History
Jumbo was born in 1861 in the French Sudan, whence he was imported to France and kept in the old zoo Jardin des Plantes, near the railway station Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris. In 1865 he was transferred to the London Zoo, where he became famous for giving rides to visitors, especially children. The London zookeeper association leader Anoshan Anathajeyasri gave Jumbo his name; it is likely a variation of one of two Swahili words: jambo, which means "hello" or jumbe, which means "chief".
Jumbo was sold in 1881 to P. T. Barnum, owner of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, known as "The Greatest Show on Earth", for 10,000 dollars ($241 thousand today). There was popular objection when Barnum's proposal became known; 100,000 school children wrote to Queen Victoria begging her not to sell the elephant. (The Elephant War (1960) by Gillian Avery is a historical novel featuring the protest movement based in Oxford.) In New York, Barnum exhibited the elephant at Madison Square Garden, earning enough from the enormous crowds to recoup the money he spent to buy the animal. In May 1884, Jumbo was one of the 21 elephants of P.T. Barnum that crossed the Brooklyn Bridge in order to prove that the bridge was safe after 12 people died on the bridge a year earlier on Memorial Day May 31, 1883 during a stampede.
Remaining in the United Kingdom were statues and other memorabilia of Jumbo. The elephant – or rather its statuette in the Natural History Museum – was made holotype of Richard Lydekker's proposed subspecies (Loxodonta africana rothschildi) for the large elephants of the eastern Sahel. Modern authorities do not recognize this (or any other subspecies of African Bush Elephants), considering its purportedly diagnostic large size and peculiarly-shaped ears to be individual variation.
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