An exotic day out for Sheffield zoology students - 1930s style

Also in the 1930s the first university students were admitted in groups, with a lecturer, at a reduced rate. At this time, for instance, the Sheffield University Zoology Department annually hired a passenger coach, which was slipped from the London express to deliver its complement of students for a day at the newly opened Whipsnade Zoo*.

The method of delivery of the students is interesting since it illustrates a long-gone railway operation. A slip coach (and sometimes coaches) was at the rear of the train. Some distance before the station a guard in the slip coach would pull a lever to ‘slip’ the coupling with the carriage in front, apply a little braking, to make sure the rest of the train would draw ahead and then slowly brake the coach to come to a stop at the station platform, while the express train steamed to its final destination. The whole operation was a routine on some routes but there were hairy moments and a notable crash (the driver thought the slip coach had not detached and stopped to check while his rear vision was obscured by smoke; the slip had detached and so ran into the back of the stopped train). There is a video of a slip operation here. At the end of the day though the slip coach must have been attached to a local train and pulled, presumably, to a station on the line at which it could be attached to the end of the train bound for Sheffield. 

Once at Whipsnade, our predecessors as students by thirty years might have sent a postcard like these shown below by Frederick William Bond (1887-1942) who was not a professional photographer but a member of staff of the accounts department of ZSL.

*Bullough WS, Hamilton F. 1976. The role of education. In, The Zoological Society of London 1826-1876 and Beyond. Ed. Zuckerman. Symposia of the Zoological Society of London 40, 223-231.

Wolf Suschitzky, contributor to Animal and Zoo Magazine in the 1930s, has died aged 104

It is difficult to imagine that a photographer whose work appeared in magazines nearly 80 years ago was alive until a few weeks ago. Wolfgang Suschitzky, the famous cinephotographer and photographer, died on 7 October 2016, aged 104.

Eamonn McCabe's photograph of Wolf Suschitzky
used in the Daily Telegraph obituary of 9 October

 I shall have a lot more to write about Animal and Zoo Magazine published as ‘the official magazine of the Zoological Society of London’ by Odhams from 1936 until it was forced to close by wartime newsprint shortage in 1941. It was part of the attempt made by Julian Huxley, the paid secretary of the Society, to bring the Society and the Zoo into the 20th Century.

Suschitzky fled Austria after the nazi takeover and arrived in London in 1935. His website shows how he became involved with photographing animals at London and Whipsnade:

     …Suschitzky took his first photographs of animals before the War, when working on a series of zoo films as an assistant cameraman. The keepers would cut holes into the wire fencing and accompany him into the enclosures. Things did not always go smoothly: “I had to grab the camera and run for it when a kangaroo attacked me at Whipsnade, and I only just made the fence. But on the whole, the kind of animal photography which I do is fairly peaceful work.” 

     The great appeal of these pictures – they were published in magazines, such as Animal and Zoo Magazine or Illustrated, and later as books and series of postcards – is due to the fact that his photographs are animal portraits, rather than zoological specimen pictures showing four legs and a tail.

Suschitzky's front covers

His obituaries state that Suschitzky’s first interest was in zoology but that he forsook it for photography. He achieved great distinction in both cinephotography (including Get Carter, the 1971 classic from which Tyneside struggles to recover from its bleak depiction) and still photography. His photographs, the series along the Charing Cross Road for example, show that he was, like many zoologists, a people watcher.

His animal photographs from the early years in London were exhibited in 1940. He continued to photograph animals and collaborate with Huxley. Their book, The Kingdom of the Beasts, was published in 1956.

An article from Animal and Zoo Magazine
January 1941 illustrated by Suschitzky's
photographs