In the end of the 19th century some thinkers debated about the link of human and primate. Has T.H. Huxley ever met a chimp, an orang, a gorilla, a bonobo, a gibbon? And so, what about Richard Owen, Samuel Wilberforce, prof Beale, Brodie, Robert FitzRoy?
I don't think bonobos had been recognised as a species in those days. Certainly Orangutans and Chmpanzees were imported, although they didn't usually last long.
Indeed "Jenny", the first orang-utan at London Zoo, arrived in 1837 and was housed in the newly-built Giraffe House. Confusingly. London Zoo's second orang-utan was also was also called "Jenny"; Richard Owen certainly saw the second "Jenny" at London Zoo (as did Queen Victoria).
An interesting question, on which I have done a little research. Richard Owen saw many of the animals at London Zoo eventually, as he conducted post mortem examinations and anatomical dissections on them, including the zoo's first orang, which died three says after it arrived in 1830 and 'Tommy' the first chimp in 1836. I suspect that he only saw a few of them alive. At this time very few apes reached Britain (or the rest of Europe), and those that did only survived for a few months at best. Cross's and Wombwell's menageries had an orang and a gorilla in 1835 and 1855 respectively, so it is possible that one of these men might have seen one of them - but highly unlikely. I have read that roughly 20 orangs were kept at London Zoo between 1856 and 1896 (International Zoo News, number 371). As both Bishop Wilberforce and T H Huxley worked together as Vice-Presidents of the Zoological Society in 1861, only a year after their famous debate about evolution in Oxford, they may well have had opportunities to see an orang; but Wilberforce was dead and Huxley very old before the zoo received a gorilla and a second chimp. However it might take a good deal of research to find any evidence for this. I am afraid that I do not know anything about the history of gibbons at the zoo. I presume that the Brodie you mention is Benjamin Brodie, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, who was a friend of Huxley. I presume that he would have had less opportunity than the others. I'm sorry that I don't know who you mean by Professor Beale.
The Zoological Society of London’s first orang-utan was acquired in 1830; this short-lived animal was housed for a couple of days in the Zoological Society’s offices in Bruton Street and never lived long enough to reach London Zoo. (In those days, the Zoological Society’s offices were not on the same site as the zoo.) Consequently (and I realise that this is being pedantic) the orang-utan, “Jenny”, kept in London Zoo’s Giraffe Hose, and visited by Charles Darwin, was London Zoo’s first orang-utan even though not the Zoological Society’s first orang-utan.
The story of ZSL's first few orangs is rather confusing. The first one was kept in the offices for those few days, but an eminent zoologist such as Owen could have seen it if he wished - although I expect it would have been recorded somewhere if he had. The second was the first 'Jenny', but it seems that she was also called 'Lady Jane' (I suspect this may have been her official name, while her keepers called her 'Jenny'). For a while she was kept with a young male called 'Tommy', not to be confused with the chimp of the same name.
