THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

By the 1850s elephants were one of the most sought-after species in European zoos; the twenty already in captivity were all smaller, more docile Asian elephants. ¹  Jumbo—who wasn’t Jumbo yet—was the first, live African elephant to reach Europe. ²

After a harrowing trip—six weeks across the desert, eight hundred miles by boat, two hundred miles by train, followed by another boat and another train—he ended up in a French zoo (the largest zoo in Europe then). ³ That zoo soon traded him (along with another African elephant named Alice) to its direct competitor, London’s Regent’s Park Zoo, for a rhino; the Regent’s one elephant had recently died from shock during a violent thunderstorm.

“At the time there was fierce rivalry between Europe’s zoological gardens, and the prestige of being the first institution to obtain a living African elephant became a matter of great importance, but nowhere was the urgency felt more keenly than at the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in London.”

By the time the Regent’s acquired Jumbo though, he was in bad shape. The French hadn’t taken good care of him (not a real kick in the teeth to anyone), and upon arrival in London his soon-to-be lifelong, devoted trainer Matthew Scott observed:

“A more deplorable, displeased and rotten creature never walked God’s earth. His condition was simply filthy. He had been in the care of Frenchmen for several years, and they either did not know how to treat the race of elephants, or culpably neglected his raising.... The poor thing was full disease, which had worked its way through the animal’s hide, and had almost eaten out his eyes. The hoof of the feet and the tail were literally rotten, and the whole hide was so covered with sores, that the only thing I can compare it to was the condition of the man of leprosy in the bible.”

Matthew Scott was the second to last child of seventeen (sixteen boys, one girl). His father died the year that he turned four, and his mother—imagine being the mother of sixteen boys—wrote him off as a “rough, naughty lad, full of devilment;” precisely what she meant by ‘devilment’ is unclear. What is clear is that he was a loner, and a loner who loved animals.

At London’s Regent’s Park Zoo, he started out as the keeper of a pandemonium of parrots, and management soon upgraded him to deer and antelope, on account of his good, Honest work. What set Scott apart were his devotion and his sometimes unorthodox approach to care-taking: He once spent seventeen twenty-four-hour days personally tending to an “eggbound” (i.e., pregnant) kiwi.

When Jumbo arrived in London, Scott was just thirty-two, and though he hadn’t ever worked with an elephant before, the superintendent saw his credentials for what they were and put him in charge of Jumbo.

Under Scott’s watch—the two were close to inseparable, and Jumbo would obey no one else—Jumbo slowly regained his health (aided by a diet that included a gallon or two of whiskey a day). 

But Jumbo’s health wasn’t the only problem. He was moody and irritable and clearly disliked being confined (which if you “work” in a zoo is a real issue). He charged the doors of his cage and threw fierce fits from time to time. And though he never misbehaved in public and seemed to appreciate children—including the young Winston Churchill, who rode on his back for a fifteen-minute tour—the owners of the zoo were deeply concerned about his temper tantrums. They knew full well that African elephants were not only “bigger” and “badder” than their Asian cousins, but also that they had never been domesticated. They became so concerned that they decided to accept an offer from P.T. Barnum.

Phineas Taylor Barnum (who did not say “there’s a sucker born every minute” but could have) “...purchased the American Museum in 1841, decades before he began his circus career, and carried the dime store museum to its apotheosis. His magnificent five-story edifice on lower Broadway featured an aquarium, a shooting gallery, wild animals, paintings, historical artifacts, and exotic curios from all over the world. Its Lecture Room scheduled daily dramatic performances, and, under the pretext of providing educational content, exhibited a continually renewed selection of human oddities...In the 1860s Barnum capitalized on the evolution controversy by centering his Lecture Room entertainment around an exhibit known as ‘What Is It?’ A supposed missing link, said to have been captured in Africa, the creature was billed as a ‘unique specimen of BRUTE HUMANITY.’ In reality, ‘It’ was William Henry Johnson, a black man from New Jersey.”

Barnum went on to buy his first freak (and opening act) for a thousand dollars. Billed as “The Greatest Natural and National Curiosity in the World,” Joice Heth was a blind, toothless, eighty-year-old African American woman who, P.T. claimed was 161 and get this, George Washington’s former nurse. European opera star Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale, was part of his second act, as were Charles Sherwood Stratton, a.k.a. Tom Thumb (a 25” midget); Eng and Chang, Siamese twins, who married sisters and fathered twenty-two children collectively; tattooed men; a number of armless men and women; a number of bearded women (with arms); albinos; an embalmed mermaid from Fiji, most likely a monkey torso sewn to a large fish’s tail; people shot out of cannons; and a 275 lb., seven-year-old girl. ⁴ 

A tireless and relentless self-promoter, who practically invented the “art” of PR, P.T. believed that show business was the only way to escape the “severe drudging practicalness of life.” ⁵  (Of course we now know, thanks to the FDA, that drugs are.)  Close to the end of his career, at the age of seventy-two, Barnum bought Jumbo for “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

When the newspapers announced the sale of Jumbo to Barnum, there was a public outcry: Jumbo, beloved by British schoolchildren, had become a national institution. People wrote Barnum letters begging him to withdraw his offer and formed a Jumbo Defense Fund. ⁶  Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales and the London Times expressed their displeasure. Jumbo’s fans sent him his favorite buns (a mass-gesture that was appreciated) and a court injunction was set in motion. None of that kept Jumbo from his fate though. After seventeen years in England, he left home—but not willingly.

At first he lay down and refused to go anywhere. Then, for weeks, he balked at entering the specially constructed 14’ x 8’ x 12’ oak and iron crate on wheels, with doors on either side, that would take him to the U.S. bound freighter that Barnum had chartered. Crowds began to show up to boo the opposition as he fought the chains (which frightened him).

Finally, thanks to Scott’s efforts, Jumbo entered his crate. He and it were then taken to the ship, where a crane hoisted Jumbo and his crate onto the deck.  

Fifteen days later, on April 9^th, Easter Sunday, 1882, Jumbo arrived in New York City, where marching bands and hysterical crowds greeted him. “Jumbomania” was in full swing. Pulled by sixteen horses and pushed by elephants, the circus paraded him up Broadway to Madison Square Garden.

Hailed as the Barnum & Bailey Circus’ new star attraction and billed as the largest elephant in the world at 12’ high, 6.5 tons, Jumbo was immediate front-page news and became the most famous animal in the world in no time. ⁷  He had a profound effect on the box office receipts, and ancillary profits rose (on account of Jumbo trading cards, posters, cigars and other “stuff”). And at first, Jumbo seemed to like the circus too. He appeared to be calmer, and he seemed to be at ease with the other elephants.

That all changed though, once the circus went on tour in the eastern U.S. and Canada, using a hundred freight cars to haul all their personnel, performers, equipment and animals. Jumbo, of course, had his own bespoke ride: a 40’ x 13’ x 8’ railroad carriage, but like most sentient beings, he couldn’t stand traveling: “The shaking and jar of the train, the worrying noises, etc. kept him in a constant ferment of nervous excitement and he gave me little chance for sleep,” wrote Scott (who had his own bed and toilet). The only thing that seemed to settle him down was the bottle of beer that Scott gave him at bedtime. 

In September 1885 the circus found itself in a small, Ontario town. After the final show, some local officials told them no trains were scheduled so they could take a shortcut across the railroad tracks to save time (and money) as they loaded up the animals. It was 9 p.m., and almost all of the other elephants had been loaded; Scott was leading Jumbo and Tom Thumb to their private car when, as an eyewitness recalled:

“The flagman [began] frantically waving his lantern, trying to stop the oncoming train…. Scotty realized the danger. ‘Run, Jumbo, Run,’ he cried, half-sobbing…. I could see Jumbo running down the tracks. His trunk was held high in the air and his trumpeting sent paralyzing shivers down either side of my spine. At that moment the locomotive struck the small elephant, hurtling him down the embankment and against a telephone pole. Jumbo in the meantime had kept on at a break-neck speed.” ⁸

The train, with its brakes squealing, crashed into Jumbo and knocked him down to the embankment, where, the eyewitness continued:

“The animal...reached out his long trunk, wrapped it around the trainer and then drew him down to where that majestic head lay blood stained in the cinders. Scotty cried like a baby. Five minutes later, they lifted him from the lifeless body...That night Scotty laid down beside the body of his friend. At last, exhausted from the strain, he fell asleep.”

Jumbo was just twenty-four. ⁹

“The loss was tremendous but such trifles never disturb my nerves,” offered Barnum, clearly not unnerved. In fact, he had planned years before to have Jumbo stuffed post-haste in case something along those lines were to happen. Within forty-eight hours the leading taxidermist in the country was on the scene turning Jumbo singular into Jumbo plural: a stuffed hide Jumbo (thanks to 78,280 nails) and a skeletal Jumbo. The two were ready and on display for the opening of the new season. (Scott, who was never anything but faithful, toured with Jumbo and then disappeared from history.)

As we all know though, the show must go on.


EPILOGUE

Jumbo’s life story was probably the inspiration for the 1939 children’s book Dumbo. Walt Disney read the book and in 1941 turned it into an animated movie.
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¹   African elephants—the ones with the really, really big ears—are more aggressive than their smaller, lighter Asian (or, as they are sometimes called Indian) cousins. (African elephants also happen to be the largest, living land animals.)

²   Jumbo may (or may not) have been named before he arrived in England; nobody knows—not even his trainer, Matthew Scott. 

What’s also unclear are the exact etymological origins of the word ‘jumbo.’ It probably comes from ‘mumbo jumbo’: “a grotesque idol said to have been worshipped by certain West African people; obscure or meaningless talk or writing; nonsense.”

³   A few incongruous facts and observations about the history of zoos:

Though they didn’t get to be called “zoos” until the 1930s, like almost anything of any import, zoos date back to ancient China and Egypt. More recently (sort of), zoos took part in ancient Aztec civilization & culture.

Then, predictably, Europeans (followed by capitalism) took over: Aristocrats had private menageries over to their endless, sprawling grounds, and with the rise of 15^th and 16^th century trade, those grounds/zoos became public gardens.

Today over six hundred million people visit eleven thousand zoos each year.

⁴   Eng and Chang, the two Siamese twins featured in Barnum’s second act, were actually born in Siam (as Thailand was known back then).

⁵   Barnum not only gave us the first museum for the masses, but also the first beauty contest.

⁶   P.T. himself may have been behind this ‘spontaneous’ outburst. 

⁷   To emphasize his size, Barnum paired him with a baby elephant named Tom Thumb.

⁸  An elephant’s top speed is 25 m.p.h. 

⁹  Elephants can live up to sixty, and in rare cases even longer.


Bibliography

Adams, Judith A.; The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills.

Baratay, Eric and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier; Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West.

Chambers, Paul; Jumbo: This Being the True Story of the Greatest Elephant in the World.

Di Silvestro, Roger L.; The African Elephant: Twilight in Eden.

Gibson, Greg; Hubert’s Freaks.

Harris, Neil; Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum.

Kunhardt, Phillip B., Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt; P.T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman.

Wallace, Irving; The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum.

Wilson, Susan; “An Elephant’s Tale: An Unadulterated and Relatively True Story Chronicling the Life, Death and Afterlife of Jumbo, Tufts’ Illustrious Mascot,” Tufts Online Magazine, Spring 2002, http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/spring2002/jumbo.html.

 “A grotesque idol…”; OED

“At the time….”; Chambers, 23

“Elephants live…”; Di Silvestro

“A more deplorable…”; Chambers, 52

“The flagman…”; Wilson, 1

“The animal…”; Ibid

“The loss…”; Kunhardt, 298

“Purchases the…”; Gibson, 12

“The shaking and jar...”; Chambers, 179