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Sir Roger the Elephant
- University of Virginia Press
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R ichar d Sutcliffe, Mik e Ruther for d, and Jean ne Robinson Sir Roger the Elephant A mounted, twenty-seven-year-old, male Asian elephant: Elephas maximus to the scientists; accession number 1900.170 to the museum professionals; but Sir Roger to those who know and love him. Sir Roger is the most iconic and wellloved animal in the Glasgow Museums collections. At nearly ten feet (three meters) high, his size makes him hard to ignore. He has been a focal conversation point in the Kelvingrove Museum galleries since they first opened, more than one hundred years ago. The museum archives, the local press, the autobiography of his one-time owner E. H. Bostock, and personal knowledge give many interesting insights into his varied and interesting personal history. Sir Roger Alive Most of the information about Sir Roger’s life comes directly from the autobiography of Edward Henry Bostock (1858–1940), who, following in the family footsteps, ran numerous traveling menageries (1878–1920) and founded the Scottish Zoo and Variety Circus in Glasgow in 1897.1 Bostock became a prominent figure in Glasgow, and over the years donated many specimens to Glasgow’s Corporation Museum, including Sir Roger. We don’t know anythingaboutthefirsttenyearsofSirRoger ’slife.Theentryinthemuseum’sregister reads “South India,” so it is likely that was where he originated.2 According to Bostock, Sir Roger had been with his Travelling Menagerie for twelve years prior to being settled in to the zoo in time for the May 1897 opening.3 Sir Roger the Elephant | 59 The menagerie visited Scotland in 1884 and 1886, stopping in virtually every Scottish town between Berwick and Thurso, including small villages well off thebeaten track.4 As Bostockhadacquiredhimabout 1885,Sir Roger may well have come to Scotland with the 1886 tour. Bostock described him as “a quiet, well-behaved animal, and with the menagerie used to pull a small wagon on the journeys from town to town”—a description very similar to that of Maharajah in Wombwell’s Royal Number One Menagerie in the 1870s (see Samuel Alberti’s essay in this volume).5 Sir Roger was greatly admired by visitors to the zoo, and many small boys eagerly spent their pocket money on buns to feed him.6 Most of his time was probably spent in a small enclosure, but along with another younger elephant and several camels and dromedaries, he was taken out of the zoo on the New City Road and led out through the populous Glasgowstreetstowardthecountryforacoupleofhours’exercisetwiceaweek. In October 1900, then aged about twenty-seven years old, Sir Roger, developed musth, a condition common to all mature male elephants during the breeding cycle. It is caused by the flow of a secretion called temporin from the elephant’s temporal gland. Often painful, the condition can lead to unpredictable bad temper and aggression. The musth made Sir Roger extremely dangerous to handle, and he made several attempts to attack the zoo staff looking after him, including his regular keeper, John Allen. On returning from one of his regular trips out of the zoo for exercise, Sir Roger made a savage attack on Allen, who might have been killed if several members of the staff had not rushed to his assistance and beaten off the elephant. Even so, Allen was hospitalized with a broken arm and several broken ribs. A series of other keepers were found to look after Sir Roger, but the elephant soon showed his dislike for each man put in charge of him. Bostock himself could not get close to him without Sir Roger making menacing lunges toward him. The elephant was normally tied up with chains and rings around one hind leg and one foreleg, but Bostock became increasingly concerned that these might not hold and that the elephant might break loose. A more secure enclosure seemed the best solution, and Bostock came up with the design. It was to be built beside where Sir Roger was kept, and so all the work had to be done while he was out being exercised. The builder took measurements the next time Sir Roger left the zoo, and the following time, workmen cut holes through the sixteen-inch wall of the building in order to attach a strong cage, [18.209.209.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:43 GMT) 60 | richard sutcliffe, mike rutherford, jeanne robinson which had been prefabricated beforehand. The whole construction was completed in less than two-and-a-half hours. On his return from his...