version

Happier Outcomes: Salt and Pepper from the Bostock and
Wombwell menagerie
 bathing in Wales in 1888.

When Mrs Wombwell finally arrived in London, looking forward to adding a newly acquired elephant to her menagerie, she may have experienced some difficulties in extracting out of George a straightforward explanation as to why she was now in receipt of some rather large bills for an ex-elephant whose skin and bones were now in the possession of a London naturalist. Should she ever have succeeded in uncovering the details, she might have learned, not very much to her pleasure, that the sequence of unfortunate events that had unfolded in this year of 1866 seems to have proceeded as follows:

i. George fails to board an uncooperative Peto the elephant, and an irritated captain sails off and leaves George and team kicking their heels in Paris and running up expense accounts for accommodation, food and drink for a full fortnight.
ii. George’s team, having then hired twelve horses and had a custom-made cage constructed, succeed in driving the cage into a hole in the road, upturning Peto the elephant, smashing the cage, and immediately having to pay premium price for a replacement to be hastily assembled.
iii. Nobody having thought to assess the space available on deck for the elephant, the captain now more irate than irritated, has to remove both a mast and a pump before they can set sail. More charges are no doubt added to the bill.
iv. On arriving in London. The chains supposed to lift the cage prove not to be strong enough. The cage is dropped with Peto inside and crashes through the deck of the steamer. The captain graduates from irate to incandescent.
v. His mood is not improved when George tests out Einstein’s theorem of stupidity regarding trying out the same experiment and expecting different results. The second set of chains break, and more damage is inflicted on the hapless steamer ‘Esther’.
vi. Leaving the fuming captain behind to total up his bill for damages incurred, George decides to accommodate Peto the elephant in an East London gateway. The unattended elephant lazily proceeds to pull up what is now at least a third set of chains, and gently but persistently begins to demolish the house above him. A sleeping couple are aroused from their slumbers by the sound of the floorboards beneath them being raised, and very possibly at the sight of an elephant’s trunk circling around their bed. Compensation for damage to private property and a generous pay-off to avoid further action seems likely.
vii. The elephant is marched on post haste to Cremorne Gardens. By this time the original French keeper has seen enough. The only thing in his mind is to get back to Paris, and put maximum distance between himself and George Wombwell junior. He no doubt exacts his own price for travel expenses, delays and psychological trauma.
viii. Peto then takes some limited but possibly satisfying revenge on the team by re-arranging Mr Hendy's rib cage. Hospital bills are now added to the growing list of expenses.
ix. Peto gets feverish, for which George blames Mr Smith's failure to keep the the elephant's quarters clean. George and the team remain at a loss to explain Peto's continuing foul temper. 
x. Since Peto remains uncooperative, they put him down, and sell off his skin and bones to Mr Rice, and thus complete the project assigned at a more than handsome loss.
xi. The team then settles down and awaits the arrival of Mrs Wombwell and her menagerie, and presumably work over various versions of stories that might account for their Clouseauish buffoonery, and mollify the out-of-pocket and astounded menagerie owner.

Could it just be that the Peto the elephant story remained so vividly in George's memory because it was his last great animal project, before being relegated to the back row of the menagerie band to blow into his cornet,  and be kept well, well, well away from the animals, and, particularly, elephants? 

The Death of Peto the Elephant

It did not take too long for the final denouement to unfold for the unfortunate Peto the elephant. As usual, finding others to blame for the calamities that he had played such a central role in engineering, George recorded that:

After some weeks finding that he was too vicious and dangerous for the menagerie it was decided to destroy him and he was sold to Mr C Rice the naturalist for his skin and bones.

Mr Rice was preparing to have him destroyed but Mr Smith would not allow it on his premises and bought it himself believing he could tame him by kindness – but to no purpose. I told Mr Smith that unless the den was kept constantly clean the animal would have fever in the feet and die – it so happened and this was the end of the Indian elephant “Peto”, the old companion of the now giant African elephant Jumbo.

Mr Rice was probably Charles Rice, recorded as a competitor of Jamrach's in the Victorian animal import business, so the purchase was most likely for commercial rather than scientific purposes. It is interesting also that George manages to provide two different versions of Peto's demise in two successive paragraphs, firstly suggesting that Peto had to be put down as a menace to society, and immediately after, managing to put the blame squarely on Mr Smith for allowing Peto to develop 'foot fever', an accusation for which for once he might possibly have had some justification. 

We may comfortably assume that the price paid by Charles Rice for the corpse of Peto the elephant can hardly have compensated Mrs Wombwell for her investment in bringing Peto to England, nor for her familial loyalty in entrusting George with the task of bringing her a new elephant. Skipping forward five years from George's dating of the Peto the Elephant saga to 1866, the 1871 census finds George in Stockton, Durham:



Passing over the fact that George's age varies quite wildly between records, presumably thanks to a liberal dose of imaginative self-reporting, he has now become a 'musician'. Barely fifty years of age, he has - just as he reported to the Daily Mail - been reduced to playing his cornet in the circus and menagerie bands. Anything to keep him away from the animals.