CHAPTER 5
The Menagerie
When people think of the Tower of London, they usually think about human prisoners. But not only people were locked in the Tower.
For hundreds of years, the king’s private zoo—called the Menagerie—was located in the Tower. The first animals were lions that arrived around the year 1210. People thought that lions were very noble animals. The lion was on the royal crest of England. So lions were a good choice for the king to own. In 1235, the European emperor Frederick II gave King Henry III three leopards as a present. Henry put them in the Tower. Then he decided to add some other animals. Soon he also had lynxes, lions, and camels.
The king of Norway gave Henry a big bear that was pure white. No one in England had seen a polar bear before. Finding enough fish for the bear was hard. The keepers decided to let it catch its own food. Some of the gates in the Tower were water gates that opened right onto the river Thames. The keepers chained the bear to a water gate. Soon the people of London were treated to the amazing sight of a polar bear fishing for salmon in the Thames.
The French king Louis IX gave Henry an animal like nothing people had ever seen—one that ate and drank using its long trunk. This was the first elephant in England. It was not easy to ship such a large animal to London. After sailing on a boat to England, the elephant had to walk many miles to London. Huge crowds gathered to watch it go by. Unfortunately, no one really knew how to take care of an elephant. Hoping to keep it healthy, its keepers had it drink a gallon of wine a day. It only lived for two years.
Soon the king had so many animals that he decided he needed to build them a real home. One of the towers was turned into a zoo. It was called the Lion Tower. For many years, the gate in the Lion Tower was the only way people could get into the Tower. So anyone going to see the king had to pass by cages of lions and tigers.
The animals weren’t treated the way we treat zoo animals today. They lived in bare cages. Sometimes they were let out to fight with each other. Or a lion would be put into a cage with some dogs, to see which was stronger. But the animals didn’t always cooperate. One time a lamb was put in with a lion. The lion just sniffed it and then lay down and ignored it.
Of all the animals, the lions were treated with the greatest care. People believed that when a lion died, it meant the king or queen would soon die. So the keepers tried very hard to keep the lions healthy.
The zoo in the Tower lasted for about six hundred years. It grew until it contained many animals. These included a porcupine and a kangaroo. It became a big attraction. At first only people the king invited could see the zoo. Later on, any tourist could pay to see the animals. People think that the famous writer William Shakespeare might have visited the zoo. In his play Hamlet he describes a porcupine. The Tower was one of the only places in England where he could have seen one.
In the 1700s, a room was built where people and monkeys could mix together. The monkeys were running loose. This lasted until a monkey attacked a small boy. Sometimes the animals fought each other. A rare bird had its head bitten off when it leaned into the cage of a hyena. People got hurt, too. A girl was killed when she tried to pat a lion’s paws. A small child was chased by a wolf that escaped from its cage.
Duke of Wellington
Then the Duke of Wellington was put in charge of the Tower. He was a famous soldier. He thought it was silly to keep all those animals in a place that was supposed to be a military site. So he had the animals sent away to the London Zoo. By 1835, the Tower zoo was gone.
Ravens
Royal Greenwich Observatory