History of the Golden Hamster: 6. Golden Hamsters kept in Scotland at the turn of the 20th Century

All the captive Golden Hamsters up to the 1970s were descended from a single litter collected by Israel Aharoni near Aleppo in 1930. That statement is correct but I was surprised when I learnt of a colony of Golden Hamsters being kept in Britain for thirty years until around 1910.

Seven years ago, I was scanning the magazines in W.H. Smith’s and noticed in a now-defunct but then I think new monthly, Small Furry Pets, an article by Dr Karl Shuker on the history of the Golden Hamster.

I was particularly interested in one paragraph:

Nothing more emerged regarding this newly-described species until 1879, when some live examples were brought back to England by James Skene, who had been working in the diplomatic service in Syria. These thrived and bred for 30 years…Then in 1910 the last generation of progeny descended from those original specimens died without breeding, and the golden hamster once again sank back into obscurity.

I was so intrigued that I bought the magazine and kept a copy of the article.

The only reference online to the hamsters brought back by James Skene was to an article written in 1992 by Chris Henwood, a noted keeper and writer on small rodents, for the now-defunct British Hamster Association:

So now if you take the old story as the truth then little was heard of the Golden Hamster for almost exactly 100 years. Wrong! In fact a group of unknown number was brought from Syria to the UK by James Skeene. He had been British Consul to Syria and on his retirement in 1880 returned to Britain. I can sadly find no reference that he wrote anything about the species in general or his animals in particular, and if anyone can help with this area I would be very grateful. It does however appear that they bred in this country at least until 1910 when the last individuals appear to have either died or been destroyed (perhaps on the death of Skeene?).

4th edition of Reynolds's
booklet

Only when I obtained the paper by the late Rolf Gattermann and his colleagues on the collection and ecology of Golden Hamsters in the late 1990s did I get any further information. They listed the collections (dead and alive) over the years, and for 1880 listed Skene, with the information having come from a book published in 1954 by H.W. Reynolds and published by the Zoological Society of London.

I could not find a copy of Reynolds’s book (really a booklet since it is only 32 pages) for sale. But the ZSL Library has two copies and their superb service to Fellows soon had a copy on my desk. This is what Reynolds wrote:

A single preserved specimen, without any particulars recorded, is in the Beirut Museum, and I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Rosslyn Bruce D.D., F.L.S., for the only other authentic record of specimens being found in the last century. According to Dr Rosslyn Bruce, his grandfather, James Henry Skene, of Rubislaw—who was for many years Consul-General at Aleppo, caught and bred a large number of Golden Hamsters and upon his retirement, in 1880, he brought back to Edinburgh a number of live specimens which were shared among is family and friends. This stock is understood to have bred in captivity for some thirty years, then the strain died out.

In this story we have three people of interest:

James Henry Skene (1812-1886)

Skene was a soldier, writer and diplomat. He served in the 73rd Regiment of Foot (later and eventually incorporated into the Black Watch). He sold his commission to settle in Greece, travel and write books on the region. His wife, Rhalou, whom he married in 1832, was a Fanariot. According to the family history, ‘He eventually became attached to the services of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, English [sic] Ambassador at Constantinople, and for his services during the Crimean War was appointed Vice-Consul at Constantinople, and afterwards Consul-General at Aleppo, from which office he retired in 1880, and died at Geneva on 3rd October, 1886’.

Skene’s daughter, Jane, was the mother of Rosslyn Bruce*.

Rosslyn Bruce (1871-1956)

Bruce is listed as a clergyman and a naturalist but I suspect that is the wrong order of precedence of his interests. He was in many ways the epitome of the old CofE wealthy parson. He had many interests—including hoaxes—and clearly enjoyed pulling the wool over the eyes of church authorities. He was born in Nottinghamshire, the son of Canon Lloyd Stewart Bruce and Jane Skene, one of eleven children. After divinity at Oxford (he was secretary of the Union but lost an election for the presidency to the evolution-denier Hilaire Belloc) he became a curate in Soho where he campaigned for better living conditions for children whose parents were on the stage and for the education of mothers in the care of babies (still necessary 120 years later).

His family controlled the living at Clifton in Nottinghamshire and Bruce was installed as rector there. (This story has many of the elements of an Anthony Trollope novel.) He broke his leg while fox hunting, an episode recounted in detail in the Nottingham Evening Post of 22 October 1907. A year later he married Rachel Gurney, a member of the banking family immortalised by W.S. Gilbert in his line from the judge (‘and a good judge too’) in Trial by Jury on how he had become a wealthy lawyer ‘by falling in love with a rich attorney’s elderly ugly daughter‘: ‘at length I became as rich as the Gurneys…’

From Clifton (later the site of the largest council housing estate in Europe) he moved to Edgbaston, Birmingham in 1912. During the First World War he went on Noel Baker’s humanitarian mission to the Balkans and served as chaplain to British troops in France.

In 1923 he became rector at Hustmonceux in East Sussex—and stayed there. The obituarist for The Times (21 January 1956) clearly thought he should have risen higher in the church hierarchy given he background and education. However, he clearly upset the upper reaches as newspaper explained:

He did much to beautify the ancient church of Herstmonceux, and fancifully explained how supernatural agencies had introduced new embellishments, for which the necessary faculty had not first been obtained from higher ecclesiastical authority. Such unorthodoxy of behaviour stood as a barrier to preferment that his abilities and devotion undoubtedly deserved.

The obituary went on to praise the gaiety of his company and his ‘deep love of all fellow creatures’.

Bruce’s interests emerge in the penultimate paragraph:

Rosslyn Bruce’s lifelong pastime was the care and breeding of animals. Horses, monkeys, birds, mice, rats, iguanas, snakes, dogs, ferrets, even bears and an elephant all passed through his cherishing hands. He was known as the greatest expert on smooth fox terriers, and bred several champions. He judged at dog shows far  and wide. One of Queen Victoria’s pets was a Skye terrier from his kennels.

Local press reports show that he gave talks about his animals kept in Nottinghamshire, Birmingham and Hurstmonceux and other animals can be added to the list: canaries, lovebirds, pigeons and a tortoise in his study; kangaroo, porcupines, racoons, chameleons, eagles and fleas. He told the Sussex Agricultural Express that his ambition as a boy was ‘to become the proprietor of a menagerie’.

His winding-up the church hierarchy extended to the news media. He told a reporter he had bred green mice—and the story, in modern terminology, went viral.

Rosslyn Bruce (centre) in 1916

Bruce appeared in the newspapers for another very sad reason that still resonates from 1912. Bruce’s sister, Kathleen, married Robert Falcon Scott—Scott of the Antarctic—and it was Rosslyn who informed the world in February 1913 that Kathleen, en route to New Zealand to meet the returning Terra Nova Expedition, had been informed of her husband’s death on the trek back from the South Pole.

There can be no doubt that the Reverend Doctor Bruce knew what he was talking about when he told Reynolds about the hamsters brought back to Scotland by Skene in 1880. I am still curious about the family and friends who kept the hamsters and how Bruce knew they had died out around 1910. Certainly, a number of the Skene family lived in Edinburgh (and helped bring up the eleven siblings of the  Bruce family after their mother, Jane, died in 1880, and their father in 1886).

Skene had many relatives and descendants. Do any of them know anything more or of anything written about his hamsters? And did Bruce himself have any of the offspring of Skene’s hamsters?

H. W. Reynolds

1st Edition

I have not been able to find out much about Reynolds, the author of the hamster book who was told of Skene’s hamsters by Rosslyn Bruce. Local newspapers show that he was secretary of a fanciers’ hamster club for the midlands and north of England and in 1949 was living at 7 Milford Road, Walton-on-the-Hill, Stafford. He and other fanciers imported ‘panda’ hamsters—a black and white colour form—which had first been bred in the U.S.A. He always appeared in print, as was usual then, as H.W. so I do not know his first names. My impression, from the emphasis on the suitability of hamsters for keeping in schools, is that he was a schoolteacher.

I have found no trace of him after 1950. The fourth edition of his booklet, Golden Hamsters, was published by the Zoological Society of London. The first edition, though, he published himself in 1948 as ‘Belvedere Booklet No. 1’. The website of a hamster breeder in Cambridge states:

Mr Reynolds was a member of the earliest hamster clubs in the UK and held the show prefix ‘Belvedere’ for his animals—which was also the name of his house.

His book obviously sold well to run to four editions. But why was the 4th and last, in 1954, published by the Zoological Society of London and not by Reynolds himself? My guess is that the booklet was useful to recommend to those seeking advice from the Zoo on hamsters during the hamster craze. Why Reynolds revised but did not publish the last edition remains unknown.

U.S. Version

I have just found on eBay’s U.S. site, an American edition of the book with the same text but more photographs. It was published by a Milo G. Denlinger in 1950 and printed in the U.S.A.

Reynolds published a second booklet, ‘Belvedere No. 2’, also in 1948. It was entitled Bishop the Hamster and Other Tales.

Edward Hindle provided an introduction to booklet No. 1 and provided a short review for the Autumn 1948 edition of Zoo Life. His introduction, written when he was Scientific Director at the Zoo, takes us back to the reason I began writing this series in the first place:

I received two pairs of these animals from Dr. S. Adler in the following year, and built up a stock maintained first at Hampstead and subsequently in my department at the University of Glasgow From the outset I had no difficulty in breeding them and was able to distribute specimens to any one interested. The London Zoological Gardens received a few pairs shortly before the war, which bred so prolifically that they were put on sale, and helped to make the Golden Hamster known to a much wider public.
Their rapid increase in general popularity dates from the end of the war and now they seem to have become thoroughly established as a domestic pet. 

*Francis Rosslyn Courteney Bruce at birth; Rosslyn Francis Courteney at death.

Reynolds HW. 1948. Golden Hamsters. 1st edition. Stafford

Reynolds HW. 1954. Golden Hamsters. 4th edition. London: Zoological Society of London

Reynolds HW. 1950. Golden Hamsters. USA: Milo G Denlinger

Skene WF (editor). 1887. Memorials of the Family of Skene of Skene. Aberdeen: New Spalding Club