Primates at the Zoo in Victorian London: Matters of Life and Death

On 10 September I wrote (here) about the astonishing number of primates (1,300 individuals of 166 species) that arrived at London Zoo in the years 1883 and 1895 and indicated that the death rate must also have been high since the available accommodation would have been filled many times over. I then remembered that some time in the 1950s Gwynne Vevers had been involved in a survey to see how the Zoo was then doing compared with the past, over a large part of which his father, Geoffrey Marr Vevers had been Superintendent of the Zoo. I found the paper—more on the reasons why this was done will be in a subsequent post—and found the most relevant figures. Although data for primates alone could not be extracted the mortality rate for all vertebrates (both wild and domestic) except fish was approximately 45% in the 1880s-90s. In other words, given a stock of 100 animals at the start of the year, 55 would be left at the end. We also know that primates were a particular concern when Chalmers Mitchell took over as Secretary in 1903 because of the high incidence of tuberculosis. The chances of an individual primate surviving for five years after arrival were very low indeed.

These figures can also be used to back calculate the approximate number of primates housed by the Zoo at any one time.  If we assume that the death rate for primates was 50% and that the number in the Zoo did not change from year to year then it does not need much arithmetic to show that the number of primates kept in the various houses was somewhere between 150 and 200, towards the lower end of the estimate if some of the monkeys that arrived were passed on to other owners. It is also possible to calculate a holding of 155 individual primates in 1946-48, lending some credence to a figure of around 175 in 1883-1895. In 1957 the mortality rate for primates was 25%. The great advances in wild animal husbandry and veterinary knowledge of later decades were still yet to come.

It does not saying that the odds of a primate surviving for 10 years (perhaps half its maximum lifespan) in the late Victorian zoo was very low indeed. However, the figures would have been highly skewed with the majority living only a short time after arrival while a few would have made it into old age.

The two man houses for primates were replaced as soon as possible during the Mitchell regime, plans being interrupted by the First World War. These photographs show the old Monkey House and the Ape House. The Ape House had just been completed ‘at great cost’ when Mitchell was successful in his campaign to become Secretary in 1903. He disapproved of it mightily as, ‘A supreme example of the belief that anthropoid apes, like other denizens of the tropics, required, above all, protection from cold’. He had it demolished as soon as he could and by 1927 it had been replaced by the present Reptile House; the new Monkey House was opened in the same year, only to be replaced in the early 1970s as yet another example of how primates should not be kept.

This postcard of London Zoo has an Aerofilms photograph from 1921
The old Monkey house is indicated on the left, the Ape House (opened in 1903) on the right
Both were demolished later in the 1920s

This postcard of the Mappin Terraces shows the Ape House beyond
From the fashion and the sparse vegetationmy guess is this is photograph was taken shortly after the terraces opened in 1913

   

Ashton EH, Vevers HG. 1959. The numbers of exhibits, births and deaths in the menagerie at Regent’s Park: 1835-1957, and in Whipsnade Park 1931-1957. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1959, 489-514.

Mitchell PC. 1929. Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London. London: Zoological Society of London