Barnum's Animals
Indoor whales, giant elephants, trained pigs, and America's changing ideas about animals
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Let’s start with the New York Times’ account of a fire in the heart of Manhattan on July 14, 1865.
The whales were, of course, burned alive. At an early stage of the conflagration, the large panes of glass in the great “whale tank” were broken to allow the heavy mass of water to flow upon the floor of the main saloon, and the leviathan natives of Labrador, when last seen, were floundering in mortal agony, to the inexpressible delight of the unfeeling boys, who demanded a share of the blubber.
OK, indoor Beluga whales dying in an urban fire? That’s odd. But Beluga whales weren’t the only animals that perished on Broadway that day. Also inside the building was:
a collection of “sassy” monkeys, subdued dogs, meek rats, fat cats, plump pigeons, sleepy owls, prickly porcupines, gay guinea pigs, crowing cocks, hungry hounds, big monkeys, little monkeys, middle-aged, scheming monkeys, and a great many miserable, mangy monkeys. These animals and other creatures may have been happy, but they didn’t smell nicely; they doubtless lived respectable, but their antics were not pleasant to look at and, to tell the truth, they frequently fought fiercely, and were badly beaten for it. However, they are gone: all burned to death, roasted whole…
Tom Thumb, the “Giantess” Miss Swan, and the other human occupants of Barnum’s American Museum escaped. Many of the wax figures inside were “rescued” as well (a likeless of Jefferson Davis was beaten up by the crowd outside after bring carried to safety).
But the building was utterly destroyed. As we’ve seen, the many animals that P.T. Barnum had collected over the years perished in terrible circumstances, burning along with his huge collection of “curiosities.” The only animal survivor was “Ned the Learned Seal,” although some snakes may have gotten out, too: the Times says that an “anaconda, pythons, and other gigantic specimens of the ophidian tribe” were able to slither down the stairs “to the infinite astonishment and alarm of the multitude” that was gathered outside the burning building.
The image below shows the effort to fight the blaze, which consumed a number of nearby buildings:
Despite the terrible deaths of his animals, Barnum didn’t give up on housing wild animals in urban Manhattan. He built a new museum and filled it with even more curiosities, only to see that building burn down only three years later.
Again, countless animals perished in the blaze. Artist Henry Bispham imagined the scene:
Here’s what was left of the second museum, destroyed by fire and coated in ice after the water from the firefighters’ hoses froze:
How did hippos, whales, and snakes end up in a firetrap building in Manhattan? What were their lives like? And how did P.T. Barnum’s menageries reflect Americans’ changing ideas about the natural world? Let’s take a look inside the world of Barnum’s animals.
If you wanted to see an exotic animal in 1860s America, you had to go to Barnum’s American Museum. It opened three decades before America’s first zoo (in Philadelphia) and five decades before the Bronx Zoo in New York.
The museum had everything, containing elements of a freak show, a natural history museum, a wax museum, and an entertainment venue. There, you could see a famous singer, a human being of unusual size, a bearded lady, a Biblically-themed play about the evils of alcohol, a taxidermied elephant, genuine historical artifacts, and ridiculous fakes. There was something for everyone. This ad gives a sense of the place:
As you can see, in a single visit people could take in a minstrel show, gawk at a bearded lady, and see a real live “orang outang.” The orangutans — imported a great cost — were touted as a “connecting link between Man and Brute!!!!”
This 1864 ad focuses heavily on animals, including “educated white rats,” brook trout, sea horses, “living monster snakes,” and, of course, a whale.
Barnum’s beluga whales were some of his hottest attractions and his biggest headaches. Here’s an ad for the whales, which were captured off the coast of Canada:
TWO LIVING WHITE WHALES
weighing TWENTY THOUSANDS POUNDS per registers
Hudson River Railroad Co.,
after several months of immense labor and at an expense of
NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS,
were captured and brought to this city from the coast of Labrador and are
now disporting in that MINATURE OCEAN,
the MAMMOTH WHALE TANK,
the only specimen to be seen alive.
NOW IS THE TIME
to see these wonders as
THEIR LIVES ARE UNCERTAIN,
seven of the same species having died while being exhibited at this
Museum.
GEORGE, the great WHALE CAPTURER, will enter
the WHALE TANK every day at 10 3/4 A.M., 2 1/4 and 7 3/4 P. M.
Why were their lives uncertain? Because Barnum didn’t know how to keep them alive. He later wrote, as Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy relate in their excellent book Our Kindred Creatures,
I did not know how to feed or take care of the monsters, and, moreover, they were in fresh water, and this, with the bad air in the basement, may have hastened their death, which occurred a few days after their arrival, but not before thousands of people had seen them.
Barnum captured and killed a number of whales, many of which died within days or weeks or arriving at the museum, until the fires ended the cycle of misery.
After the second fire at his museum, Barnum tried something new, establishing a circus company in Wisconsin in 1870. His circus, like his museum, would rely heavily on the use of live animals. The most famous of his animal stars was Jumbo, an elephant that the London Zoo decided to sell to Barnum after it had begun to display worrisome behavior.
Jumbo’s whole story is a sad one. At the zoo, he fractured his own tusks by bashing them against the walls of his enclosure (probably in a vain attempt to relieve a toothache). When the zoo sold him, they couldn’t get him to enter a crate or walk down to the docks. Jumbo’s obstinance became the stuff of legend. This illustration shows the trainers’ various attempts to get him to cooperate:
Once in America, Jumbo became a main draw for the circus, billed as a “towering monster” and “the mighty lord of all beasts:”
Barnum wanted people to be impressed not just by Jumbo but by the effort that the circus put into transporting him around the world:
Jumbo was the undisputed star of the show, but he had plenty of costars. There were camels, giraffes, rhinos, and more:
Sadly, Jumbo was only in Barnum’s circus for three years — he was hit by a freight train as his handlers were walking him to his rail car in 1885. People posed with his body:
Though his key attraction had died, Barnum wasn’t about to give up on a source of revenue. He had Jumbo stuffed and displayed:
And, separately, put his skeleton on display:
Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, Barnum was not completely insensitive to the welfare of his animals. He actually maintained a long friendship with Henry Bergh, the founder of the ASPCA. After a dispute over whether Barnum should feed live rabbits to his snakes (Bergh objected, Barnum persisted because that was the way things went in nature), they continued to correspond about Barnum’s practices. Barnum didn’t take all of Bergh’s advice, but the activist did convince him to leave some of his wealth to animal charities when he died.
Barnum passed away a few years after Jumbo did, but his circus continued to grow, trading on his famous name. It eventually merged with the Ringling Brothers Circus to become the dominant circus in the United States. As it evolved, the enterprise continued to rely on animals to bring in the crowds. An advertisement from around 1900 bragged of not one but “2 Menageries:”
These menageries functioned like a traveling zoo, bringing exotic animals from town to town:
The animals would often parade down Main Street when the circus arrived:
The circus featured some animals that, like Jumbo, were intended to inspire fear and awe. Gargantua the gorilla was a cornerstone of the circus in the 1930s and 1940s:
But they also featured cute animals, like a baby giraffe:
And trained animals who impressed people with their skills:
We can see a few trends here. Barnum — and the people who ran his circus after he died — believed that people would flock to see exotic animals, animals that behaved like humans, animals that did death-defying tricks, and animals that were particularly large or scary. They also believed that people would not be all that curious about the welfare of the creatures in the circus.
They were right, of course. Barnum’s circus became a cultural phenomenon, thanks in large part to the thousands of animals that made up its various menageries. For more than a century, the circus was wildly popular. People attended the circus for decades without thinking too much about what the animals’ lives must have been like.
I went to the circus several times as a kid. It never occurred to me to think about whether the elephants, tigers, and horses were being treated well. I just enjoyed the show.
But, sometime between my childhood and the birth of my own kids, public opinion on the circus shifted. Circus performances became less popular, partially because people could not longer watch the animal performances without wondering about the welfare of the creatures involved. And audiences’ suspicions were correct — circuses had a long history of animal cruelty and neglect that goes back all the way to P.T. Barnum’s decision to bring wild animals from all over the world to a cramped firetrap of a museum in New York.
Eventually, the circus died. Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey abruptly stopped performing in 2017 due to dwindling audiences, local bans on various aspects of their animal acts, exposure of their cruel practices, and lawsuits from animal-rights groups.
After a six-year hiatus, the company started up again in 2023 — without animal performances.
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