Jumbo the Circus Elephant
Jumbo was the world’s first animal superstar. There were millions of people who went to see the biggest elephant in the world, first an attraction at the London Zoo and later of Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was the most adored animal of the time, and yet his story is a tragic one, for he ended up being killed by a train when he was only 24. Jumbo was a unique elephant about whom many books have been written, the most popular by his keeper and lifelong friend, Matthew Scott. It is also supposed that he was the inspiration for Disney’s Dumbo.
Jumbo was born in 1860 somewhere near today’s border between Sudan and Ethiopia. When he was only two, his mother was killed by hunters in Sudan. Jumbo was captured and sold to an Italian animal dealer, Lorenzo Casanova, who was transporting African animals. The little elephant lived first in the Paris zoo, Jardin des Plantes, until 1865, when he was bought by the London Zoo, where he got his name Jumbo. Although it is not clear what was the meaning of the name Jumbo, whether it was a variation of “Jumbe,” the Swahili word for “Hello,” or something else, it is certain that the word Jumbo became a synonym for something big.
At the time, people were eager to see and learn more about species of African wildlife. Although many were familiar with Asian elephants, the African ones were bigger and less common, and Jumbo was quite a sensation. He was given to Matthew Scott, a bachelor in his early thirties who seemed to have stronger bonds with animals than with people. The two got along and eventually became best friends. Quite often Scott slept in his friend’s stall after the two of them would share a bottle of scotch. Yes, Jumbo liked alcohol. Besides the whiskey he shared with Scott, Jumbo liked a keg of beer during the day.
Jumbo grew to almost 11 feet and weighed five tons, and sparked everyone’s curiosity. People loved him, especially children who rode on his back in a huge howdah. Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt were among many children who rode on Jumbo’s back. However, the elephant, although sociable, wasn’t enjoying his life in the zoo. He hurled himself against the walls and broke both his tusks, and when they regrew, he ground them down. Much of his behavior couldn’t be understood back then, and people feared that Jumbo was becoming aggressive, even though his unpleasant behavior occurred mostly at night when he was alone in his quarters. David Attenborough, the author of the documentary about Jumbo’s life, said that he was a “Jekyll and Hyde character.”
Fearing that he might hurt someone, Abraham Dee Bartlett, the superintendent of London Zoo, believed that the only solution left was to shoot the elephant. He also feared that Jumbo, aged 16 in 1881, was reaching elephant adolescence which came with his first outbreak of “musth,” a rise of testosterone which occurs annually and triggers bull elephants to mate. Their anxiety was over what spectators could witness in an aroused elephant.
