The story begins with the capture of an infant elephant in Eastern (not Western) Africa, some time around 1861–2. After a lengthy and arduous journey across the Sahara Desert, the elephant who would become Jumbo ended up in the markets of Cairo, Egypt. There, he was spotted and purchased by the animal collector Johann Schmidt. Schmidt specialized in the trade of exotic creatures. He bought them from trappers for a low price and sold them to European zoos for a high price. Such were the beginnings for one young, little elephant.
Schmidt dispatched his precious cargo across the Mediterranean Sea. Arriving in continental Europe, the elephant was then transported over-land to Paris. Jumbo’s new home turned out to be none other than the famous Jardin des Plantes. He was soon introduced to his first cage-mate. This was Alice, a young African female elephant. The pair, though, did not remain in the City of Lights for long.
The managers of the French menagerie soon decided that they wanted to add an Indian rhinoceros to the collection. The London zoo happened to have one and was willing to make a trade for a pair of elephants. With the deal agreed upon, Jumbo and Alice were shipped across the English Channel. The two arrived in London in 1865. The male elephant made for a disappointing show. Sickly and thin, he looked as if he could die at any moment. But, over the next few weeks, he made a robust recovery.
For the next seventeen years, Jumbo remained in London. And he grew and grew and grew: in terms of both size and popularity. Reaching a height of eleven and a half feet, the elephant came to weigh-in at a hefty six-and-a-half tons. This sheer size earned him the title of the world’s largest elephant. As for his popularity, everyone knew about Jumbo: from the thousands of yearly visitors who gazed their eyes upon him during his exhibitions to the countless number of schoolchildren who rode on his back in the howdah (or Indian carriage). Even Queen Victoria, Theodore Roosevelt, and P.T. Barnum once made that steep climb onto the broad back of this mighty pachyderm. Jumbo was almost as well known in the Americas as he was in England. Yet, not everything was quite as idyllic as it might seem. For the Regent’s Park Zoo did have a serious problem on its hands—one which it zealously kept secret from the general public.
Jumbo had always been known for his mild temperament. He was friendly to visitors. He was gentle around children. But, as he entered into his teens, his mood and behavior began to change. Jumbo had his own personal handler, a man called Matthew Scott. Scott earned his reputation as a top rank animal trainer years earlier when attempting to trap an angry, adult hippopotamus. The animal had escaped his enclosure and was running amok in the park. When cornered by the keeper, the hippo charged him and took a ferocious snap. Scott only survived this attack with his life and limbs intact by nimbly hopping a fence at the last second. His new job, by contrast, looked at first to be far simpler: taking care of a gentle elephant. By the 1880s, however, Scott found this assignment to be ever more challenging. Jumbo had now entered into adolescence.
Modern zoologists call this developmental period: musth (Hindi word for madness). And they define it as a phase of glandular secretion, higher testosterone-levels, and heighten sexual arousal. In other words, this is a case of over-active and uncontrollable hormones; otherwise known as “heat.” One would have hoped that the fields of natural science would have moved beyond the 17th century and biological determinism. But to no avail. Non-physiological factors—such as captivity, poor labor-conditions, brutal training methods, or the grind of the entertainment industry—do not matter. Intellectual maturity and independence of mind are not considered. Rebellious attitudes and vengeful emotions do not exist. Freedom, or the desire for autonomy, is something that an elephant could never imagine. Agency is a non-concept.
But Jumbo was no scientist, and he certainly did not see himself as a machine. Resistance was his new thought. He flew into terrible rages. He tried repeatedly to escape. He hurled his body against his enclosure. On one occasion, while attempting to ram his fearsome tusks through the iron-doors of his exhibition cage, Jumbo injured himself so severely that surgery was required. Matthew Scott oversaw the procedure and, as usual, was able to calm the giant beast. The keeper’s most successful method to soothe the elephant’s nerves actually involved supplying Jumbo with large quantities of beer. This even became a ritual between the two: drinking time. Once, when the trainer forgot to give Jumbo his share of the nightly brew, he was slammed to the floor by the thirsty giant. Scott never made that mistake again. Yet, there were times—increasing in number as the years wore on—when inebriation did not work to quiet the elephant. It reached a point where Regent Park directors lived in constant fear of what Jumbo might do next. So afraid did they become that the principle director purchased an elephant gun for the protection of the zoo and its employees. If a fight ever got completely out of hand, Jumbo would be shot dead. But just when the situation looked its worse, the London zoo received an amazing stroke of good fortune.
P.T. Barnum’s American circus, promoted as the Greatest Show on Earth, was lacking a center piece—that truly grand figure among other great spectacles. Barnum’s archrival, the Cooper and Bailey’s Allied Show, had its star: the baby Columbia. She was the first elephant ever born in captivity in the United States, and Barnum had made many bids to purchase her. But the Allied Show refused to sell. So Barnum did the next best thing, luring James Bailey to his side, and then went right on searching for another big-time celebrity. He soon found what he was looking for in London. This was Jumbo, a true icon with enough star power to fill his big top every night of the week. Barnum offered the zoo $10,000 for the elephant.
The Regent Park directors were elated. This was a lot of money, and Jumbo had simply grown too dangerous to keep. He had to be sold. The zoo, however, was not prepared for the sheer scale of negative publicity that it would receive regarding this move. The British public was outraged at the idea of shipping Jumbo off to the States. Thousands of children wrote letters to the Queen in protest. Lawsuits were filed to block the sale. Newspapers openly vilified park administrators. Yet, the zoo would not be swayed from its decision.
In the spring of 1882, patrons funneled in to catch one last glimpse of Jumbo and wave good-bye. Crowds of this size had never before been seen at Regents Park, and the zoo itself profited handsomely from this planned farewell, pocketing $40,000 in ticket sales alone. But the final day did come, and the elephant was escorted from his exhibit area and led onto the main grounds. The original plan was to load Jumbo into a large container, which would then be paraded through the London streets. The journey would end at a Thames quay for shipping. This plan, though, proved to be a far more difficult to carry out than first imagined. For Jumbo declined to enter the container.
Matthew Scott, his trainer, tried every technique he could think of to coax the huge elephant into the crate. But each time, Jumbo would approach, stop short, and proceed to lie down on the ground. After that, there was no budging him. As the days passed and embarrassment mounted, the London press declared that this delay was a testament to the fact that the elephant did not want to leave England. Barnum was not amused, and his agent in London grew impatient. The circus’s chief handler was sent for. William Neuman, otherwise known as Elephant Bill, was Barnum’s most notorious and brutal trainer. Instead of offering pachyderms a gallon of pale ale, Elephant Bill opted for a spear-like lance as his primary motivational tool. After his trip across the Atlantic, Neuman set to work straightaway at the reconditioning of Jumbo.
At first, the trainer tried more gentle means of persuasion: verbal commands, pushing, prodding. But none of these were successful. Next, he fitted the elephant with leg chains and pulled on the beast. This method too failed. Jumbo just flatly refused to enter the container. Neuman then pulled out his trusty lance and began using the weapon, but the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals intervened and put a stop to the stabbings. Neuman was furious: both at this level of oversight, which would have never happened in the States, and at his own inability to quell Jumbo’s recalcitrance. It was rumored that the American trainer even threatened to shoot the elephant, if that was the only way to get the animal to Barnum. Ultimately the use of lethal force was not needed, as Scott was finally able to convince Jumbo to walk into the crate. Some speculated that Scott himself was partially responsible for this delay,
