On 4 August 1919 The Times reported under the headline 'New Creatures at the Zoo' reported how things were going at London Zoo a year after the end of the First World War. It contained this statement:
The regular visitor and the sedulous zoologist will still see many gaps in the collection. It cannot be expected that these will be filled until the conditions of transport are more normal, and the desire to “profiteer” had disappeared from the tropical jungle. None the less there is now a good collection at Regent’s Park, more representative and richer in rare animals than any other menagerie in Europe…
A riposte came in a letter published 8 December that year, the gap of four months reflecting the time it had taken for the copy of The Times to reach East Africa and for a letter to reach London in return.
Sir,—Re your article published in The Times of August 4th 1919, under the heading of "New Creatures at the Zoo.” The statement that "it is not expected that the gaps in the collection of animals in the Zoological Gardens will be filled until the desire to profiteer has disappeared from the tropical jungle” is of considerable interest to us, as until recently we were five brothers (now four) who are engaged in big game hunting in Uganda and Central Africa, chiefly for ivory and skins, but always with on eye to obtaining some rare live animal which might be sold to the highest bidder, either the Royal Zoological Society or a similar society on the Continent or in America.
In conjunction with coffee planting in Uganda, we always made a living out of this in pre-war days, and in June last, when we were demobilised, two of us proceeded to the Belgian Congo on a hunting expedition. During this trip some ivory and lion skins were obtained, and we were also fortunate enough to secure a newly born female gorilla on Mount Mikeno at an altitude of 10,000ft; this animal is now three months old, and is in the best of health, and we have decided to sell her to the highest bidder, and have already invited an offer from the Royal Zoological Society; we also secured the skins and complete skeletons of a full-grown male and female gorilla, for which we.also intend inviting offers from various museums and from any private collectors with whom we can get in touch.
Unfortunately this otherwise successful expedition was marred by the death of one of the two “profiteers,” who was killed by a lion near Rutsburu, in the Belgian Congo, during the return, journey, they having camped there tor a few days in order to secure some lion skins and cubs if possible before leaving the Congo.
Possibly profiteering is carried on in connexion with buying and selling animals, but to describe this as "profiteering in the tropical jungle” tends to give the public the idea that the man who actually hunts the animals is the profiteer, whereas the hunter merely sells his specimens to the highest bidder.
There are various agents in every country who buy up animals from natives and others in order to sell them again to zoological societies and collectors, but these gentlemen are not to be found in the jungle, but in the towns in close proximity thereto, and, whether or not their dealings can be described as profiteering is not for us to say, but we would remind the writer of your article that prices out here for all necessities have gone up enormously since the Armistice, and there is no doubt that this is due to a great extent to profiteering at home, and would suggest to him that he would be making better use of his pen if he left us in the jungles alone and turned his attention to those well-fed and well-housed profiteers at his own doorstep, who by their dealings are doing the country incalculable harm. ,We are. Sir, yours, &c.,
FOUR JUNGLE PROFITEERS?
There is nothing to add other than that the writer of the report in The Times would have been Peter Chalmers Mitchell. He continued as correspondent for that newspaper while Secretary of the Zoological Society. It is no surprise that this great self-publicist found himself responsible for propaganda at the War Office in the First World War. I do not know who the ‘Four Jungle Profiteers’ were but they must have been known to the dealers of the time since John D. Hamlyn, the major London animal dealer after the war, reproduced their letter in his house publication, Hamlyn’s Menagerie Magazine published in the same month as their letter to The Times.
I assume, since the original article was about London Zoo, that the Royal Zoological Society referred to was the Zoological Society of London which operated then as now under a Royal Charter but which never included ‘Royal’ in its title. The other but unlikely possibility is that the ‘profiteers’ were referring to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, i.e. Edinburgh Zoo, which did then and still does use the Royal title.
Finally, the gorillas would have been Mountain or Eastern Gorillas, Gorilla beringei. I wonder what happened to the baby gorilla and, indeed, to the remains of the ones, one of which was presumably the mother, that were shot. Does a museum somewhere in the world have them?
No comments:
Post a Comment