December 21, 2021 • 33 mins
Walking through London today, you'll doubtlessly hear cacophonous traffic, sirens, construction, countless languages -- all the noises familiar to big cities... but, not too long ago, it would also have been normal to hear the roars of large animals in certain neighborhoods. In the first part of this two-part series, the guys explore the factors that led London to become a world-class hub for the exotic animal trade, often to the detriment of the animals (and the occasional spectator).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our one and only
super producer, Mr Max Williams. Hi, it's me Ben Boland. No, no,
we both we we both watched Tiger King. We did.
We gotta admit it. We both watched it. Wow. That
was like peak pandemic television, you know. I mean it
(00:50):
was the thing that sort of united all of us
and solidarity, uh and bonded us together for the fight
against the coronavirus. You know. Thank you Joe Exotic for
giving us that gift. Apparently the new one is not
so good. The the sequel, they just sort of like,
you know, are mining desperately for like extra bits of
stuff to to shove into a series. I have not
(01:11):
bothered watching it, but no, I did like it. And
I also I've got to give credit where credit is
due to chase a story like that and to be
around as it totally like happens before your very eyes.
Like the filmmakers deserve credit for hanging out, you know
and just kind of seeing this whole crazy story kind
of you know unfold. Uh. And and and allowing us
(01:31):
to you know, go along for the ride. Is it
high art? You know, maybe not, but it's definitely pretty
solid documentary filmmaking. Yeah, yeah, Greedon, it's a good point
about the pandemic. Society was living vicariously through so many
adventures of other people. You know. Uh, Subscriptions to streaming
(01:51):
services were on the rise, where people were listening to
podcast watching films, so on and so on. But one
thing that we found, with the help of our longtime
Paul Gabe Louisier, was that Joe Exotic was maybe not
the first tiger king. In fact, the the first tiger king,
(02:14):
we we could well say, was a guy named Charles
jam Rock in the eighteen hundreds in London, which was
a very very different London from the London you'll see
in the two thousand's very much was. I mean, well,
you know, you're still going to see the high streets
and the cobblestones and all of that good stuff. I mean,
London is a town that prides itself in its history.
(02:37):
There were a lot more wild exotic animals just kind
of around. Uh, and that was thanks in part uh
if not, well, now let's just let's not give him
fall the credit. But it was thanks in part to
Charles jam Rock, who's the coolest name in the exotic
animal trade if you ask me, spelled j A M
R A c H. He was a very, very sought
(03:00):
after wild animal dealer. He was known throughout the world
and he had a very very uh a list kind
of clientele that he catered to. He had agents all
over the world that would get him exactly what he needed,
be at a panther, a prized panther, puma, or some
other animal that starts with a pie, since we're doing
(03:20):
the whole alliteration thing, a parrot. They were very into
with the mccaus been. That was a very sought after
exotic pet um and it was all about class and status.
These pets were very expensive to purchase, very expensive to
feed and maintain, and very expensive and dangerous to house
and keep them from, you know, like malling the housekeeper.
(03:41):
But that happened a lot too. I got a jump
in air and to ask, actually, couldn't get you a
porpoise to keep along with this piece thing? Could you
get a porpoise? A good question? Porpoises? Uh, yeah, we're porpoises.
Popular in this period. Let's go, he could get you
a porpoise on purpose. I'm sure if you if you
had to he he was. He was probably into porpoises
(04:02):
for profit, if that was a possibility. Okay, done with
the piece. So this this is weird because this coincides
with an earlier stuff they don't want you to know episode.
We did a while back on allegations of cryptids of
large cats attacking people in modern day UK, But back
(04:23):
in the eighteen hundreds, just as you described, there were
quite a few very real, very dangerous large cats. One
example that comes to us from our pals at Mental
Flaws is how on October eighteen fifty seven, this kid
was just walking down the street in London's East End
(04:44):
when he was attacked by a tiger that had escaped
its cage. The tiger snatched up the kid like put
him in its jaws and ran off with him down
the street. Luckily, the kids survived, the tiger survived, and
the guy who rescued the boy survived, which was convenient
for the rescuer because the rescuer also owned this tiger.
(05:05):
It was it was being delivered to a shop owned
by Charles jam Rock and as as you had established earlier,
he was at the very least one of the top
wild animal dealers in the world, quite possibly in the world.
He had this network of people all around the planet
(05:27):
that would help him get quote unquote exotic animals to London,
and London, as we'll find, had had a long standing
um fascination with all these kinds of creatures that appeared
in other parts of the world. And this is this
is so weird. Like, if you've been to London, you know,
(05:47):
there are a lot of things you can complain about.
It's got some of the world's worst traffic. Things can
be more expensive than a lot of people are used to.
But if you walk down like a high street now,
of the many certaing you might have, one of them
won't be Will a jaguar attack me? Is today the
day that it's tiger gets my foot be a pretty
(06:09):
poetic way to go. But no, no, it definitely would
not be something I would sign up for, especially given
those rapacious prices of of lodging and meals and all
of that. Um. But I I sort of, I said,
I walked it back already, but I'm just gonna walk
it back one step further, Charles jam Rock was definitely
one of the most noteworthy wild animal dealers in the world,
like you said, and and you know, cater to a
(06:30):
very very very high end clientele. But there had been
a fascination, a long standing fascination with exotic animals in
London long before he hit the scene. There was a
wild animal menagerie uh in the Tower of London that
was around since twelve thirty five. Um. And as we've
talked about in stories of of American presidents and their
(06:53):
weird pets and stuff. Sometimes, uh, these animals are given
as like political gift, you know, as a sign of
solidarity or layer is our most notable creature from our
land we present to you as a sign of our
affection for you as a country and as a ruler.
But jam Rock, Uh, he hit the scene in a
(07:16):
moment that was really really really crucial, um because trade
was beginning to open up. So was no longer all
about just like having someone that was coming as an
ambassador an emissary bringing you a gift. Now there were
all these trade routes that were open, and essentially a
business sprung up out of this whole fascination. It was
(07:43):
quite an industry in the late eighteenth century noises from
big animals, especially large cats around the Exeter or Strange area.
We're just a normal part of city background noise, the
way you would hear horns honking or people saying well
gonna you know whatever the UK version of that is.
(08:03):
So there was even a writer, Charles Lamb who lived
in Temple Lane and he wrote about how he liked
to hear the big cats yelling when he walked home
after a good night of drinking and partying. It's strange
because you know, if you think about it, this makes
a kind of sense. This is the age of the
British Empire. It's the world's leading imperial power, and so
(08:28):
it was seen as a benefit of living in the
heart of this empire to have this at home, access
to animals from around the world. And people made a
lot of money doing this kind of thing. As you said,
there's a guy named Joshua Brooks who had a menagerie
they called it at the end of Tottenham Court Road,
(08:50):
and his specialization you'll love this was exotic birds, but
he also was into antelopes, lions, monkeys, porcupines. This is
like a day the zoo for a lot of people.
You you feel like you're getting a taste of culture.
You feel like you're living vicariously, right, You're having adventures
by having the world brought to you totally. Um. And
(09:11):
there is a fantastic book by Christopher Plum called Georgian
Menagerie that you can get at the Guardians online bookshop
if you go to Bookshop dot the Guardian dot com.
And John Mullin over at the Guardian did a really
great review, uh, and exerted a little bit from this
book that talks about just this period in English history. Uh,
(09:32):
Georgian England, Georgian London, right, Um. And there were everything
from camels too, you know, um, rhinoceri whatever is it,
rnacerest is, who cares? They were everywhere, as as the
Guardian puts the lions on Tottenham Court Road, camels on
the strand, England's capital once teamed with beasts. So this
would have been a very very interesting time. Like you said, Bennett,
(09:55):
it was sort of just par for the course, and
folks were treating it more like to visit to the zoo.
It wasn't a huge deal. It was just another attraction
that London had to offer to entertain people. You know,
there were even like traveling wild animal menagerie's that would
go from town to town and then if you had
enough money, you could actually buy your own tiger or bow,
(10:18):
a constrictor or whatever you might tickle your fancy. So
there were a ton of exotic pet shops already. By
there were around a hundred and eighteen wild animal dealers
with brick and mortar shops just in London, but you
also have them all over the country in places like
Bristol and Bath and Liverpool. Um, and you could, if
(10:40):
you were so disposed financially and you know mentally, uh,
to go into one of these and check out a
bear or an elephant or a kangaroo. Perhaps. Um pretty
wild if you think about it. And England kind of
got this reputation as being the hub, the center that
kind of like dumping off point for the US wild
(11:00):
animal trade, whether they were alive or dead, because a
lot of these animals would not survive the long journeys
from their native lands, you know, to London to this hub.
It is funny like we live here in Atlanta. Uh
in Atlanta is a hub for a lot of things
like that. Too. Unfortunately, one of those is human trafficking.
That's because of our approximity to one of the biggest
(11:21):
airports in the world. So this is the kind of
thing you get when you sort of become this like
crossroads of civilization. Yeah, this is Uh, there are a
couple of points there that that I think we could
highlight for context. Let's keep in mind, Uh, this is
the same part of the world where people were flexing
by renting pineapples. It's a very different cultural framework. Also,
(11:44):
are we still in pointy shoes area or we passed
that now? I think we're a little past pointy shoes.
But pointy shoes are always around the corner because it's fashioned.
So get ahead of it and get your own pointy
shoes today. Ridiculous history branded always be closing. This is
a good time for us to give some examples of
these weird flexes. Consider the Earl of Shelburne, who later
(12:06):
went on to become Prime Minister. This guy kept in
orangutan and a tame leopard in his orang injury at
Bowood House. We talked about oranges too. You were flexing
by happy citrus fruits growing on your property. Yeah, and uh,
I can. I guess, is a leopard ever truly tame?
(12:26):
I mean you can do it, yeah, just the it's
the difference between taming and domesticating. So a single individual
creature could be ostensibly tamed, but it would still very
much be a wild animal. So it wouldn't all of
a sudden be like you have a uh, spotted version
of Lassie. If that makes sense. Well, I guess what
(12:47):
I'm getting at is we're going to see in some
of these stories there is the perception of having a
tame animal, and then you know, when you maybe poker
product or pushed a little too far, does that tame
element kind of drop off and then that sort of
refers back to its natural state of wildness. It can, yeah,
because taming. Think of it as like human familiarization with
(13:09):
humans or with often with like a couple of particular humans,
and you know, you'll be seen as as a peer
or or maybe even you'll be seen as an authoritarian
or parent figure, but there's still very much wild wild animals.
And I love I love the point about orangutanks because
they're so intelligent. In fact, just recently I learned there
(13:32):
was a long standing myth in Um. It's long standing
myth in some very specific region where orangutanks occur, where
the people have always believed that orangutanks can talk. They've
just decided not to let humans know because they don't
want to be put to work. And there's some great
meme I keep picturing. It sounds so realistic of like
(13:52):
a bunch of orangutangs hanging out, even though they're kind
of solitary creatures, hanging out, shooting the breeze, maybe having
a book club, and then they see some humans coming
and they say, oh, ship, everybody shut up. They're gonna
make us pay taxes. But they are, they are. They
are very intelligent animals. And you know, Shelburne is um
not an exception to the rule. Sir Robert Walpole had
(14:16):
a pet flamingo. Sir Hans Sloan had a one eyed
tame wolverine that would just sort of follow him around
his house. He also had an apossum and porcupine. No
word on how the three animals got along. I would
imagine he kept them separate. Ben you pronounced the oh
and possum. I know this is a very divisive thing.
I think it's a person. I think that shows it
(14:36):
speaks to people's personalities. Actually believe there's a difference between
a possum and an opossum. It's it's a little confusing.
They both refer to the Virginia possum in North America. Uh,
the technical or scientific context I think is o possum.
But then if you go to Bob Vila dot com,
(14:57):
which I did not think would enter the conversation ship today,
Bob is telling me that one key difference is their tails.
A possums tale is thick and furry. He says, thanks Bob,
who knew who was such an expert? Yeah, yeah, I
guess he got started in the possum game and then
went on to the rest of his story career. So
(15:18):
when we when we look at it trustworthy home advice,
Bob field A possums and opossums. Uh yeah, let us
know your your take on the possum apossum controversy. Queen Charlotte,
that's another quick example. Wife to George three, she had
an elephant, she had a couple of zebras in Buckingham Palace,
and she was one of the big champions of bringing
(15:42):
exotic animals to London. And she had a collection of
the first living kangaroos seen in the area, which later
led to a kangaroo collecting mania in the seventeen nineties.
And then yeah, and she would give kangaroo babies Joey's
to were fellow aristocrats who already had their own private menageries.
(16:04):
You know, I think we've talked about this, but it
turns out that the pouch on mama kangaroos that the
little Joey's hang out in, it's not just a cute,
little warm, dry place. It's actually full of like slimy,
amniotic fluid type stuff. It is very gross. I know
a lot of unhelpful and fascinating kangaroo facts which we
don't we don't need to get here, but all I'm
(16:25):
the only reason I'm saying that is to point out that, yes, no,
you are, you are correct. It is it is not
a like a cozy It's not like that cozy little
side pocket you get on some jenes. It tot or
it would be if that was filled with snut when
you bought it. Absolutely absolutely spot on. So I mentioned
earlier the idea of live and dead animals being a
(16:46):
part of this trade. Um the dead animals were just
as important as the live, and in fact that those
are the ones we still think of today. That kind
of codify Britain's kind of empire building influence across the planet.
You know, the idea of like huntsmen or like some
like moneyed British royal or business person in their lodge.
You know, with all these severed taxidermy heads of different
(17:09):
animals they killed, um, you know, on safari or whatever.
This is almost a stereotypical image of imperialism. If you
think about during the reign of Queen Victoria, there was
an Indian based taxidermy company uh called Van ingen and
van ingen Um that stuffed close to forty three thousand
wild animals, including tigers and leopards and more between nineteen
(17:34):
hundred and uh nineteen fifty. So this is like well
beyond the era that we're specifically discussing today, but just
so you know how far this stuff goes. And this
was to supply the European and Indian demands for these
types of trophies that we're talking about, uh, and they
would you know, travel across the globe to you know,
get these specimens and then you know, stuff and mount them.
(17:57):
Um to Filippo's trophy type rooms that we're talking about. Yeah, yep,
And these animals weren't always just for show. Turtle feast
had a became a really popular fad in the city
of London. Like it wasn't a respectable social dinner unless
there was freshly prepared turtle. And this is one this
(18:20):
is one of the most pretentious things. This bothers me
because I like this animal. Eventually, at some point the
most well to do with aristocrats could have must have
their wigs dressed with bear grease and only bear grease,
and thousands of barrels of bear grease came from Arkansas
and this almost led to the extinction of bears in Arkansas.
(18:43):
Bears from Russia were fattened up and potential customers would
sometimes travel to witness the removal of fat from the
bear corpse is a guarantee they weren't getting swindled with
pig fat. This like this gets into some gross territory.
I think we should also note, for some foreshadowing here
that um, this did not come without cost for the
(19:05):
common people. The tiger that's just out wandering the streets
of London isn't gonna say, hey, I am gonna attack
the people who brought me here. They're just you know,
all humans are on the menu. So you can see
stories of panthers tearing off women's arms. You can see
(19:26):
stories of people getting their clothing attacked when they got
too close to a creature in a menagerie. Uh. There's
also a guy named well, a lion named Wallace the
Lion in the eighteen twenties who was famous for tearing
the hands and other limbs off three people on several
different occasions. He actually went to Derby. He escaped in
(19:47):
Derbyshire rather and killed a guy one time, but he
was not put down. It was returned to captivity because
they had already been so much investment in these creatures,
and indeed they became more successful, more profitable when they
had a bloody story in their past. Right now, you're
not seeing a regular lion, You're seeing a man eater. Uh. Yeah,
(20:10):
this is crazy. I love you mentioned Queen Victoria because
during her reign there was this explosion and construction of
all kinds of venues for seeing exotic animals private as
well as available to the public. Like zoos today, some
of it had ties to more of a scientific bent,
you know, like we are learning more about the natural world,
(20:32):
which is a noble thing to do. Others were definitely
more kind of like a Barnum and Bailey type circus acts,
you know. So here's the other thing. This trade was unregulated.
All you needed to have was this scratch the starting capital. Uh.
It's true that the very first what we would call
(20:54):
animal welfare laws had been passed, and there were people saying, hey,
maybe we're going too far with the fur trade. A
lot of these animals are dying in transport, but that's
not something a lot of people wanted to hear. They
were more interested in having their turtle soup their tigers.
And there there bear grease wigs, which is still weird
(21:15):
to me that that was the like, of all the
things you could do with a bear, that's that's the
thing you want to brag about. So it's like some
really good grease man. I mean, what do you want?
You know, you when you win, the heart wants what
the heart wants, I guess so, and so does the wig.
So at this point, at this point, I believe it's
time for us to introduce Charles jam Rock you know,
(21:44):
it's funny you were mentioning this off air. I'm pretty
sure that we have some restaurants in Atlanta who are
named after Charles jam Rock. I don't know. They're named
after him. That spelled j A M R O c K,
which to me, I don't know. I think of like reggae.
Mu sick is like like roots rock reggae, you know,
like jam with jam and you know all that, like
(22:05):
that's a Bob Marley song and all of that, the whalers.
So the idea of jam rock to me seems like
a very reggae kind of concept because these are in
fact Jamaican restaurants that were talking about. But yeah, Charles
jam Rock was not Jamaican at all. He was German heritage.
He was born in Hamburg, Germany, in eighteen fifteen as
(22:27):
Charles Christian jam Rock. That's my middle name actually, And
he went on to become a pre eminent dealer, as
we mentioned, the top of a wild and exotic creatures,
everything from birds to you know, four legged guys, whatever,
whatever was in demand, he could get you one wabat's Yeah,
(22:48):
he very much. So we'll get to that. And he
actually got the help of his father to establish this
vast trading network supplying to Zoo's menagerie, circuses, museums. Anyone
that was in need of a wild preacher, dead or alive,
he had their back. This was all during nineteenth century Europe,
(23:08):
and even the famous English poet Dante, not the not
Dante allegory, but the British poet Dante Gabrielle Rosetti. Um,
he bought a wombat, his beloved pet wombat, from our
guy jam Rock. You gotta have one. A wombat is
like the It's like old Yeller for poets. You gotta
you gotta have what I want to. I want to
(23:29):
step back because the reason was setting up the Jamaican
restaurant joke here, which I'm gonna I'm gonna keep. I'm
just gonna make that my reality. Jam jam Rock is
spelled J A M R A C H. And made
the uh. After looking through some pronunciation possibilities, I just
decided to say jam Rock as well. For this it
(23:52):
sounds schooler. If you are a descendant of old C. C.
J himself and you have a preferred pronunciation, that's fine,
please right in love to hear it. But but this
guy followed. Like he said, he followed in his dad's footsteps,
and it made sense to his father is able to
help him because his father knew the trade, the trade rights.
He was very much set up to be that guy. Yeah,
(24:14):
he had insider information. He knew what was coming off
the boats and often knew when because he was a
harbor master, so he had the connects. In eighteen thirty nine,
Charles his brother Anton, moves to London to start his
own animal trade business, following in dear Old DAWs footsteps.
(24:36):
But unfortunately Anton passes away very soon after he arrives,
and this is an opportunity for Charles to take over
the business. After charles father expires in eighteen forty, there's
a tough series of years for Charles. Uh he moves
to London himself. He takes over. He opens an exotic
pet store and a museum of natural history called jam
(24:58):
Rocks Animal Emporium. I love it when people use the
word emporium. I am such a sucker for the word emporium.
I've been in so many tourist traps in the middle
of nowhere, America just because someone slapped emporium on their
you know, on their kitch store, So thank you emporiums uh.
He also had a so he had the emporium on St.
(25:20):
George Street. He had another outfit, a menagerie on Bet Street.
And there's a pretty great uh. There's a pretty great
description of this from the Spectator in one where they
say Mr Childs jam Rock the wild Beast banners. He's
sometimes familiarly called never failed to have a large assortment
of tigers and lines on hand. The passages between the
(25:42):
two stories of cages would never and walk and walk
down them was occasionally like running the gauntlet. So they're
they're trying to sort of articulate the excitement, the endorphin rush,
the thrill of danger people experience because the animals, without
reading the whole quote right, the animals pause can reach people.
(26:03):
This is not like a modern zoo. There's not like
a pit and you know, a large fence. There's a cage.
And so if you walk too slow, you know, as
anybody like the three of us all have cats living
with us. If you walk by just a regular house
cat and it's feeling, you know, kind of in a
punching mood, they'll just swat at you, give you a swat,
(26:23):
give you a good old swat, and if you get
a little claw that it connects, you might end up
with a slice. Uh. And this is a you know,
significantly smaller cat than what we would be dealing with
in these emporiums or or Mr jam Rocks emporium. So
if you call one of those wipes, it might like
you know, lose you a limb or the very least,
you know, give you a serious injury you Oh yeah, yeah,
(26:44):
and uh, this is I can see this because this
is kind of embarrassing. That's why I found out cat
scratch fever is a real thing, not just the ted
nugent song. I actually one time got cat scratch fever
as a kid. Isn't it like a like a pair
a site almost It makes you like do bow to
the will of your feline masters. That's toxoplasmosis. Cat scratch fever.
(27:11):
Is cat scratch fever? Is you bacterial infection? And if
you if a cat bites you or scratches you. All
I remember is I got a fever and then I
had like, uh swollen area of my body. But I
got over it. I survived no toxoplasmosis, which I would
always love to avoid. But people weren't worried about toxoplasmosis.
(27:33):
They probably weren't too worried about cat scratch fever. They
wanted the thrill of feeling like they had escaped the
jaguar or a tiger. And so jam Rock is blowing up.
He's starting to be known as sort of world class
in the business, which he was, and more and more
people very well to do. People started to come to
him and say things like, misso, jam Rock, I'm follow
(27:55):
your career with great interest, and I've always wanted to
own in Almadillo, And like literally they would say this.
They would come to him and request specific animals and
he would he would say, you know, I imagine we
can work something out. And people would buy elephants and
like you said, parakeets and cause all kinds of stuff
(28:16):
from him. He also started networking. It's funny man at
our at our favorite local wing spot, and we shout
out all the time, called the local one of the
guys who works there, and I'm not gonna disclose his name.
He has a world class meteorite collection, like museum level.
And I was talking and I think you know the
(28:37):
guy know And I was talking to him about I
was like, how do you find these things? How does
it work? And he has a network of dealers across
the world, like when a meteorite falls, he knows the
guys who get on the plane to find it, which
is sort of like how jam Rock was with his
network that you know, he pretty much inherited from his dad,
I think, right, like he built upon it, but came
(29:00):
from his dad. Oh totally. I mean, that's the thing.
I mean. Even though this was very big in London,
this whole exotic animal trade, it was probably a network
of only a handful of top top players, of which
jam Rock was like the a number one, And I
think we said they were like a hundred and something
dealers in London, which is a massive, massive metro area.
(29:21):
So you know, he was kind of, uh, the top
of the heap when it came to this relatively niche
industry because if after all, you could only afford this
if you were of a certain class, So this wouldn't
have been something like you know, necessities like you know,
food and grain and things like that, that would have
obviously been on a much much larger scale. Um even
(29:42):
as larger scales this was it was still only for
a very select few. But the thing that I think
is neat and probably one reason we still talk about
this guy today, was because he started to develop all
these relationships with these really important uh institutions in London
like the Natural History Museum and the Zoological Gardens is
now known as the London Zoo UM. So when he
(30:03):
you know, would have overflow on his and his you
know pens or his facilities or whatever, uh, he would
essentially allow the Zoological Gardens to store these creatures for
him and it would be almost like a trial basis
where if the animals were a hit with you know,
the spectators, then the zoo would actually buy it from him.
(30:24):
So he had this kind of built in um relationship
with those guys that would help him sort of clear
some of his creatures out if if they were sticking
around for too long. Yeah yeah, no audition process, Uh well,
non consensual on the animals part. And you know a
lot of these animals are from very different climates, so unfortunately,
unless they were unless a lot of TLC was put
(30:47):
into their diet, they wouldn't last long once they arrived.
If they made it off the ship alive. And because
of that rate of attrition. Because so many animals were
dying in transit or within the first few weeks or
months after arriving, jam Rock naturally developed that side hustle
you were mentioning with taxidermy. He got more and more
(31:11):
and more and more successful. We're talking waiting list for animals,
stuff like that. People are kissing his keyst just to
get on his good side and maybe jump the line
a little bit. And in eighteen fifty seven, at the
high point of his success, he gets his crown jewel,
a fully grown Bengal tiger that came to England from
(31:34):
the East Indies. This takes us to that morning we
talked about the very top, the morning of October when
the tiger and several other large felines by the way
arrives at the Belt Street. Nagerie, whoa hold the phone?
Hold the horses grabbed the tigers. This is a two parter.
(31:56):
We have just gotten to the introduction of our main character,
not our protagonist. I would argue, it's also Christmas, so
give us a break. You know it's a two partner.
Come on, let us have this, please, we love you.
The next press is gonna be a lot of fun
and it happens this week, so not even that long
to wait. In the meantime, why not reach out to us,
send us an email. We've got one, right, Ben, we
do well. You guys have what I'm still trying to
(32:18):
get access to Ridiculous at I Heart media dot com.
But give us, drop us a line, let us know.
As always, we want to hear your strange animal encounters
from your neck of the global woods. You can also
tell us about that on Ridiculous Historians at Facebook. While
you're on the internet, you can make friends with us,
(32:39):
not just as I show, but as individuals and Ben
Bowling on Instagram bo w l I n Ben Bowling
hs W on Twitter get a look at my various
various misadventures. Um candidly, I had to be off social
media for a little bit, but I'm getting back to
it slowly but surely. Can't wait to hear from everybody. Yep,
you can find me on social media as well. I
(33:00):
am exclusively on Instagram at how now Noel Brown, We'll
see act folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our one and only
super producer, Mr Max Williams. Hi, it's me Ben Boland. No, no,
we both we we both watched Tiger King. We did.
We gotta admit it. We both watched it. Wow. That
was like peak pandemic television, you know. I mean it
(00:50):
was the thing that sort of united all of us
and solidarity, uh and bonded us together for the fight
against the coronavirus. You know. Thank you Joe Exotic for
giving us that gift. Apparently the new one is not
so good. The the sequel, they just sort of like,
you know, are mining desperately for like extra bits of
stuff to to shove into a series. I have not
(01:11):
bothered watching it, but no, I did like it. And
I also I've got to give credit where credit is
due to chase a story like that and to be
around as it totally like happens before your very eyes.
Like the filmmakers deserve credit for hanging out, you know
and just kind of seeing this whole crazy story kind
of you know unfold. Uh. And and and allowing us
(01:31):
to you know, go along for the ride. Is it
high art? You know, maybe not, but it's definitely pretty
solid documentary filmmaking. Yeah, yeah, Greedon, it's a good point
about the pandemic. Society was living vicariously through so many
adventures of other people. You know. Uh, Subscriptions to streaming
(01:51):
services were on the rise, where people were listening to
podcast watching films, so on and so on. But one
thing that we found, with the help of our longtime
Paul Gabe Louisier, was that Joe Exotic was maybe not
the first tiger king. In fact, the the first tiger king,
(02:14):
we we could well say, was a guy named Charles
jam Rock in the eighteen hundreds in London, which was
a very very different London from the London you'll see
in the two thousand's very much was. I mean, well,
you know, you're still going to see the high streets
and the cobblestones and all of that good stuff. I mean,
London is a town that prides itself in its history.
(02:37):
There were a lot more wild exotic animals just kind
of around. Uh, and that was thanks in part uh
if not, well, now let's just let's not give him
fall the credit. But it was thanks in part to
Charles jam Rock, who's the coolest name in the exotic
animal trade if you ask me, spelled j A M
R A c H. He was a very, very sought
(03:00):
after wild animal dealer. He was known throughout the world
and he had a very very uh a list kind
of clientele that he catered to. He had agents all
over the world that would get him exactly what he needed,
be at a panther, a prized panther, puma, or some
other animal that starts with a pie, since we're doing
(03:20):
the whole alliteration thing, a parrot. They were very into
with the mccaus been. That was a very sought after
exotic pet um and it was all about class and status.
These pets were very expensive to purchase, very expensive to
feed and maintain, and very expensive and dangerous to house
and keep them from, you know, like malling the housekeeper.
(03:41):
But that happened a lot too. I got a jump
in air and to ask, actually, couldn't get you a
porpoise to keep along with this piece thing? Could you
get a porpoise? A good question? Porpoises? Uh, yeah, we're porpoises.
Popular in this period. Let's go, he could get you
a porpoise on purpose. I'm sure if you if you
had to he he was. He was probably into porpoises
(04:02):
for profit, if that was a possibility. Okay, done with
the piece. So this this is weird because this coincides
with an earlier stuff they don't want you to know episode.
We did a while back on allegations of cryptids of
large cats attacking people in modern day UK, But back
(04:23):
in the eighteen hundreds, just as you described, there were
quite a few very real, very dangerous large cats. One
example that comes to us from our pals at Mental
Flaws is how on October eighteen fifty seven, this kid
was just walking down the street in London's East End
(04:44):
when he was attacked by a tiger that had escaped
its cage. The tiger snatched up the kid like put
him in its jaws and ran off with him down
the street. Luckily, the kids survived, the tiger survived, and
the guy who rescued the boy survived, which was convenient
for the rescuer because the rescuer also owned this tiger.
(05:05):
It was it was being delivered to a shop owned
by Charles jam Rock and as as you had established earlier,
he was at the very least one of the top
wild animal dealers in the world, quite possibly in the world.
He had this network of people all around the planet
(05:27):
that would help him get quote unquote exotic animals to London,
and London, as we'll find, had had a long standing
um fascination with all these kinds of creatures that appeared
in other parts of the world. And this is this
is so weird. Like, if you've been to London, you know,
(05:47):
there are a lot of things you can complain about.
It's got some of the world's worst traffic. Things can
be more expensive than a lot of people are used to.
But if you walk down like a high street now,
of the many certaing you might have, one of them
won't be Will a jaguar attack me? Is today the
day that it's tiger gets my foot be a pretty
(06:09):
poetic way to go. But no, no, it definitely would
not be something I would sign up for, especially given
those rapacious prices of of lodging and meals and all
of that. Um. But I I sort of, I said,
I walked it back already, but I'm just gonna walk
it back one step further, Charles jam Rock was definitely
one of the most noteworthy wild animal dealers in the world,
like you said, and and you know, cater to a
(06:30):
very very very high end clientele. But there had been
a fascination, a long standing fascination with exotic animals in
London long before he hit the scene. There was a
wild animal menagerie uh in the Tower of London that
was around since twelve thirty five. Um. And as we've
talked about in stories of of American presidents and their
(06:53):
weird pets and stuff. Sometimes, uh, these animals are given
as like political gift, you know, as a sign of
solidarity or layer is our most notable creature from our
land we present to you as a sign of our
affection for you as a country and as a ruler.
But jam Rock, Uh, he hit the scene in a
(07:16):
moment that was really really really crucial, um because trade
was beginning to open up. So was no longer all
about just like having someone that was coming as an
ambassador an emissary bringing you a gift. Now there were
all these trade routes that were open, and essentially a
business sprung up out of this whole fascination. It was
(07:43):
quite an industry in the late eighteenth century noises from
big animals, especially large cats around the Exeter or Strange area.
We're just a normal part of city background noise, the
way you would hear horns honking or people saying well
gonna you know whatever the UK version of that is.
(08:03):
So there was even a writer, Charles Lamb who lived
in Temple Lane and he wrote about how he liked
to hear the big cats yelling when he walked home
after a good night of drinking and partying. It's strange
because you know, if you think about it, this makes
a kind of sense. This is the age of the
British Empire. It's the world's leading imperial power, and so
(08:28):
it was seen as a benefit of living in the
heart of this empire to have this at home, access
to animals from around the world. And people made a
lot of money doing this kind of thing. As you said,
there's a guy named Joshua Brooks who had a menagerie
they called it at the end of Tottenham Court Road,
(08:50):
and his specialization you'll love this was exotic birds, but
he also was into antelopes, lions, monkeys, porcupines. This is
like a day the zoo for a lot of people.
You you feel like you're getting a taste of culture.
You feel like you're living vicariously, right, You're having adventures
by having the world brought to you totally. Um. And
(09:11):
there is a fantastic book by Christopher Plum called Georgian
Menagerie that you can get at the Guardians online bookshop
if you go to Bookshop dot the Guardian dot com.
And John Mullin over at the Guardian did a really
great review, uh, and exerted a little bit from this
book that talks about just this period in English history. Uh,
(09:32):
Georgian England, Georgian London, right, Um. And there were everything
from camels too, you know, um, rhinoceri whatever is it,
rnacerest is, who cares? They were everywhere, as as the
Guardian puts the lions on Tottenham Court Road, camels on
the strand, England's capital once teamed with beasts. So this
would have been a very very interesting time. Like you said, Bennett,
(09:55):
it was sort of just par for the course, and
folks were treating it more like to visit to the zoo.
It wasn't a huge deal. It was just another attraction
that London had to offer to entertain people. You know,
there were even like traveling wild animal menagerie's that would
go from town to town and then if you had
enough money, you could actually buy your own tiger or bow,
(10:18):
a constrictor or whatever you might tickle your fancy. So
there were a ton of exotic pet shops already. By
there were around a hundred and eighteen wild animal dealers
with brick and mortar shops just in London, but you
also have them all over the country in places like
Bristol and Bath and Liverpool. Um, and you could, if
(10:40):
you were so disposed financially and you know mentally, uh,
to go into one of these and check out a
bear or an elephant or a kangaroo. Perhaps. Um pretty
wild if you think about it. And England kind of
got this reputation as being the hub, the center that
kind of like dumping off point for the US wild
(11:00):
animal trade, whether they were alive or dead, because a
lot of these animals would not survive the long journeys
from their native lands, you know, to London to this hub.
It is funny like we live here in Atlanta. Uh
in Atlanta is a hub for a lot of things
like that. Too. Unfortunately, one of those is human trafficking.
That's because of our approximity to one of the biggest
(11:21):
airports in the world. So this is the kind of
thing you get when you sort of become this like
crossroads of civilization. Yeah, this is Uh, there are a
couple of points there that that I think we could
highlight for context. Let's keep in mind, Uh, this is
the same part of the world where people were flexing
by renting pineapples. It's a very different cultural framework. Also,
(11:44):
are we still in pointy shoes area or we passed
that now? I think we're a little past pointy shoes.
But pointy shoes are always around the corner because it's fashioned.
So get ahead of it and get your own pointy
shoes today. Ridiculous history branded always be closing. This is
a good time for us to give some examples of
these weird flexes. Consider the Earl of Shelburne, who later
(12:06):
went on to become Prime Minister. This guy kept in
orangutan and a tame leopard in his orang injury at
Bowood House. We talked about oranges too. You were flexing
by happy citrus fruits growing on your property. Yeah, and uh,
I can. I guess, is a leopard ever truly tame?
(12:26):
I mean you can do it, yeah, just the it's
the difference between taming and domesticating. So a single individual
creature could be ostensibly tamed, but it would still very
much be a wild animal. So it wouldn't all of
a sudden be like you have a uh, spotted version
of Lassie. If that makes sense. Well, I guess what
(12:47):
I'm getting at is we're going to see in some
of these stories there is the perception of having a
tame animal, and then you know, when you maybe poker
product or pushed a little too far, does that tame
element kind of drop off and then that sort of
refers back to its natural state of wildness. It can, yeah,
because taming. Think of it as like human familiarization with
(13:09):
humans or with often with like a couple of particular humans,
and you know, you'll be seen as as a peer
or or maybe even you'll be seen as an authoritarian
or parent figure, but there's still very much wild wild animals.
And I love I love the point about orangutanks because
they're so intelligent. In fact, just recently I learned there
(13:32):
was a long standing myth in Um. It's long standing
myth in some very specific region where orangutanks occur, where
the people have always believed that orangutanks can talk. They've
just decided not to let humans know because they don't
want to be put to work. And there's some great
meme I keep picturing. It sounds so realistic of like
(13:52):
a bunch of orangutangs hanging out, even though they're kind
of solitary creatures, hanging out, shooting the breeze, maybe having
a book club, and then they see some humans coming
and they say, oh, ship, everybody shut up. They're gonna
make us pay taxes. But they are, they are. They
are very intelligent animals. And you know, Shelburne is um
not an exception to the rule. Sir Robert Walpole had
(14:16):
a pet flamingo. Sir Hans Sloan had a one eyed
tame wolverine that would just sort of follow him around
his house. He also had an apossum and porcupine. No
word on how the three animals got along. I would
imagine he kept them separate. Ben you pronounced the oh
and possum. I know this is a very divisive thing.
I think it's a person. I think that shows it
(14:36):
speaks to people's personalities. Actually believe there's a difference between
a possum and an opossum. It's it's a little confusing.
They both refer to the Virginia possum in North America. Uh,
the technical or scientific context I think is o possum.
But then if you go to Bob Vila dot com,
(14:57):
which I did not think would enter the conversation ship today,
Bob is telling me that one key difference is their tails.
A possums tale is thick and furry. He says, thanks Bob,
who knew who was such an expert? Yeah, yeah, I
guess he got started in the possum game and then
went on to the rest of his story career. So
(15:18):
when we when we look at it trustworthy home advice,
Bob field A possums and opossums. Uh yeah, let us
know your your take on the possum apossum controversy. Queen Charlotte,
that's another quick example. Wife to George three, she had
an elephant, she had a couple of zebras in Buckingham Palace,
and she was one of the big champions of bringing
(15:42):
exotic animals to London. And she had a collection of
the first living kangaroos seen in the area, which later
led to a kangaroo collecting mania in the seventeen nineties.
And then yeah, and she would give kangaroo babies Joey's
to were fellow aristocrats who already had their own private menageries.
(16:04):
You know, I think we've talked about this, but it
turns out that the pouch on mama kangaroos that the
little Joey's hang out in, it's not just a cute,
little warm, dry place. It's actually full of like slimy,
amniotic fluid type stuff. It is very gross. I know
a lot of unhelpful and fascinating kangaroo facts which we
don't we don't need to get here, but all I'm
(16:25):
the only reason I'm saying that is to point out that, yes, no,
you are, you are correct. It is it is not
a like a cozy It's not like that cozy little
side pocket you get on some jenes. It tot or
it would be if that was filled with snut when
you bought it. Absolutely absolutely spot on. So I mentioned
earlier the idea of live and dead animals being a
(16:46):
part of this trade. Um the dead animals were just
as important as the live, and in fact that those
are the ones we still think of today. That kind
of codify Britain's kind of empire building influence across the planet.
You know, the idea of like huntsmen or like some
like moneyed British royal or business person in their lodge.
You know, with all these severed taxidermy heads of different
(17:09):
animals they killed, um, you know, on safari or whatever.
This is almost a stereotypical image of imperialism. If you
think about during the reign of Queen Victoria, there was
an Indian based taxidermy company uh called Van ingen and
van ingen Um that stuffed close to forty three thousand
wild animals, including tigers and leopards and more between nineteen
(17:34):
hundred and uh nineteen fifty. So this is like well
beyond the era that we're specifically discussing today, but just
so you know how far this stuff goes. And this
was to supply the European and Indian demands for these
types of trophies that we're talking about, uh, and they
would you know, travel across the globe to you know,
get these specimens and then you know, stuff and mount them.
(17:57):
Um to Filippo's trophy type rooms that we're talking about. Yeah, yep,
And these animals weren't always just for show. Turtle feast
had a became a really popular fad in the city
of London. Like it wasn't a respectable social dinner unless
there was freshly prepared turtle. And this is one this
(18:20):
is one of the most pretentious things. This bothers me
because I like this animal. Eventually, at some point the
most well to do with aristocrats could have must have
their wigs dressed with bear grease and only bear grease,
and thousands of barrels of bear grease came from Arkansas
and this almost led to the extinction of bears in Arkansas.
(18:43):
Bears from Russia were fattened up and potential customers would
sometimes travel to witness the removal of fat from the
bear corpse is a guarantee they weren't getting swindled with
pig fat. This like this gets into some gross territory.
I think we should also note, for some foreshadowing here
that um, this did not come without cost for the
(19:05):
common people. The tiger that's just out wandering the streets
of London isn't gonna say, hey, I am gonna attack
the people who brought me here. They're just you know,
all humans are on the menu. So you can see
stories of panthers tearing off women's arms. You can see
(19:26):
stories of people getting their clothing attacked when they got
too close to a creature in a menagerie. Uh. There's
also a guy named well, a lion named Wallace the
Lion in the eighteen twenties who was famous for tearing
the hands and other limbs off three people on several
different occasions. He actually went to Derby. He escaped in
(19:47):
Derbyshire rather and killed a guy one time, but he
was not put down. It was returned to captivity because
they had already been so much investment in these creatures,
and indeed they became more successful, more profitable when they
had a bloody story in their past. Right now, you're
not seeing a regular lion, You're seeing a man eater. Uh. Yeah,
(20:10):
this is crazy. I love you mentioned Queen Victoria because
during her reign there was this explosion and construction of
all kinds of venues for seeing exotic animals private as
well as available to the public. Like zoos today, some
of it had ties to more of a scientific bent,
you know, like we are learning more about the natural world,
(20:32):
which is a noble thing to do. Others were definitely
more kind of like a Barnum and Bailey type circus acts,
you know. So here's the other thing. This trade was unregulated.
All you needed to have was this scratch the starting capital. Uh.
It's true that the very first what we would call
(20:54):
animal welfare laws had been passed, and there were people saying, hey,
maybe we're going too far with the fur trade. A
lot of these animals are dying in transport, but that's
not something a lot of people wanted to hear. They
were more interested in having their turtle soup their tigers.
And there there bear grease wigs, which is still weird
(21:15):
to me that that was the like, of all the
things you could do with a bear, that's that's the
thing you want to brag about. So it's like some
really good grease man. I mean, what do you want?
You know, you when you win, the heart wants what
the heart wants, I guess so, and so does the wig.
So at this point, at this point, I believe it's
time for us to introduce Charles jam Rock you know,
(21:44):
it's funny you were mentioning this off air. I'm pretty
sure that we have some restaurants in Atlanta who are
named after Charles jam Rock. I don't know. They're named
after him. That spelled j A M R O c K,
which to me, I don't know. I think of like reggae.
Mu sick is like like roots rock reggae, you know,
like jam with jam and you know all that, like
(22:05):
that's a Bob Marley song and all of that, the whalers.
So the idea of jam rock to me seems like
a very reggae kind of concept because these are in
fact Jamaican restaurants that were talking about. But yeah, Charles
jam Rock was not Jamaican at all. He was German heritage.
He was born in Hamburg, Germany, in eighteen fifteen as
(22:27):
Charles Christian jam Rock. That's my middle name actually, And
he went on to become a pre eminent dealer, as
we mentioned, the top of a wild and exotic creatures,
everything from birds to you know, four legged guys, whatever,
whatever was in demand, he could get you one wabat's Yeah,
(22:48):
he very much. So we'll get to that. And he
actually got the help of his father to establish this
vast trading network supplying to Zoo's menagerie, circuses, museums. Anyone
that was in need of a wild preacher, dead or alive,
he had their back. This was all during nineteenth century Europe,
(23:08):
and even the famous English poet Dante, not the not
Dante allegory, but the British poet Dante Gabrielle Rosetti. Um,
he bought a wombat, his beloved pet wombat, from our
guy jam Rock. You gotta have one. A wombat is
like the It's like old Yeller for poets. You gotta
you gotta have what I want to. I want to
(23:29):
step back because the reason was setting up the Jamaican
restaurant joke here, which I'm gonna I'm gonna keep. I'm
just gonna make that my reality. Jam jam Rock is
spelled J A M R A C H. And made
the uh. After looking through some pronunciation possibilities, I just
decided to say jam Rock as well. For this it
(23:52):
sounds schooler. If you are a descendant of old C. C.
J himself and you have a preferred pronunciation, that's fine,
please right in love to hear it. But but this
guy followed. Like he said, he followed in his dad's footsteps,
and it made sense to his father is able to
help him because his father knew the trade, the trade rights.
He was very much set up to be that guy. Yeah,
(24:14):
he had insider information. He knew what was coming off
the boats and often knew when because he was a
harbor master, so he had the connects. In eighteen thirty nine,
Charles his brother Anton, moves to London to start his
own animal trade business, following in dear Old DAWs footsteps.
(24:36):
But unfortunately Anton passes away very soon after he arrives,
and this is an opportunity for Charles to take over
the business. After charles father expires in eighteen forty, there's
a tough series of years for Charles. Uh he moves
to London himself. He takes over. He opens an exotic
pet store and a museum of natural history called jam
(24:58):
Rocks Animal Emporium. I love it when people use the
word emporium. I am such a sucker for the word emporium.
I've been in so many tourist traps in the middle
of nowhere, America just because someone slapped emporium on their
you know, on their kitch store, So thank you emporiums uh.
He also had a so he had the emporium on St.
(25:20):
George Street. He had another outfit, a menagerie on Bet Street.
And there's a pretty great uh. There's a pretty great
description of this from the Spectator in one where they
say Mr Childs jam Rock the wild Beast banners. He's
sometimes familiarly called never failed to have a large assortment
of tigers and lines on hand. The passages between the
(25:42):
two stories of cages would never and walk and walk
down them was occasionally like running the gauntlet. So they're
they're trying to sort of articulate the excitement, the endorphin rush,
the thrill of danger people experience because the animals, without
reading the whole quote right, the animals pause can reach people.
(26:03):
This is not like a modern zoo. There's not like
a pit and you know, a large fence. There's a cage.
And so if you walk too slow, you know, as
anybody like the three of us all have cats living
with us. If you walk by just a regular house
cat and it's feeling, you know, kind of in a
punching mood, they'll just swat at you, give you a swat,
(26:23):
give you a good old swat, and if you get
a little claw that it connects, you might end up
with a slice. Uh. And this is a you know,
significantly smaller cat than what we would be dealing with
in these emporiums or or Mr jam Rocks emporium. So
if you call one of those wipes, it might like
you know, lose you a limb or the very least,
you know, give you a serious injury you Oh yeah, yeah,
(26:44):
and uh, this is I can see this because this
is kind of embarrassing. That's why I found out cat
scratch fever is a real thing, not just the ted
nugent song. I actually one time got cat scratch fever
as a kid. Isn't it like a like a pair
a site almost It makes you like do bow to
the will of your feline masters. That's toxoplasmosis. Cat scratch fever.
(27:11):
Is cat scratch fever? Is you bacterial infection? And if
you if a cat bites you or scratches you. All
I remember is I got a fever and then I
had like, uh swollen area of my body. But I
got over it. I survived no toxoplasmosis, which I would
always love to avoid. But people weren't worried about toxoplasmosis.
(27:33):
They probably weren't too worried about cat scratch fever. They
wanted the thrill of feeling like they had escaped the
jaguar or a tiger. And so jam Rock is blowing up.
He's starting to be known as sort of world class
in the business, which he was, and more and more
people very well to do. People started to come to
him and say things like, misso, jam Rock, I'm follow
(27:55):
your career with great interest, and I've always wanted to
own in Almadillo, And like literally they would say this.
They would come to him and request specific animals and
he would he would say, you know, I imagine we
can work something out. And people would buy elephants and
like you said, parakeets and cause all kinds of stuff
(28:16):
from him. He also started networking. It's funny man at
our at our favorite local wing spot, and we shout
out all the time, called the local one of the
guys who works there, and I'm not gonna disclose his name.
He has a world class meteorite collection, like museum level.
And I was talking and I think you know the
(28:37):
guy know And I was talking to him about I
was like, how do you find these things? How does
it work? And he has a network of dealers across
the world, like when a meteorite falls, he knows the
guys who get on the plane to find it, which
is sort of like how jam Rock was with his
network that you know, he pretty much inherited from his dad,
I think, right, like he built upon it, but came
(29:00):
from his dad. Oh totally. I mean, that's the thing.
I mean. Even though this was very big in London,
this whole exotic animal trade, it was probably a network
of only a handful of top top players, of which
jam Rock was like the a number one, And I
think we said they were like a hundred and something
dealers in London, which is a massive, massive metro area.
(29:21):
So you know, he was kind of, uh, the top
of the heap when it came to this relatively niche
industry because if after all, you could only afford this
if you were of a certain class, So this wouldn't
have been something like you know, necessities like you know,
food and grain and things like that, that would have
obviously been on a much much larger scale. Um even
(29:42):
as larger scales this was it was still only for
a very select few. But the thing that I think
is neat and probably one reason we still talk about
this guy today, was because he started to develop all
these relationships with these really important uh institutions in London
like the Natural History Museum and the Zoological Gardens is
now known as the London Zoo UM. So when he
(30:03):
you know, would have overflow on his and his you
know pens or his facilities or whatever, uh, he would
essentially allow the Zoological Gardens to store these creatures for
him and it would be almost like a trial basis
where if the animals were a hit with you know,
the spectators, then the zoo would actually buy it from him.
(30:24):
So he had this kind of built in um relationship
with those guys that would help him sort of clear
some of his creatures out if if they were sticking
around for too long. Yeah yeah, no audition process, Uh well,
non consensual on the animals part. And you know a
lot of these animals are from very different climates, so unfortunately,
unless they were unless a lot of TLC was put
(30:47):
into their diet, they wouldn't last long once they arrived.
If they made it off the ship alive. And because
of that rate of attrition. Because so many animals were
dying in transit or within the first few weeks or
months after arriving, jam Rock naturally developed that side hustle
you were mentioning with taxidermy. He got more and more
(31:11):
and more and more successful. We're talking waiting list for animals,
stuff like that. People are kissing his keyst just to
get on his good side and maybe jump the line
a little bit. And in eighteen fifty seven, at the
high point of his success, he gets his crown jewel,
a fully grown Bengal tiger that came to England from
(31:34):
the East Indies. This takes us to that morning we
talked about the very top, the morning of October when
the tiger and several other large felines by the way
arrives at the Belt Street. Nagerie, whoa hold the phone?
Hold the horses grabbed the tigers. This is a two parter.
(31:56):
We have just gotten to the introduction of our main character,
not our protagonist. I would argue, it's also Christmas, so
give us a break. You know it's a two partner.
Come on, let us have this, please, we love you.
The next press is gonna be a lot of fun
and it happens this week, so not even that long
to wait. In the meantime, why not reach out to us,
send us an email. We've got one, right, Ben, we
do well. You guys have what I'm still trying to
(32:18):
get access to Ridiculous at I Heart media dot com.
But give us, drop us a line, let us know.
As always, we want to hear your strange animal encounters
from your neck of the global woods. You can also
tell us about that on Ridiculous Historians at Facebook. While
you're on the internet, you can make friends with us,
(32:39):
not just as I show, but as individuals and Ben
Bowling on Instagram bo w l I n Ben Bowling
hs W on Twitter get a look at my various
various misadventures. Um candidly, I had to be off social
media for a little bit, but I'm getting back to
it slowly but surely. Can't wait to hear from everybody. Yep,
you can find me on social media as well. I
(33:00):
am exclusively on Instagram at how now Noel Brown, We'll
see act folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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