When Jumbo the circus elephant died, many cried and were upset, but still through their sorrow, somehow, Canadians who were near Jumbo at the time of his demise managed to find their appetite.
WORLD TRAVELER
Jumbo got his start in the French Sudan in 1861. His mother was hunted and killed. Taher Sheriff, a Sudanese elephant hunter, took the captured orphan Jumbo and sold him to Lorenzo Casanova, and he made his way to France two years after his birth and wowed the crowds at the Jardin Des Plantes in Paris—one of the top zoos in Paris.
But Paris already had a popular pair of pachyderms—Castor and Pollux. The London Zoological Gardens, on the other hand, were eager to get an African elephant. In 1865, an exchange was agreed upon. The four-year-old Jumbo was traded to England for a rhinoceros, two dingoes, a possum, a kangaroo, and a pair of eagles.
The French had treated Jumbo poorly, and he was overly thin, dirty, and sick. In London, Jumbo met his devoted trainer, Matthew Scott, who nursed him back to health and gave the elephant his name, which comes from the Swahili word, “jumbe” for “chief.” Little did Jumbo know, as he gave rides to many of the zoo visitors, that stardom awaited in North America.
A STAR IS BORN
When Jumbo was 21, the Barnum & Bailey Circus made an offer to purchase him. Queen Victoria received about 100,000 letters from schoolchildren begging her not to sell their beloved Jumbo. The animal, with his howdah (traditional elephant saddle) on his back, had given rides to the Prince of Wales and the other offspring of Queen Victoria, as well as a young Winston Churchill. But the pleadings of children were drowned out by hard cold cash. Jumbo was sold for $10,000 (the equivalent of about $220,000 today). Many English citizens were sent into a tizzy over the sale and a fund was set up to purchase the elephant back from Barnum. The public outcry was so great that the zoo tried to revoke the sale. But Barnum would hear none of it. “I would not sell him for $100,000. America is waiting for Jumbo, said Barnum.”
At Reversing Falls, NB, tides force water to flow in the reverse direction.
And it literally was true that America was waiting When Jumbo arrived by ship in New York to become part of “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Promotional posters advertised the 12-foot tall, six-ton as a “monster,” but the thousands of curiosity seekers who turned out for his arrival encountered a very mild-tempered creature.
For three years, Jumbo traveled through the U.S and Canada in his own special train car, “Jumbo’s Palace Car.” During 31 weeks after Jumbo has joined the circus, Barnum raked in $1.75 million, which Barnum mostly attributed to Jumbo.
TRAGEDY IN ONTARIO
On September 15, 1885, the circus played St. Thomas, Ontario, a booming railroad town. The town’s location near the railway tracks made it a convenient stop for the big top, which traveled by train. Jumbo was in the prime in life—a robust 25 years old, which is young, considering that an African elephant can live until age 60. The 29 elephants had finished their performance for the evening a little early that night. They were usually loaded into their car after 9:55, but on this night their handler was escorting them at about 9:30 back to their train cars along designated stretch of track. The final two elephants—Jumbo and Tom Thumb—were reaching their cars when an unscheduled freight train barreled down the tracks.
Its engineer did all he could to stop the train. He saw the elephant and sounded his warning horn. He thrust the train into reverse but was unable to stop. The train first hit Tom Thumb. Tom was scooped up in the cowcatcher and knocked down an embankment, and he tumbled into the ravine. Jumbo, however, was trapped between the oncoming train and circus train and was crushed. The impact derailed the train. Jumbo’s skull was broken in a hundred places, though it took poor Jumbo a few minutes to die in the company of Scott, his longtime caretaker. Jumbo reached out his long trunk and drew Scott toward his large head. Scott cried and cried until Jumbo slipped away.
A SIX-TON SPILL
Once Jumbo passed, the most immediate problem was how to get him off the tracks. It took 100 spectators to move the enormous body. Barnum & Bailey wished to have Jumbo stuffed so the circus got local butchers to cut up his carcass in order to preserve the hide and skeleton. In a letter in the Ottawa Sun, a woman recounted her great grandfather’s tales about the days following the horrific accident. He had told her that the butchers were given no instructions on what to do with the meat from the elephant so they tossed in on a huge fire to burn it so the meat would not rot. The smell of roasting elephant was supposedly so appealing that many of the residents of St. Thomas stopped by the pyre with utensils and helped themselves to a plate of pachyderm.
Skookumchuk! The BC town means “big rapids” in Chinook (and it’s fun to say).
The stuffed version of Jumbo traveled with the circus until 1889. Then Barnum donated the elephant to Tufts University. The school kept it on display until 1975 when it was destroyed in a fire. Jumbo’s tail was the only part left after the blaze. University officials keep it preserved in its archives, and Jumbo’s ashes are stored in a 14-ounce Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director.
St. Thomas built a life-size statue in tribute to Jumbo 100 years after the elephant’s death. The town’s Railway City Brewing also keeps the memory of Jumbo alive by making Dead Elephant Ale, which has the slogan: “When you raise your glass of Dead Elephant Ale, you will enjoy everything that Jumbo was and became.” San Jose Sharks NHL star Joe Thornton is known as “Jumbo Joe” in part because he hails from St. Thomas. Jumbo’s legacy also lives on in our language. The word “jumbo” has come to mean “huge” and its used often in for such things as a jumbo jet or jumbo-sized hot dog. So next time you order something that’s jumbo-sized, take a moment to remember the majestic mammoth circus entertainer who may have wound up as lunchmeat for the townsfolk in St. Thomas.
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“There has been testing done that has shown that picking your nose while driving is even more dangerous than using a cell phone because of the high occurrences of physical injury while conducting this type of behavior. I would like to see all types of distractions lead to a hefty fine, my advice for this particular offense would be an $850 fine.”
—Ontario Transportation Minister Jim Bradley
Police in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, ranked 2011 arrests by astrological sign and found that people who fall under the sign of Aries were most likely to be detained!