Book: The Tower Menagerie

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Tower-Menagerie-600-Year-Collection-Ferocious/dp/B000H2MY0K/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312906642&sr=1-1]Amazon.com: The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London: Daniel Hahn: Books[/ame]

Just finished reading this book: The Tower Menagerie by Daniel Hahn (first published 2003). It is about the wild animal collection housed in the Tower Of London, which lasted from the early 1200's to the early 1800's. (I mean the animal collection lasted that long, not the tower, which of course is still there).

The information is of course interesting to any ZooChatter, but I think especially to those of you who live in the UK (and especially in London). The book itself is fair - not bad by any means and not difficult or technical, just a bit dry in the writing style. The book jacket says it is the author's first book and I suspect he is a history teacher or the like who decided he needed to write a book finally. A more seasoned author may have made it a bit more lively, but I still enjoyed it.

The most interesting anectdote comes from the 1250's, when the king of Norway gifted England a "pale" or "white" bear, which the author presumes to mean a polar bear. (In my own mind, it could also have been a pale brown bear, though the idea of a polar bear is more fun). In either case, this bear came with a chain and muzzle and in order to save on food bills was taken regularly down to the nearby Thames River to catch fish for itself! What a sight that must have been for ship crews coming up the river!

The end of the book very briefly touches on the formation of the London Zoo and even more briefly the Dublin Zoo. There is also a decent and interesting section on Exeter Exchange (the infamous English menagerie housed on the second floor of a commercial building).

As I said, a bit dry in spots but still enjoyable for anyone interested in the history of zoos and especially for anyone living in London or other parts of England.

 

I have this book! I love it. It's informative, and interesting. But, as you said, it is dry in areas.

 

There is an exhibition on at the Tower on this subject:

Royal Beasts

It's on my list of things to do, if I get round to it I will report back.

 

Wow, that is a cool exhibition. Too bad I am not going back to London soon as that would make a perfect followup visit to reading the book.

 

Personally, I found this exhibition rather disappointing.

If you were planning to visit the Tower of London anyway then this it is, perhaps, a worthwhile extra but I really don’t think that it is worth visiting the Tower especially to see this exhibition.

It’s hard to know what audience it was aimed at. I doubt that the average tourist visiting the Tower of London is particularly interested in the history of the menagerie and I’m sure that none of the information supplied would tell anybody seriously interested in zoo history anything that they did not know already.

 

I did too. I visited mainly to see it but enjoyed the rest of my Tower visit far more. It was very small and simplistic- presumably just aimed at the general tourists to the Tower. One disadavantage is that the 'Lion Tower' the site of the Tower menagerie, is no longer there- it was apparently located where the current ticket/gift shops are now sited, so there is no concrete 'evidence' to see anymore.

For anyone planning to visit, I believe the exhibition closed at end of July.

 

I just finished reading "The Tower Menagerie" and for the most part I really enjoyed the book. I am an English/Social Studies high school teacher and thus I've always been intrigued by historical events...especially if captive wildlife is the topic! It is disheartening to think that big cats used to be kept in the Tower in tiny cages 10 feet in length, and that Chunee the elephant at Exeter Exchange was chained by his back feet and kept locked in an enclosure not much bigger than himself. Eventually the elephant was gunned down with 152 bullets embedded in his skin, just one more example of animal cruelty in historical times.

The book did a great job of portraying the mindset of earlier eras, when animals such as dragons, unicorns and griffons were widely considered true species, and of course a polar bear fishing in the Thames would have been an amazing sight for all to see regardless of ones place in society.

 

Continuing with this digression from the Tower Menagerie, a few additional comments about the shooting of ‘Chunee’:-

The elephant ‘Chunee’ was gunned down at the Exeter ‘Change menagerie by a contingent of soldiers in 1826. Amongst those in the crowd watching this event was a fourteen year old boy -Abraham Bartlett - who years later became the Superintendent of London Zoo.

Bartlett never forgot the horror of this witnessing this; it has been said that this was one of the reasons he was eager to sell the famous African elephant ‘Jumbo’ to Barnum as he did want to be responsible for ordering a dangerous elephant to be destroyed.