Wombwell,
Wild Beast Merchant,
Commercial Road,
London.
All sorts of Foreign Animals, Birds, &c., bought, sold, or exchanged, at the Repository, or the Travelling Menagerie.
Wombwell never missed Bartholomew Fair, as long as it continued to be held, but a story is told of him which shows that he was once very near doing so. His menagerie was at Newcastle-on-Tyne within a fortnight of the time when it should be in Smithfield, and it did not seem possible to reach London in time; but, being in the metropolis on some business connected with his Commercial Road establishment, he found that Atkins was advertising that his menagerie would be “the only wild beast show in the fair.” The rivalry which appears to have existed at that time between the two great menagerists prompted Wombwell to post down to Newcastle, and immediately commence a forced march to London. By making extraordinary exertions, he succeeded in reaching the metropolis on the morning of the first day of the fair. But his elephant had exerted itself so much on the journey that it died within a few hours after its arrival on the ground.
Atkins heard by some means of his rival’s loss, and immediately placarded the neighbourhood with the announcement that his menagerie contained “the only living elephant in the fair.” Wombwell resolved that his rival should not make capital of his loss in this manner, and had a long strip of canvas painted with the words—“The only dead elephant in the fair.” This bold bid for public patronage proved a complete success. A dead elephant was a greater rarity than a live one, and his show was crowded every day of the fair, while Atkins’s was comparatively deserted. The keen rivalry which this story illustrates did not endure for ever, for, during the period of my earliest recollections, from forty to fifty years ago, the two great menageries never visited Croydon Fair together, their proprietors agreeing to take that popular resort in their tours in alternate years.
I never failed, in my boyhood, to visit Wombwell’s, or Atkins’s show, whichever visited Croydon Fair, and could never sufficiently admire the gorgeously-uniformed bandsmen, whose brazen instruments brayed and blared from noon till night on the exterior platform, and the immense pictures, suspended from lofty poles, of elephants and giraffes, lions and tigers, zebras, boa constrictors, and whatever else was most wonderful in the brute creation, or most susceptible of brilliant colouring. The difference in the scale to which the zoological rarities within were depicted on the canvas, as compared with the figures of men that were represented, was a very characteristic feature of these pictorial displays. The boa constrictor was given the girth of an ox, and the white bear should have been as large as an elephant, judged by the size of the sailors who were attacking him among his native ice-bergs.
I have a perfect recollection of Wombwell’s two famous lions, Nero and Wallace, and their keeper, “Manchester Jack,” as he was called, who used to enter Nero’s cage, and sit upon the animal, open his mouth, etc. It is said that, when Van Amburgh arrived in England with his trained lions, tigers, and leopards, arrangements were made for a trial of skill and daring between him and Manchester Jack, which was to have taken place at Southampton, but fell through, owing to the American showing the white feather. The story seems improbable, for Van Amburgh’s daring in his performances has never been excelled.
Lion-tamers, like gymnasts, are generally killed half-a-dozen times by rumour, though they die in their beds in about the same proportion as other men; and I remember hearing an absurd story which conferred upon Manchester Jack the unenviable distinction of having his head bitten off by a lion. He was said to have been exhibiting the fool-hardy trick, with which Van Amburgh’s name was so much associated, of putting his head in the lion’s mouth, and to have been awakened to a sense of his temerity and its consequences by hearing the animal growl, and feeling its jaw close upon his neck.
“Does he whisk his tail, Bill?” he was reported to have said to another keeper while in this horrible situation.
“Yes,” replied Bill.
“Then I am a dead man!” groaned Manchester Jack.