Latest / Ridiculous History / London's Tiger King, Part One: When Exotic Animal's Were The Hottest Flex

Transcript

London's Tiger King, Part One: When Exotic Animal's Were The Hottest Flex · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. That's our one and only
0:33
Speaker 1: super producer, Mr Max Williams. Hi, it's me Ben Boland. No, no,
0:40
Speaker 1: we both we we both watched Tiger King. We did.
0:44
Speaker 1: We gotta admit it. We both watched it. Wow. That
0:47
Speaker 1: was like peak pandemic television, you know. I mean it
0:50
Speaker 1: was the thing that sort of united all of us
0:52
Speaker 1: and solidarity, uh and bonded us together for the fight
0:55
Speaker 1: against the coronavirus. You know. Thank you Joe Exotic for
0:59
Speaker 1: giving us that gift. Apparently the new one is not
1:03
Speaker 1: so good. The the sequel, they just sort of like,
1:05
Speaker 1: you know, are mining desperately for like extra bits of
1:09
Speaker 1: stuff to to shove into a series. I have not
1:11
Speaker 1: bothered watching it, but no, I did like it. And
1:14
Speaker 1: I also I've got to give credit where credit is
1:16
Speaker 1: due to chase a story like that and to be
1:18
Speaker 1: around as it totally like happens before your very eyes.
1:22
Speaker 1: Like the filmmakers deserve credit for hanging out, you know
1:25
Speaker 1: and just kind of seeing this whole crazy story kind
1:28
Speaker 1: of you know unfold. Uh. And and and allowing us
1:31
Speaker 1: to you know, go along for the ride. Is it
1:34
Speaker 1: high art? You know, maybe not, but it's definitely pretty
1:38
Speaker 1: solid documentary filmmaking. Yeah, yeah, Greedon, it's a good point
1:42
Speaker 1: about the pandemic. Society was living vicariously through so many
1:46
Speaker 1: adventures of other people. You know. Uh, Subscriptions to streaming
1:51
Speaker 1: services were on the rise, where people were listening to
1:54
Speaker 1: podcast watching films, so on and so on. But one
1:59
Speaker 1: thing that we found, with the help of our longtime
2:03
Speaker 1: Paul Gabe Louisier, was that Joe Exotic was maybe not
2:09
Speaker 1: the first tiger king. In fact, the the first tiger king,
2:14
Speaker 1: we we could well say, was a guy named Charles
2:18
Speaker 1: jam Rock in the eighteen hundreds in London, which was
2:22
Speaker 1: a very very different London from the London you'll see
2:25
Speaker 1: in the two thousand's very much was. I mean, well,
2:29
Speaker 1: you know, you're still going to see the high streets
2:31
Speaker 1: and the cobblestones and all of that good stuff. I mean,
2:34
Speaker 1: London is a town that prides itself in its history.
2:37
Speaker 1: There were a lot more wild exotic animals just kind
2:40
Speaker 1: of around. Uh, and that was thanks in part uh
2:44
Speaker 1: if not, well, now let's just let's not give him
2:47
Speaker 1: fall the credit. But it was thanks in part to
2:49
Speaker 1: Charles jam Rock, who's the coolest name in the exotic
2:52
Speaker 1: animal trade if you ask me, spelled j A M
2:55
Speaker 1: R A c H. He was a very, very sought
3:00
Speaker 1: after wild animal dealer. He was known throughout the world
3:04
Speaker 1: and he had a very very uh a list kind
3:07
Speaker 1: of clientele that he catered to. He had agents all
3:11
Speaker 1: over the world that would get him exactly what he needed,
3:14
Speaker 1: be at a panther, a prized panther, puma, or some
3:18
Speaker 1: other animal that starts with a pie, since we're doing
3:20
Speaker 1: the whole alliteration thing, a parrot. They were very into
3:23
Speaker 1: with the mccaus been. That was a very sought after
3:26
Speaker 1: exotic pet um and it was all about class and status.
3:30
Speaker 1: These pets were very expensive to purchase, very expensive to
3:34
Speaker 1: feed and maintain, and very expensive and dangerous to house
3:38
Speaker 1: and keep them from, you know, like malling the housekeeper.
3:41
Speaker 1: But that happened a lot too. I got a jump
3:43
Speaker 1: in air and to ask, actually, couldn't get you a
3:45
Speaker 1: porpoise to keep along with this piece thing? Could you
3:47
Speaker 1: get a porpoise? A good question? Porpoises? Uh, yeah, we're porpoises.
3:51
Speaker 1: Popular in this period. Let's go, he could get you
3:56
Speaker 1: a porpoise on purpose. I'm sure if you if you
3:59
Speaker 1: had to he he was. He was probably into porpoises
4:02
Speaker 1: for profit, if that was a possibility. Okay, done with
4:05
Speaker 1: the piece. So this this is weird because this coincides
4:10
Speaker 1: with an earlier stuff they don't want you to know episode.
4:14
Speaker 1: We did a while back on allegations of cryptids of
4:18
Speaker 1: large cats attacking people in modern day UK, But back
4:23
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, just as you described, there were
4:27
Speaker 1: quite a few very real, very dangerous large cats. One
4:31
Speaker 1: example that comes to us from our pals at Mental
4:33
Speaker 1: Flaws is how on October eighteen fifty seven, this kid
4:39
Speaker 1: was just walking down the street in London's East End
4:44
Speaker 1: when he was attacked by a tiger that had escaped
4:46
Speaker 1: its cage. The tiger snatched up the kid like put
4:50
Speaker 1: him in its jaws and ran off with him down
4:53
Speaker 1: the street. Luckily, the kids survived, the tiger survived, and
4:57
Speaker 1: the guy who rescued the boy survived, which was convenient
5:01
Speaker 1: for the rescuer because the rescuer also owned this tiger.
5:05
Speaker 1: It was it was being delivered to a shop owned
5:09
Speaker 1: by Charles jam Rock and as as you had established earlier,
5:14
Speaker 1: he was at the very least one of the top
5:17
Speaker 1: wild animal dealers in the world, quite possibly in the world.
5:22
Speaker 1: He had this network of people all around the planet
5:27
Speaker 1: that would help him get quote unquote exotic animals to London,
5:31
Speaker 1: and London, as we'll find, had had a long standing
5:36
Speaker 1: um fascination with all these kinds of creatures that appeared
5:41
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world. And this is this
5:45
Speaker 1: is so weird. Like, if you've been to London, you know,
5:47
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things you can complain about.
5:49
Speaker 1: It's got some of the world's worst traffic. Things can
5:53
Speaker 1: be more expensive than a lot of people are used to.
5:56
Speaker 1: But if you walk down like a high street now,
5:59
Speaker 1: of the many certaing you might have, one of them
6:02
Speaker 1: won't be Will a jaguar attack me? Is today the
6:06
Speaker 1: day that it's tiger gets my foot be a pretty
6:09
Speaker 1: poetic way to go. But no, no, it definitely would
6:12
Speaker 1: not be something I would sign up for, especially given
6:14
Speaker 1: those rapacious prices of of lodging and meals and all
6:17
Speaker 1: of that. Um. But I I sort of, I said,
6:20
Speaker 1: I walked it back already, but I'm just gonna walk
6:21
Speaker 1: it back one step further, Charles jam Rock was definitely
6:25
Speaker 1: one of the most noteworthy wild animal dealers in the world,
6:28
Speaker 1: like you said, and and you know, cater to a
6:30
Speaker 1: very very very high end clientele. But there had been
6:34
Speaker 1: a fascination, a long standing fascination with exotic animals in
6:38
Speaker 1: London long before he hit the scene. There was a
6:41
Speaker 1: wild animal menagerie uh in the Tower of London that
6:45
Speaker 1: was around since twelve thirty five. Um. And as we've
6:50
Speaker 1: talked about in stories of of American presidents and their
6:53
Speaker 1: weird pets and stuff. Sometimes, uh, these animals are given
6:58
Speaker 1: as like political gift, you know, as a sign of
7:01
Speaker 1: solidarity or layer is our most notable creature from our
7:05
Speaker 1: land we present to you as a sign of our
7:09
Speaker 1: affection for you as a country and as a ruler.
7:12
Speaker 1: But jam Rock, Uh, he hit the scene in a
7:16
Speaker 1: moment that was really really really crucial, um because trade
7:21
Speaker 1: was beginning to open up. So was no longer all
7:24
Speaker 1: about just like having someone that was coming as an
7:26
Speaker 1: ambassador an emissary bringing you a gift. Now there were
7:29
Speaker 1: all these trade routes that were open, and essentially a
7:32
Speaker 1: business sprung up out of this whole fascination. It was
7:43
Speaker 1: quite an industry in the late eighteenth century noises from
7:48
Speaker 1: big animals, especially large cats around the Exeter or Strange area.
7:53
Speaker 1: We're just a normal part of city background noise, the
7:56
Speaker 1: way you would hear horns honking or people saying well
8:00
Speaker 1: gonna you know whatever the UK version of that is.
8:03
Speaker 1: So there was even a writer, Charles Lamb who lived
8:06
Speaker 1: in Temple Lane and he wrote about how he liked
8:11
Speaker 1: to hear the big cats yelling when he walked home
8:13
Speaker 1: after a good night of drinking and partying. It's strange
8:17
Speaker 1: because you know, if you think about it, this makes
8:20
Speaker 1: a kind of sense. This is the age of the
8:23
Speaker 1: British Empire. It's the world's leading imperial power, and so
8:28
Speaker 1: it was seen as a benefit of living in the
8:31
Speaker 1: heart of this empire to have this at home, access
8:35
Speaker 1: to animals from around the world. And people made a
8:40
Speaker 1: lot of money doing this kind of thing. As you said,
8:44
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Joshua Brooks who had a menagerie
8:47
Speaker 1: they called it at the end of Tottenham Court Road,
8:50
Speaker 1: and his specialization you'll love this was exotic birds, but
8:54
Speaker 1: he also was into antelopes, lions, monkeys, porcupines. This is
8:59
Speaker 1: like a day the zoo for a lot of people.
9:01
Speaker 1: You you feel like you're getting a taste of culture.
9:03
Speaker 1: You feel like you're living vicariously, right, You're having adventures
9:08
Speaker 1: by having the world brought to you totally. Um. And
9:11
Speaker 1: there is a fantastic book by Christopher Plum called Georgian
9:16
Speaker 1: Menagerie that you can get at the Guardians online bookshop
9:21
Speaker 1: if you go to Bookshop dot the Guardian dot com.
9:24
Speaker 1: And John Mullin over at the Guardian did a really
9:26
Speaker 1: great review, uh, and exerted a little bit from this
9:28
Speaker 1: book that talks about just this period in English history. Uh,
9:32
Speaker 1: Georgian England, Georgian London, right, Um. And there were everything
9:37
Speaker 1: from camels too, you know, um, rhinoceri whatever is it,
9:41
Speaker 1: rnacerest is, who cares? They were everywhere, as as the
9:44
Speaker 1: Guardian puts the lions on Tottenham Court Road, camels on
9:47
Speaker 1: the strand, England's capital once teamed with beasts. So this
9:52
Speaker 1: would have been a very very interesting time. Like you said, Bennett,
9:55
Speaker 1: it was sort of just par for the course, and
9:57
Speaker 1: folks were treating it more like to visit to the zoo.
10:01
Speaker 1: It wasn't a huge deal. It was just another attraction
10:03
Speaker 1: that London had to offer to entertain people. You know,
10:07
Speaker 1: there were even like traveling wild animal menagerie's that would
10:10
Speaker 1: go from town to town and then if you had
10:13
Speaker 1: enough money, you could actually buy your own tiger or bow,
10:18
Speaker 1: a constrictor or whatever you might tickle your fancy. So
10:22
Speaker 1: there were a ton of exotic pet shops already. By
10:25
Speaker 1: there were around a hundred and eighteen wild animal dealers
10:29
Speaker 1: with brick and mortar shops just in London, but you
10:33
Speaker 1: also have them all over the country in places like
10:35
Speaker 1: Bristol and Bath and Liverpool. Um, and you could, if
10:40
Speaker 1: you were so disposed financially and you know mentally, uh,
10:43
Speaker 1: to go into one of these and check out a
10:46
Speaker 1: bear or an elephant or a kangaroo. Perhaps. Um pretty
10:50
Speaker 1: wild if you think about it. And England kind of
10:53
Speaker 1: got this reputation as being the hub, the center that
10:57
Speaker 1: kind of like dumping off point for the US wild
11:00
Speaker 1: animal trade, whether they were alive or dead, because a
11:04
Speaker 1: lot of these animals would not survive the long journeys
11:07
Speaker 1: from their native lands, you know, to London to this hub.
11:11
Speaker 1: It is funny like we live here in Atlanta. Uh
11:13
Speaker 1: in Atlanta is a hub for a lot of things
11:15
Speaker 1: like that. Too. Unfortunately, one of those is human trafficking.
11:19
Speaker 1: That's because of our approximity to one of the biggest
11:21
Speaker 1: airports in the world. So this is the kind of
11:23
Speaker 1: thing you get when you sort of become this like
11:25
Speaker 1: crossroads of civilization. Yeah, this is Uh, there are a
11:29
Speaker 1: couple of points there that that I think we could
11:32
Speaker 1: highlight for context. Let's keep in mind, Uh, this is
11:35
Speaker 1: the same part of the world where people were flexing
11:38
Speaker 1: by renting pineapples. It's a very different cultural framework. Also,
11:44
Speaker 1: are we still in pointy shoes area or we passed
11:47
Speaker 1: that now? I think we're a little past pointy shoes.
11:49
Speaker 1: But pointy shoes are always around the corner because it's fashioned.
11:52
Speaker 1: So get ahead of it and get your own pointy
11:54
Speaker 1: shoes today. Ridiculous history branded always be closing. This is
11:58
Speaker 1: a good time for us to give some examples of
12:01
Speaker 1: these weird flexes. Consider the Earl of Shelburne, who later
12:06
Speaker 1: went on to become Prime Minister. This guy kept in
12:09
Speaker 1: orangutan and a tame leopard in his orang injury at
12:14
Speaker 1: Bowood House. We talked about oranges too. You were flexing
12:18
Speaker 1: by happy citrus fruits growing on your property. Yeah, and uh,
12:22
Speaker 1: I can. I guess, is a leopard ever truly tame?
12:26
Speaker 1: I mean you can do it, yeah, just the it's
12:30
Speaker 1: the difference between taming and domesticating. So a single individual
12:35
Speaker 1: creature could be ostensibly tamed, but it would still very
12:39
Speaker 1: much be a wild animal. So it wouldn't all of
12:41
Speaker 1: a sudden be like you have a uh, spotted version
12:44
Speaker 1: of Lassie. If that makes sense. Well, I guess what
12:47
Speaker 1: I'm getting at is we're going to see in some
12:48
Speaker 1: of these stories there is the perception of having a
12:51
Speaker 1: tame animal, and then you know, when you maybe poker
12:55
Speaker 1: product or pushed a little too far, does that tame
12:58
Speaker 1: element kind of drop off and then that sort of
13:01
Speaker 1: refers back to its natural state of wildness. It can, yeah,
13:05
Speaker 1: because taming. Think of it as like human familiarization with
13:09
Speaker 1: humans or with often with like a couple of particular humans,
13:13
Speaker 1: and you know, you'll be seen as as a peer
13:16
Speaker 1: or or maybe even you'll be seen as an authoritarian
13:21
Speaker 1: or parent figure, but there's still very much wild wild animals.
13:26
Speaker 1: And I love I love the point about orangutanks because
13:28
Speaker 1: they're so intelligent. In fact, just recently I learned there
13:32
Speaker 1: was a long standing myth in Um. It's long standing
13:36
Speaker 1: myth in some very specific region where orangutanks occur, where
13:40
Speaker 1: the people have always believed that orangutanks can talk. They've
13:44
Speaker 1: just decided not to let humans know because they don't
13:47
Speaker 1: want to be put to work. And there's some great
13:49
Speaker 1: meme I keep picturing. It sounds so realistic of like
13:52
Speaker 1: a bunch of orangutangs hanging out, even though they're kind
13:55
Speaker 1: of solitary creatures, hanging out, shooting the breeze, maybe having
13:58
Speaker 1: a book club, and then they see some humans coming
14:00
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, ship, everybody shut up. They're gonna
14:04
Speaker 1: make us pay taxes. But they are, they are. They
14:08
Speaker 1: are very intelligent animals. And you know, Shelburne is um
14:12
Speaker 1: not an exception to the rule. Sir Robert Walpole had
14:16
Speaker 1: a pet flamingo. Sir Hans Sloan had a one eyed
14:20
Speaker 1: tame wolverine that would just sort of follow him around
14:23
Speaker 1: his house. He also had an apossum and porcupine. No
14:26
Speaker 1: word on how the three animals got along. I would
14:29
Speaker 1: imagine he kept them separate. Ben you pronounced the oh
14:32
Speaker 1: and possum. I know this is a very divisive thing.
14:34
Speaker 1: I think it's a person. I think that shows it
14:36
Speaker 1: speaks to people's personalities. Actually believe there's a difference between
14:40
Speaker 1: a possum and an opossum. It's it's a little confusing.
14:44
Speaker 1: They both refer to the Virginia possum in North America. Uh,
14:49
Speaker 1: the technical or scientific context I think is o possum.
14:53
Speaker 1: But then if you go to Bob Vila dot com,
14:57
Speaker 1: which I did not think would enter the conversation ship today,
15:01
Speaker 1: Bob is telling me that one key difference is their tails.
15:04
Speaker 1: A possums tale is thick and furry. He says, thanks Bob,
15:10
Speaker 1: who knew who was such an expert? Yeah, yeah, I
15:12
Speaker 1: guess he got started in the possum game and then
15:14
Speaker 1: went on to the rest of his story career. So
15:18
Speaker 1: when we when we look at it trustworthy home advice,
15:22
Speaker 1: Bob field A possums and opossums. Uh yeah, let us
15:25
Speaker 1: know your your take on the possum apossum controversy. Queen Charlotte,
15:30
Speaker 1: that's another quick example. Wife to George three, she had
15:33
Speaker 1: an elephant, she had a couple of zebras in Buckingham Palace,
15:37
Speaker 1: and she was one of the big champions of bringing
15:42
Speaker 1: exotic animals to London. And she had a collection of
15:47
Speaker 1: the first living kangaroos seen in the area, which later
15:51
Speaker 1: led to a kangaroo collecting mania in the seventeen nineties.
15:55
Speaker 1: And then yeah, and she would give kangaroo babies Joey's
15:59
Speaker 1: to were fellow aristocrats who already had their own private menageries.
16:04
Speaker 1: You know, I think we've talked about this, but it
16:05
Speaker 1: turns out that the pouch on mama kangaroos that the
16:09
Speaker 1: little Joey's hang out in, it's not just a cute,
16:11
Speaker 1: little warm, dry place. It's actually full of like slimy,
16:15
Speaker 1: amniotic fluid type stuff. It is very gross. I know
16:18
Speaker 1: a lot of unhelpful and fascinating kangaroo facts which we
16:22
Speaker 1: don't we don't need to get here, but all I'm
16:25
Speaker 1: the only reason I'm saying that is to point out that, yes, no,
16:28
Speaker 1: you are, you are correct. It is it is not
16:30
Speaker 1: a like a cozy It's not like that cozy little
16:33
Speaker 1: side pocket you get on some jenes. It tot or
16:36
Speaker 1: it would be if that was filled with snut when
16:38
Speaker 1: you bought it. Absolutely absolutely spot on. So I mentioned
16:42
Speaker 1: earlier the idea of live and dead animals being a
16:46
Speaker 1: part of this trade. Um the dead animals were just
16:49
Speaker 1: as important as the live, and in fact that those
16:51
Speaker 1: are the ones we still think of today. That kind
16:53
Speaker 1: of codify Britain's kind of empire building influence across the planet.
16:58
Speaker 1: You know, the idea of like huntsmen or like some
17:01
Speaker 1: like moneyed British royal or business person in their lodge.
17:05
Speaker 1: You know, with all these severed taxidermy heads of different
17:09
Speaker 1: animals they killed, um, you know, on safari or whatever.
17:12
Speaker 1: This is almost a stereotypical image of imperialism. If you
17:17
Speaker 1: think about during the reign of Queen Victoria, there was
17:19
Speaker 1: an Indian based taxidermy company uh called Van ingen and
17:24
Speaker 1: van ingen Um that stuffed close to forty three thousand
17:28
Speaker 1: wild animals, including tigers and leopards and more between nineteen
17:34
Speaker 1: hundred and uh nineteen fifty. So this is like well
17:38
Speaker 1: beyond the era that we're specifically discussing today, but just
17:40
Speaker 1: so you know how far this stuff goes. And this
17:44
Speaker 1: was to supply the European and Indian demands for these
17:47
Speaker 1: types of trophies that we're talking about, uh, and they
17:50
Speaker 1: would you know, travel across the globe to you know,
17:53
Speaker 1: get these specimens and then you know, stuff and mount them.
17:57
Speaker 1: Um to Filippo's trophy type rooms that we're talking about. Yeah, yep,
18:02
Speaker 1: And these animals weren't always just for show. Turtle feast
18:07
Speaker 1: had a became a really popular fad in the city
18:11
Speaker 1: of London. Like it wasn't a respectable social dinner unless
18:15
Speaker 1: there was freshly prepared turtle. And this is one this
18:20
Speaker 1: is one of the most pretentious things. This bothers me
18:22
Speaker 1: because I like this animal. Eventually, at some point the
18:26
Speaker 1: most well to do with aristocrats could have must have
18:31
Speaker 1: their wigs dressed with bear grease and only bear grease,
18:35
Speaker 1: and thousands of barrels of bear grease came from Arkansas
18:39
Speaker 1: and this almost led to the extinction of bears in Arkansas.
18:43
Speaker 1: Bears from Russia were fattened up and potential customers would
18:47
Speaker 1: sometimes travel to witness the removal of fat from the
18:50
Speaker 1: bear corpse is a guarantee they weren't getting swindled with
18:54
Speaker 1: pig fat. This like this gets into some gross territory.
18:58
Speaker 1: I think we should also note, for some foreshadowing here
19:01
Speaker 1: that um, this did not come without cost for the
19:05
Speaker 1: common people. The tiger that's just out wandering the streets
19:10
Speaker 1: of London isn't gonna say, hey, I am gonna attack
19:14
Speaker 1: the people who brought me here. They're just you know,
19:17
Speaker 1: all humans are on the menu. So you can see
19:20
Speaker 1: stories of panthers tearing off women's arms. You can see
19:26
Speaker 1: stories of people getting their clothing attacked when they got
19:30
Speaker 1: too close to a creature in a menagerie. Uh. There's
19:33
Speaker 1: also a guy named well, a lion named Wallace the
19:36
Speaker 1: Lion in the eighteen twenties who was famous for tearing
19:39
Speaker 1: the hands and other limbs off three people on several
19:42
Speaker 1: different occasions. He actually went to Derby. He escaped in
19:47
Speaker 1: Derbyshire rather and killed a guy one time, but he
19:51
Speaker 1: was not put down. It was returned to captivity because
19:53
Speaker 1: they had already been so much investment in these creatures,
19:57
Speaker 1: and indeed they became more successful, more profitable when they
20:03
Speaker 1: had a bloody story in their past. Right now, you're
20:05
Speaker 1: not seeing a regular lion, You're seeing a man eater. Uh. Yeah,
20:10
Speaker 1: this is crazy. I love you mentioned Queen Victoria because
20:14
Speaker 1: during her reign there was this explosion and construction of
20:18
Speaker 1: all kinds of venues for seeing exotic animals private as
20:21
Speaker 1: well as available to the public. Like zoos today, some
20:25
Speaker 1: of it had ties to more of a scientific bent,
20:29
Speaker 1: you know, like we are learning more about the natural world,
20:32
Speaker 1: which is a noble thing to do. Others were definitely
20:35
Speaker 1: more kind of like a Barnum and Bailey type circus acts,
20:40
Speaker 1: you know. So here's the other thing. This trade was unregulated.
20:45
Speaker 1: All you needed to have was this scratch the starting capital. Uh.
20:50
Speaker 1: It's true that the very first what we would call
20:54
Speaker 1: animal welfare laws had been passed, and there were people saying, hey,
20:58
Speaker 1: maybe we're going too far with the fur trade. A
21:02
Speaker 1: lot of these animals are dying in transport, but that's
21:06
Speaker 1: not something a lot of people wanted to hear. They
21:08
Speaker 1: were more interested in having their turtle soup their tigers.
21:11
Speaker 1: And there there bear grease wigs, which is still weird
21:15
Speaker 1: to me that that was the like, of all the
21:18
Speaker 1: things you could do with a bear, that's that's the
21:20
Speaker 1: thing you want to brag about. So it's like some
21:22
Speaker 1: really good grease man. I mean, what do you want?
21:24
Speaker 1: You know, you when you win, the heart wants what
21:26
Speaker 1: the heart wants, I guess so, and so does the wig.
21:30
Speaker 1: So at this point, at this point, I believe it's
21:33
Speaker 1: time for us to introduce Charles jam Rock you know,
21:44
Speaker 1: it's funny you were mentioning this off air. I'm pretty
21:47
Speaker 1: sure that we have some restaurants in Atlanta who are
21:51
Speaker 1: named after Charles jam Rock. I don't know. They're named
21:54
Speaker 1: after him. That spelled j A M R O c K,
21:57
Speaker 1: which to me, I don't know. I think of like reggae.
21:59
Speaker 1: Mu sick is like like roots rock reggae, you know,
22:02
Speaker 1: like jam with jam and you know all that, like
22:05
Speaker 1: that's a Bob Marley song and all of that, the whalers.
22:09
Speaker 1: So the idea of jam rock to me seems like
22:11
Speaker 1: a very reggae kind of concept because these are in
22:15
Speaker 1: fact Jamaican restaurants that were talking about. But yeah, Charles
22:20
Speaker 1: jam Rock was not Jamaican at all. He was German heritage.
22:24
Speaker 1: He was born in Hamburg, Germany, in eighteen fifteen as
22:27
Speaker 1: Charles Christian jam Rock. That's my middle name actually, And
22:31
Speaker 1: he went on to become a pre eminent dealer, as
22:35
Speaker 1: we mentioned, the top of a wild and exotic creatures,
22:39
Speaker 1: everything from birds to you know, four legged guys, whatever,
22:44
Speaker 1: whatever was in demand, he could get you one wabat's Yeah,
22:48
Speaker 1: he very much. So we'll get to that. And he
22:50
Speaker 1: actually got the help of his father to establish this
22:53
Speaker 1: vast trading network supplying to Zoo's menagerie, circuses, museums. Anyone
23:00
Speaker 1: that was in need of a wild preacher, dead or alive,
23:04
Speaker 1: he had their back. This was all during nineteenth century Europe,
23:08
Speaker 1: and even the famous English poet Dante, not the not
23:12
Speaker 1: Dante allegory, but the British poet Dante Gabrielle Rosetti. Um,
23:17
Speaker 1: he bought a wombat, his beloved pet wombat, from our
23:20
Speaker 1: guy jam Rock. You gotta have one. A wombat is
23:24
Speaker 1: like the It's like old Yeller for poets. You gotta
23:28
Speaker 1: you gotta have what I want to. I want to
23:29
Speaker 1: step back because the reason was setting up the Jamaican
23:32
Speaker 1: restaurant joke here, which I'm gonna I'm gonna keep. I'm
23:35
Speaker 1: just gonna make that my reality. Jam jam Rock is
23:39
Speaker 1: spelled J A M R A C H. And made
23:43
Speaker 1: the uh. After looking through some pronunciation possibilities, I just
23:48
Speaker 1: decided to say jam Rock as well. For this it
23:52
Speaker 1: sounds schooler. If you are a descendant of old C. C.
23:56
Speaker 1: J himself and you have a preferred pronunciation, that's fine,
24:00
Speaker 1: please right in love to hear it. But but this
24:03
Speaker 1: guy followed. Like he said, he followed in his dad's footsteps,
24:06
Speaker 1: and it made sense to his father is able to
24:08
Speaker 1: help him because his father knew the trade, the trade rights.
24:11
Speaker 1: He was very much set up to be that guy. Yeah,
24:14
Speaker 1: he had insider information. He knew what was coming off
24:17
Speaker 1: the boats and often knew when because he was a
24:21
Speaker 1: harbor master, so he had the connects. In eighteen thirty nine,
24:27
Speaker 1: Charles his brother Anton, moves to London to start his
24:31
Speaker 1: own animal trade business, following in dear Old DAWs footsteps.
24:36
Speaker 1: But unfortunately Anton passes away very soon after he arrives,
24:40
Speaker 1: and this is an opportunity for Charles to take over
24:43
Speaker 1: the business. After charles father expires in eighteen forty, there's
24:48
Speaker 1: a tough series of years for Charles. Uh he moves
24:51
Speaker 1: to London himself. He takes over. He opens an exotic
24:54
Speaker 1: pet store and a museum of natural history called jam
24:58
Speaker 1: Rocks Animal Emporium. I love it when people use the
25:01
Speaker 1: word emporium. I am such a sucker for the word emporium.
25:05
Speaker 1: I've been in so many tourist traps in the middle
25:08
Speaker 1: of nowhere, America just because someone slapped emporium on their
25:12
Speaker 1: you know, on their kitch store, So thank you emporiums uh.
25:17
Speaker 1: He also had a so he had the emporium on St.
25:20
Speaker 1: George Street. He had another outfit, a menagerie on Bet Street.
25:24
Speaker 1: And there's a pretty great uh. There's a pretty great
25:28
Speaker 1: description of this from the Spectator in one where they
25:31
Speaker 1: say Mr Childs jam Rock the wild Beast banners. He's
25:35
Speaker 1: sometimes familiarly called never failed to have a large assortment
25:38
Speaker 1: of tigers and lines on hand. The passages between the
25:42
Speaker 1: two stories of cages would never and walk and walk
25:45
Speaker 1: down them was occasionally like running the gauntlet. So they're
25:49
Speaker 1: they're trying to sort of articulate the excitement, the endorphin rush,
25:55
Speaker 1: the thrill of danger people experience because the animals, without
25:59
Speaker 1: reading the whole quote right, the animals pause can reach people.
26:03
Speaker 1: This is not like a modern zoo. There's not like
26:06
Speaker 1: a pit and you know, a large fence. There's a cage.
26:09
Speaker 1: And so if you walk too slow, you know, as
26:12
Speaker 1: anybody like the three of us all have cats living
26:15
Speaker 1: with us. If you walk by just a regular house
26:18
Speaker 1: cat and it's feeling, you know, kind of in a
26:20
Speaker 1: punching mood, they'll just swat at you, give you a swat,
26:23
Speaker 1: give you a good old swat, and if you get
26:25
Speaker 1: a little claw that it connects, you might end up
26:27
Speaker 1: with a slice. Uh. And this is a you know,
26:31
Speaker 1: significantly smaller cat than what we would be dealing with
26:33
Speaker 1: in these emporiums or or Mr jam Rocks emporium. So
26:37
Speaker 1: if you call one of those wipes, it might like
26:39
Speaker 1: you know, lose you a limb or the very least,
26:41
Speaker 1: you know, give you a serious injury you Oh yeah, yeah,
26:44
Speaker 1: and uh, this is I can see this because this
26:48
Speaker 1: is kind of embarrassing. That's why I found out cat
26:51
Speaker 1: scratch fever is a real thing, not just the ted
26:53
Speaker 1: nugent song. I actually one time got cat scratch fever
26:57
Speaker 1: as a kid. Isn't it like a like a pair
27:00
Speaker 1: a site almost It makes you like do bow to
27:03
Speaker 1: the will of your feline masters. That's toxoplasmosis. Cat scratch fever.
27:11
Speaker 1: Is cat scratch fever? Is you bacterial infection? And if
27:17
Speaker 1: you if a cat bites you or scratches you. All
27:20
Speaker 1: I remember is I got a fever and then I
27:21
Speaker 1: had like, uh swollen area of my body. But I
27:25
Speaker 1: got over it. I survived no toxoplasmosis, which I would
27:29
Speaker 1: always love to avoid. But people weren't worried about toxoplasmosis.
27:33
Speaker 1: They probably weren't too worried about cat scratch fever. They
27:36
Speaker 1: wanted the thrill of feeling like they had escaped the
27:39
Speaker 1: jaguar or a tiger. And so jam Rock is blowing up.
27:43
Speaker 1: He's starting to be known as sort of world class
27:45
Speaker 1: in the business, which he was, and more and more
27:48
Speaker 1: people very well to do. People started to come to
27:51
Speaker 1: him and say things like, misso, jam Rock, I'm follow
27:55
Speaker 1: your career with great interest, and I've always wanted to
27:59
Speaker 1: own in Almadillo, And like literally they would say this.
28:03
Speaker 1: They would come to him and request specific animals and
28:06
Speaker 1: he would he would say, you know, I imagine we
28:09
Speaker 1: can work something out. And people would buy elephants and
28:13
Speaker 1: like you said, parakeets and cause all kinds of stuff
28:16
Speaker 1: from him. He also started networking. It's funny man at
28:21
Speaker 1: our at our favorite local wing spot, and we shout
28:25
Speaker 1: out all the time, called the local one of the
28:28
Speaker 1: guys who works there, and I'm not gonna disclose his name.
28:31
Speaker 1: He has a world class meteorite collection, like museum level.
28:36
Speaker 1: And I was talking and I think you know the
28:37
Speaker 1: guy know And I was talking to him about I
28:41
Speaker 1: was like, how do you find these things? How does
28:42
Speaker 1: it work? And he has a network of dealers across
28:45
Speaker 1: the world, like when a meteorite falls, he knows the
28:48
Speaker 1: guys who get on the plane to find it, which
28:51
Speaker 1: is sort of like how jam Rock was with his
28:54
Speaker 1: network that you know, he pretty much inherited from his dad,
28:57
Speaker 1: I think, right, like he built upon it, but came
29:00
Speaker 1: from his dad. Oh totally. I mean, that's the thing.
29:02
Speaker 1: I mean. Even though this was very big in London,
29:06
Speaker 1: this whole exotic animal trade, it was probably a network
29:10
Speaker 1: of only a handful of top top players, of which
29:13
Speaker 1: jam Rock was like the a number one, And I
29:16
Speaker 1: think we said they were like a hundred and something
29:18
Speaker 1: dealers in London, which is a massive, massive metro area.
29:21
Speaker 1: So you know, he was kind of, uh, the top
29:24
Speaker 1: of the heap when it came to this relatively niche
29:27
Speaker 1: industry because if after all, you could only afford this
29:30
Speaker 1: if you were of a certain class, So this wouldn't
29:33
Speaker 1: have been something like you know, necessities like you know,
29:36
Speaker 1: food and grain and things like that, that would have
29:39
Speaker 1: obviously been on a much much larger scale. Um even
29:42
Speaker 1: as larger scales this was it was still only for
29:45
Speaker 1: a very select few. But the thing that I think
29:47
Speaker 1: is neat and probably one reason we still talk about
29:50
Speaker 1: this guy today, was because he started to develop all
29:53
Speaker 1: these relationships with these really important uh institutions in London
29:57
Speaker 1: like the Natural History Museum and the Zoological Gardens is
30:00
Speaker 1: now known as the London Zoo UM. So when he
30:03
Speaker 1: you know, would have overflow on his and his you
30:06
Speaker 1: know pens or his facilities or whatever, uh, he would
30:10
Speaker 1: essentially allow the Zoological Gardens to store these creatures for
30:15
Speaker 1: him and it would be almost like a trial basis
30:18
Speaker 1: where if the animals were a hit with you know,
30:21
Speaker 1: the spectators, then the zoo would actually buy it from him.
30:24
Speaker 1: So he had this kind of built in um relationship
30:26
Speaker 1: with those guys that would help him sort of clear
30:29
Speaker 1: some of his creatures out if if they were sticking
30:31
Speaker 1: around for too long. Yeah yeah, no audition process, Uh well,
30:35
Speaker 1: non consensual on the animals part. And you know a
30:37
Speaker 1: lot of these animals are from very different climates, so unfortunately,
30:43
Speaker 1: unless they were unless a lot of TLC was put
30:47
Speaker 1: into their diet, they wouldn't last long once they arrived.
30:51
Speaker 1: If they made it off the ship alive. And because
30:54
Speaker 1: of that rate of attrition. Because so many animals were
30:57
Speaker 1: dying in transit or within the first few weeks or
31:00
Speaker 1: months after arriving, jam Rock naturally developed that side hustle
31:05
Speaker 1: you were mentioning with taxidermy. He got more and more
31:11
Speaker 1: and more and more successful. We're talking waiting list for animals,
31:15
Speaker 1: stuff like that. People are kissing his keyst just to
31:19
Speaker 1: get on his good side and maybe jump the line
31:21
Speaker 1: a little bit. And in eighteen fifty seven, at the
31:24
Speaker 1: high point of his success, he gets his crown jewel,
31:29
Speaker 1: a fully grown Bengal tiger that came to England from
31:34
Speaker 1: the East Indies. This takes us to that morning we
31:38
Speaker 1: talked about the very top, the morning of October when
31:42
Speaker 1: the tiger and several other large felines by the way
31:47
Speaker 1: arrives at the Belt Street. Nagerie, whoa hold the phone?
31:52
Speaker 1: Hold the horses grabbed the tigers. This is a two parter.
31:56
Speaker 1: We have just gotten to the introduction of our main character,
32:00
Speaker 1: not our protagonist. I would argue, it's also Christmas, so
32:03
Speaker 1: give us a break. You know it's a two partner.
32:05
Speaker 1: Come on, let us have this, please, we love you.
32:08
Speaker 1: The next press is gonna be a lot of fun
32:09
Speaker 1: and it happens this week, so not even that long
32:11
Speaker 1: to wait. In the meantime, why not reach out to us,
32:13
Speaker 1: send us an email. We've got one, right, Ben, we
32:15
Speaker 1: do well. You guys have what I'm still trying to
32:18
Speaker 1: get access to Ridiculous at I Heart media dot com.
32:21
Speaker 1: But give us, drop us a line, let us know.
32:25
Speaker 1: As always, we want to hear your strange animal encounters
32:30
Speaker 1: from your neck of the global woods. You can also
32:32
Speaker 1: tell us about that on Ridiculous Historians at Facebook. While
32:35
Speaker 1: you're on the internet, you can make friends with us,
32:39
Speaker 1: not just as I show, but as individuals and Ben
32:42
Speaker 1: Bowling on Instagram bo w l I n Ben Bowling
32:45
Speaker 1: hs W on Twitter get a look at my various
32:48
Speaker 1: various misadventures. Um candidly, I had to be off social
32:53
Speaker 1: media for a little bit, but I'm getting back to
32:55
Speaker 1: it slowly but surely. Can't wait to hear from everybody. Yep,
32:58
Speaker 1: you can find me on social media as well. I
33:00
Speaker 1: am exclusively on Instagram at how now Noel Brown, We'll
33:04
Speaker 1: see act folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
33:15
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
33:17
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.