The relationship between Joan Beauchamp Procter, Curator of Reptiles at London Zoo until her death in 1931 and her boss, Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell has intrigued historians as well as past fellows and employees of the Zoo. I wrote in a previous article:
Rumours that Mitchell, who was at least distant and perhaps estranged from his wife for a time, and Procter were lovers were rife in the 1920s and 1930s; indeed they persisted at least until the 1990s whenever his name came up in conversation with people to whom the story had been passed down the line from the 1920s. But were the rumours based on fact?
Some have argued that her severe illness and series of operations would have prevented close contact but their travels together and sojourn in Spain certainly had tongues wagging in London. Procter, who was described by Mitchell as his 'dear friend, ward and colleague’, was seen by some (Mitchell and his friends on the Council of the Zoo) as a person who could do no wrong but to others, Solly Zuckerman for example, as a person who had a beguiling influence on some men but could do little right.
In 1950, nearly twenty years after Joan Procter’s death at the age of 34 and five years after the death of Mitchell, an article on Barbary Apes appeared in Zoo Life, the house magazine of the Zoological Society of London. The author, on whom more later, had in 1928 been the British army officer charged with the welfare of the apes on Gibraltar and their feeding from Colonial Office funds of £3 per month; an NCO had the job of recording happenings in the life of the apes on the Rock. These matters were taken seriously given the legend that if the apes die out Britain will lose Gibraltar.
One male ape went ape during the author’s tenure. ‘Jacko’ broke into Government House, broke crockery and removed the Governor’s hair brushes which were never recovered. The order was given for the animal to be shot but the ape avoided that fate by never presenting himself as a clear target. Impasse. The author continued:
It happened just at this time that the lady curator of the Reptile House of the London Zoological Gardens [i.e. Joan Procter] was staying at Malaga in the south of Spain, and was related to a certain Gunner captain then stationed at Gibraltar. The latter, thinking it would be of interest, wrote and told her the story, which she passed on to the Secretary of the Zoological Society [Mitchell]. He immediately wrote to the Governor saying that they had no Barbary Ape in the Society's collection and would be very grateful if the delinquent in question could be caught and sent to them instead of being killed. The Governor therefore caused an amendment to be issued to his first instruction, the gist of which, boiled down, said “for ‘shoot' read ‘catch’”…
After a considerable time of trying to entice Jacko into a trap and then to a cage for transport by sea, involving it would seem just about every member of the Royal Artillery in Gibraltar, the ape eventually arrived in London where he lived to the age of 21.
In the meantime, the author of the article moved on, was captured at the fall of Singapore and decided to write his part in the story of the apes on the Rock while a prisoner-of-war. However, he had to contact the keepers after the war to catch up with the story of Barbary Apes at the Zoo and with what had happened to Jacko:
"Joan" and "Peter," the two present incumbents, arrived at the Gardens from Gibraltar in 1942 and 1944 respectively. "Joan" was then four years old and twice the size of "Peter" who was only two and a half. In due course they were introduced and by virtue of her superior years and size “Joan"' for a time, the dominant female and “Peter” noticeably henpecked. Since then "Peter" has gradually outgrown his partner and is now twice her weight. With vivid recollections of earlier indignities, he has been able to pay back with interest all the chastisement he received until, eventually, the brow-beaten and lacerated "Joan"had, not long ago, to be removed to the sanitorium. While there she succeeded in opening her cage door and can thus claim the distinction of being one of the few animals to escape from the Gardens. She remained at large in the near vicinity for three days, was eventually enveloped in a coat on some scaffolding by a workman, netted and ignominiously returned to convalescence.
The author noted that ‘Joan’ and ‘Peter’ had failed to breed.
I think we can safely assume that the keepers at the Zoo, many of whom served for decades, had made their minds up on the nature of the Procter-Mitchell relationship. It is, therefore, of interest that the author added:
Author’s note.—None of the characters in this story is fictitious.
While the author was pointing out that he was well aware who the apes were named after, was he aware of the more salacious innuendo?
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Who was Colonel Cecil Hunt, the author of the article and former subaltern i/c apes in Gibraltar?
Cecil Hunt (1899-1985) was a regular army officer, first, as during his time in Gibraltar, in the Royal Artillery and then, from 1934, in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He had the misfortune of being posted to Singapore as an Acting Colonel and Deputy Director of Ordnance Supply eleven weeks before the Japanese invasion in February 1942. A prisoner until the end of the war with Japan, his daughter recalled that he reached Southampton on 5 November 1945 on board R.M.S. Queen Elizabeth. In 1955 and by then a Brigadier, Cecil Hunt was ADC to the Queen until his retirement and appointment as CBE in 1956. In retirement he lived with his wife in Camberley, Surrey. In 1966 he is shown as attending the memorial service for Lieutenant-General Percival, the much but possibly unfairly criticised GOC Singapore at the time of its capture. Percival served as president of the Far East Prisoners of War Association and I suspect we can take it that Hunt approved of the actions of his former GOC in both rôles.
The ‘Gunner captain’ in Gibraltar with Hunt must have been Joan Procter’s cousin, John Ralph Willoughby Curtois (1897-1972). Awarded the Military Cross as a Lieutenant in the Royal Filed Artillery in the First World War, by the time he retired from the army in 1944 he had risen to Lieutenant-Colonel. His mother and Joan Procter’s father were siblings.
Hunt C. 1950. A Mediterranean Memory…Barbary Ape. Zoo Life 5 2( Summer 1950), 56-58.
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