London County Council Registers of Performing Animals

Archives Officer, Charlotte Hopkins, presented a paper at the 57^th London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Local History Conference. The theme of the conference was 'The London Menagerie: Animals in London History'. Charlotte’s paper investigated the London County Council Registers of Performing Animals held at LMA and explored how animals were regulated in London from 1926.

You can find out more about these records and the background to the regulation of licensing of performing animals in this article.

The Registers of Performing Animals

The London County Council (LCC) registers of performing animals contained in series LCC/PC/ANI/02 (1926-1952) were used to record the details of the performance act that had applied for registration.

They record the name of the trainer and exhibitor, their stage name, nationality, address, and the address at which the animals were trained, types of animals and the description of the performance with the date of registration. Covering the years from the start of the Act in January 1926 until December 1952, we are not sure if other registers existed or if they simply stopped recording them in this manner after this date.

Before taking a closer look at these, we need to understand the appetite that Londoners had developed for such performances of non-human animals.

London’s Appetite for Animal as Spectacle

London has long had a fascination for non-domestic animals, at first as a curiosity, an unfamiliar sight. From around 1200s to the 1820s the Tower of London had a menagerie of wild animals that were given as gifts. Famously this included lions and even a polar bear. These animals were then taken to Regent’s Park when the Zoological Society formed in 1826.

In the nineteenth century, London had a host of Travelling Menageries. There were exhibitions of wild animals at Exeter Change on the Strand, and appearances at Bartholomew Fair. 

Surrey Zoological Gardens was established in Walworth (now where Pasley Park, Walworth Road is situated) in 1831 by Edward Cross who also had a menagerie at Exeter Change. 

An early form of the circus appeared at Astley’s Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge Road, which had a regular show of a rider standing on horseback “without the aid of either bridle or saddle” around a ring. Equestrian acts were popular until wild animals took over the ring in the 1880s following the arrival of Barnum and Bailey’s extensive show from America at Olympia. Other showman, such as George Sanger, were then in competition to expand and enhance the level of spectacle. Non-domestic animals increased in number in the ring with lions, elephants and bears being a favourite.

In the Lion’s Den

With wild animals in the public arena there was clearly a need for safety measures to be put in place, as the animals sometimes fought back. One such case was during the Christmas performance of Wombwell’s Menagerie at the Agricultural Hall in Islington in 1895. A young lion tamer, Alexander Beaumont, aged 23 years (also referred to as William in some accounts) was attacked by a lion during the show. He was admitted to St Bartholomew’s Hospital on 26 December with severe wounds in the arm and thigh, noted on the coroner’s file held at LMA as "caused by being bitten by a lion.” Beaumont experienced symptoms of hydrophobia and delirium prior to death. 

LMA holds the inquest file (CLA/041/IQ/03/079) from the coroner which includes a drawing of the lion's cage. The file remarks that Beaumont was an American who had “no friends in England”.

One newspaper reported, in the language of the time, that:

The file concludes that, “We shall sell the lion – but not as a performing lion – the lion is healthy.” It had not attacked before.

Before 1889

Prior to the formation of the LCC in 1889 there had been various measures to control animals on a practical level in terms of contagious disease in the space of the city. The Metropolitan Board of Works formed in 1855 and they were the administrative authority in overseeing the control of such matters for London.

There were earlier acts against cruelty to animals in 1822 (Richard Martin’s Act MP), 1825, 1849 and then in 1876 The Cruelty to Animals Act set limits on the practice of and instituted a licensing system for animal experimentation.

In 'Beastly London', Hannah Velten outlines that, “By the late 1890s journals carried articles relating the cruel methods – starvation and water deprivation, spiked collars, hot irons, whips and so on – used to train the animals that were seen performing in the London variety halls...”

In 1913, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA, which had formed in 1824) proposed that in the future a license should be issued by them to assure management of establishments that the owner had not inflicted cruelty in training.

The Performing Animals Bill

It wasn’t until the 1920s that we see an explicitly named ‘Performing Animals Bill’. Before this, acts were not formally regulated, although they had been under the watchful eye of organisations such as the RSPCA and the Performing Animals Defence League (PADL established in 1914).

The LCC formed for the first time a Public Control Committee in 1891 and the registers of Performing Animals were under their administration (LCC/PC/ANI).

In 1921 a Select Committee on Performing Animals was established amid protests from PADL. The Minutes of Proceedings of the LCC on 26 April 1923, includes the report of the Parliamentary Committee concerning the bill presented by Brigadier General-Colvin.

This was, “to enquire into the conditions under which performing animals are trained and exhibited and to consider whether legislation is desirable to prohibit or regulate such training and exhibition, and…what lines such legislation should follow.” The Committee recommended that all persons involved in training animals for exhibition should be registered. The general principle of this bill was to be approved.

The core element of the Act was that:

1. No person shall exhibit or train any performing animal unless he is registered.
2. Every local authority shall keep a register for the purpose of this Act
3. Any application for registration under this Act shall contain such particulars as to the animals and as to the general nature of the performances in which the animals are to be exhibited or for which they are to be trained.
4. The local authority shall give to every person whose name appears on the register kept by them a certificate of registration.

By 1930, the Home Office had claimed that the inspectors of the LCC were required to visit all places of entertainment where animals were exhibited. In David H Wilson’s text on 'The Welfare of Performing Animals: A Historical Perspective' he expands:

By 1946, there were 213 trainer exhibitors in the LCC area and 82 in the county boroughs and City of London.

Examples from the Registers

Common sites for regulating animals included the circus, the park, the theatre and music hall, the street, zoos, and for film productions. Later, in the 1960s, television became a popular medium for showing animal performances and this led to a dwindling of acts appearing in the other spaces.

From some of the proposed acts contained within the registers, it is evident that there was a fashion for the animals to mimic human behaviour in their acts.

The first entry in the register for January 1926 is Alfred Roe’s Cockatoo and Parrots act. He had 12 cockatoos and two parrots who performed for 20 minutes twice daily. They would ride a toy motor car, working a merry go round, laughing, talking, whistling, a shipwreck in which eight birds take part.

There are lots of equestrian acts performing liberty and ‘high school’ acts that seem to have been popular. Dogs on hind legs and in costume were ubiquitous. Other examples across the registers of the acts that were proposed include:

• The Swedish, Madame Doris, had 15 snakes and four alligators in her act that performed for six minutes up to 12 times daily.
• Gwen Cleary from Ladbroke Grove had a horse dressed up like Charlie Chaplin, who laughs, nods, shakes head, and puts out tongue.
• An old English sheep dog trained by the American John Lester to play drunk twice nightly.
• Monkeys always get the comedy act, as do sea lions and the occasional walrus.
• Tigers take their places on seats round the arena, sit on hind legs, do the see-saw.
• Daschunds are put in sausage machine – sausages emerge the other end.
• Sealions play in jazzband.
• Telepathic dogs perform feats of intelligence such as barking in answer to questions.
• Gertrude Gindl’s act had Elephants play football and ‘shave a man’. In a later registration the elephants battle with swords and a revolver with blank cartridges.
• Chimpanzees put clothes in washing machine.
• Dogs perform on their hind legs in costume in a canine ballet.

A change in public opinion

In 1982, Ken Livingstone wrote regarding animal welfare and the Greater London Council Park’s and Smallholdings Committee who had last advised on circuses in 1967 – that licenses were given at that time as the Council only dealt with reputable circuses and there was no reason at that time to change the policy:

By November 1982, the GLC had decided to ban circuses with performing animals from GLC land.

You can explore the registers of performing animals too, all you need to do is Register for a History Card before you visit.