Tower menagerie

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The Tower Menagerie was a menagerie in the Tower of London . From 1235 to October 1835, the Tower of London housed a menagerie of wildlife. Most of them were big cats and bears , which were usually given as gifts to the respective monarch. The gifts sometimes also included more unusual animals, provided they were sufficiently exotic: the English Queen Isabella of France was presented with a porcupine as a welcome when she returned to England in 1313 . Accordingly, the animals kept there also included camels , ostriches , elephants , hyenas , owls , vultures , monkeys , rhinos and eagles . There were comparable animal husbandry occasionally in other royal residences or noble country estates. In contrast to these, however, the animals kept in the tower could be viewed. Initially, only those people who had the appropriate connections were allowed access. Over the centuries, however, the number of people who were allowed in grew. During the last decades, when wild animals were still kept in the tower, only the payment of an entrance fee was a requirement in order to be able to see the animals. The ability to see such strange animals had a major impact on the representation of animals in art and literature. The painters George Stubbs and Edwin Landseer , for example, found the models for exotic animals here.

The beginning of animal husbandry in the tower

The tradition of keeping animals in the Tower goes back to Henry III. back, who received three lions as a gift from his brother-in-law on the occasion of the marriage of his sister Isabella to Emperor Friedrich II . The three big cats that Henry III. The tower that had just been extended did not survive long. The last reference to this royal gift comes from 1240. In 1252 the tower housed a light-colored bear, this time a gift from the Norwegian king to Henry III. The sources do not specify the type of bear more precisely. Since brown bears were regularly seen as dancing bears in England, the animal attracted a lot of attention and a normal brown bear would have been an inadequate royal gift, the Norwegian gift was probably a polar bear . Until the London Zoo kept polar bears from 1827, it was likely to have been one of the few bears of this species to be seen in Great Britain. Thanks to a gift from the French King Louis IX. A little later, the royal menagerie was expanded to include an African elephant . The arrival of the beast in 1255 caused such a sensation that the elderly historian and abbot Matthew Paris traveled to London to see the elephant himself as it was transported through London. Paris recorded the event in its “Chronica Majora”.

Animal husbandry under the successors of Henry III

The successors of Henry III. continued the tradition of keeping animals in the tower. Lions were a traditional part of the menagerie; "Keeper of the king's lion" was accordingly the title of the person entrusted with the supervision of the animals. This office was not awarded to people with experience in animal husbandry, but to nobles who had somehow won the monarch's favor.

From 1420 the animals in the menagerie in the tower could be viewed against payment of an entrance fee. A decree of Henry VI. also regulated that the entrance fee was waived for those who brought a cat or dog to feed the lions. It can be assumed, however, that this by no means gave access to every London resident who was able to pay the high entrance fee of three sous . Presumably only those who had the appropriate letters of recommendation or connections could benefit from the royal menagerie.

Under James I , the tower complex was expanded at the beginning of the 17th century to include the now-defunct Lion Tower. In the courtyard belonging to the tower, the animals - including a tiger, eleven lions, a jackal and two lynxes - were given exercise. However, the area was also used to hunt animals. James I had mastiffs hunted for lions here, among other things, and set up a wooden viewing platform to better observe the spectacle from there. Overall, there was little understanding of adequate animal husbandry - the animals were kept in narrow cages that gave them little opportunity to move around. It was believed that an elephant would be adequately fed if he were only given wine to drink. The animal - a gift from the Spanish king - died after a few weeks.

The royal menagerie as a center of attraction

Green Monkey by George Stubbs

The existence of the royal menagerie in the Tower was unaffected by Oliver Cromwell's rule . Cromwell's brief reign brought about two changes, however: animal hunting was banned in the City of London and the Tower, and thus the royal menagerie, could increasingly be viewed by a paying audience. From the mid-1660s onwards, anyone who was able to pay the entrance fee was able to view the animals in the menagerie, the crown jewels and the arsenal. One of the frequent visitors to the tower was Samuel Pepys , who became a chronicler of his time through his diary. In his diary entry of January 11, 1660, Pepys reports, among other things, that on his way home he made a detour to look for his favorite lion by the name of Crowly in the tower .

Perhaps it was the income that led to Christopher Wren being hired to install additional cages in the courtyard of the Lions Tower to house eagles and owls. In 1697, a pamphlet even advertised a visit to the Tower for the first time. In addition to the obligatory lions, the showpieces of this time included a hyena and a tiger that the East India Company had given. Increasingly, the tower and its animals were among the sights that you had to see as a visitor to London. The phrase “Seeing the lions” refers to this when visiting the sights of the city, which not only include the Tower but also the Bedlam insane asylum . Someone “who has seen the lions” was cosmopolitan and experienced. 1698 the washing of the lions in the moat of the tower was announced for the first time on April 1st. This form of April Fool's joke appeared regularly in the decades that followed.

The menagerie in the tower as an object of study for art and science

In the 18th century, the scientific discussion of animals intensified. The anatomist and doctor John Hunter , who came from Scotland, dissected, among other things, the deceased animals in the royal menagerie around 1750. His goal was to compare reproduction, respiration and blood circulation of as many different animal species as possible. In the course of his life he examined a total of 500 different animal species, with the royal menagerie contributing such exotic animal species as elephants, tigers, rhinos and lions. The remaining exhibits - including skeletons of his objects of study - are now in the Royal College of Surgeons . Hunter also hired a number of painters to capture the animals in paintings and drawings. One of the most famous artists commissioned by him was George Stubbs . Among other things, Stubbs portrayed a rhinoceros newly arrived for the royal menagerie, which - after Dürer's anatomically incorrect rendering of a rhinocerus shaped the Central European conception of this animal species for centuries - gave a more accurate picture of this animal species.

The increasing interest in the natural sciences also had an impact on animal husbandry: the cages were modernized in the second half of the 18th century. Even though they were only three meters long by today's standards, they were much too small for large cats , but now they could at least be heated, the previously wooden floor was replaced by bricks. Young lions that were born in the Tower Menagerie then reached a reproductive age for the first time.

The first guide to the publicly accessible sights of the tower appeared in 1741 and, like the following publications, endeavored to give readers as precise a description as possible of the animal species to be seen.

The royal menagerie is being wound up

Statues made of wire as a memorial to the menagerie

Towards the end of the 18th century, the public's interest in the animals in the tower menagerie gradually waned. Circus companies traveling through Great Britain showed their paying visitors not only almost the same exotic animal species, but also other curiosities such as particularly tall people as "giants". The number of animals and species kept in the menagerie steadily decreased until in 1822 Alfred Cops was hired as the first experienced animal keeper. He found only an elephant, a few birds and the first grizzly shown in Great Britain as part of the royal menagerie. With the support of George IV he began to rebuild the menagerie and to add a large number of new animal species. In 1829, in addition to the obligatory lions, tigers and bears, an ocelot , cheetah , caracal , various hyenas, zebras, llamas, parrots, anaconda and rattlesnakes could be seen. The renewed bloom of the tower menagerie lasted only a very short time. After the London Zoo opened, the animals were transferred to the zoo. One reason for this was the attack by a lion on some soldiers in 1835, the year of the transfer.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alison Weir: Isabella, Random House, London 2005, ISBN 0-7126-4194-7
  2. ↑ Hahn, p. 13
  3. ↑ Hahn, p. 20f
  4. ↑ Hahn, p. 23
  5. ↑ Hahn, p. 73
  6. ↑ Hahn, pp. 92-101.
  7. ↑ Hahn, p. 107f
  8. ^ Hahn, pp. 127 and 139
  9. ↑ Hahn, pp. 140f and 154–157
  10. ↑ Hahn, pp. 158-160.
  11. ↑ Hahn, p. 178
  12. ↑ Hahn, p. 175
  13. ↑ Hahn, pp. 206-207.
  14. ↑ Hahn, pp. 209-212.
  15. ^ Tower of London , Microsoft Encarta 1998

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 29 "  N , 0 ° 4 ′ 33"  W.