Gorilla, Jenny, Brought From Africa

The tour included

ADVERTISEMENT

THE sad tale of a young gorilla brought from Africa to Scarborough in the 19th century was told on Radio 4 yesterday.

Just eight years after the species was identified, the infant primate was captured and its family slaughtered in the process.

The animal was named Jenny and placed in a travelling wild-beast show which toured Britain in 1855.Scarbor-ough, where people paid a few pennies to see Jenny, who was thought to be a chimpanzee.

Gorillas first came to the attention of the western world in 1847 when a missionary, Thomas Savage, travelling in west Africa, was shown a skull he was convinced belonged to a new species of ape. Eight years later gorillas remained little known; only a few people had even glimpsed them in the wild and the species was recognised only from its bones.

But, unknown to anyone, a young gorilla was already living anonymously in England. In 1855, Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie exhibited a chimpanzee which was not kept with the other wild beasts but lived in her own apartment. She had a governess and was dressed in human clothes.

Jenny’s journey out of Africa a little over 150 years ago marked the beginning of our tortuous and often misguided association with gorillas.

Source