Research - Animals in the Victorian Era
- Kristina Lexova
- Mar 19, 2017
- 2 min read
I did some research on animals in the Victorian Era for our circus menagerie and ended up going on a bit of an internet learning trip...
During the time period, exotic animals were a hot commodity, imported from far away lands as status symbols, pets for the wealthy and members of travelling zoos, or menageries. Subsequently, one would have been able to encounter rare animals from every corner of the world at these menageries, and sometimes even on one's doorstep as the circus came into town (see images below). And of course if you had sufficient funds, you could even pop into the nearest wildlife dealer's shop and purchase your very own exotic pet. I actually found some papers written in 1894 by a woman named Eliza Brightwen, describing her pet lemurs:
http://www.victorianvoices.net/ARTICLES/GOP/Pets/1894-Lemurs.pdf
Animal welfare at that time was of little more than rudimentary, although the very first animal welfare laws came into effect during the century. Tragically, the hunting and trading of animals, especially exotics, was completely unregulated, resulting in the extinction of some unique species (below, left to right: great auk, quagga, Mauritius blue pigeon).
What all this means for the animals in our level is that they could be almost anything, from elephants and horses to antelopes, walruses and even whales - PT Barnum's American Museum in New York City famously housed a pair of beluga whales in 1861, which then proceeded to tour the country in seaweed-lined boxes until their unsurprising death a week later. A short article on them can be found here: http://monkeygoggles.com/?p=2992
That's it for the research portion, I've compiled a little reference board of more basic animals that could potentially populate our circus grounds:
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