Jumbo the Elephant

When I was in kindergarten my teacher (her name was Mrs. Knault and I remember that at the time she seemed to be really old) read us a book about Jumbo the Elephant.  As a caveat I'll note that I don't remember all of this story personally, some of it was related by my parents.  That summer we were on our way to Michigan by driving through Ontario (after seeing Niagara Falls).  My parents discovered that there was a statue of Jumbo in the small town of St. Thomas (or perhaps I knew that from school), so we drove by to see it.  I discovered recently that it had only been erected in 1985 (just a couple years before we saw it).  I still have a picture of me standing next to the elephant.  So when we knew that we'd be driving through Ontario on our own way to Michigan from Niagara Falls I knew that I had to stop by the statue and see it again.

August 1988

When I sat down to type up this entry I also did some searching on-line and discovered that the St. Thomas public library has a timeline of Jumbo's life.  I've included several excerpts below, but if you want to see the full list please visit their website, which also includes several vintage photographs.

Jumbo was born in the Sudan in the 1860s and captured young.  He was taken to Paris and then purchased by the London Zoo.  He grew to a prodigious size and became quite famous.  In 1867 "A howdah, the traditional elephant saddle, [wa]s placed on his back and he [began] giving rides to children."  Among others, he was ridden by "the Prince of Wales and the other children of Queen Victoria, a young Winston Churchill and a number of children of the titled heads of Europe."

In 1881 he was sold to PT Barnum, the famous American circus entrepreneur.  The sale was disputed for a time but eventually went through and Jumbo was shipped across the Atlantic.  Barnum quickly made back his investment (due to court costs and transport fees the original £2000 cost ballooned to £6000) in a few weeks and went on to earn well over a million dollars, partly due to Jumbo's popularity.  On April 10, 1882, just a little bit less than 100 years before I was born, Jumbo was displayed in America for the first time at Madison Square Garden.

On September 15, 1885 the circus stopped in the booming railroad town of St. Thomas, Ontario to put on another successful performance.

After the show, the elephants are being moved from the circus grounds to their train. It is 9:30, but the elephants are meant to have been loaded after 9:55. Along the Grand Trunk railroad track, Special Freight train #151 is travelling with its engineer, William Burnip.  Several hundred yards down the track Jumbo and the little elephant Tom Thumb are the last elephants being loaded in. They are walking along the tracks to reach their train cars. Burnip sees the elephants but it is too late. He sounds the warning horn and puts the train in reverse. It screeches to a halt and strikes Tom Thumb first. He is struck by the cowcatcher and is thrown into the ravine. Jumbo is struck on his hind end, causing the train to derail. His trunk is impacted and his injuries are fatal. Scott manages to leap free of the incident, but now tends to the mortally wounded Jumbo, weeping as he strokes his head. Eyewitnesses would relate how Jumbo reached out and gently clasped his trainer with his trunk. Jumbo dies in a few minutes.

His body was parceled out to different locations, and eventually a fire destroyed most of his skin, though I presume his bones are still intact.  In 1935 the story of Jumbo was revived in St. Thomas and in 1977 a plaque is erected (I didn't know about the plaque before we visited or I would have tried to find it during our visit).  I think the last two entries on the timeline are the most fascinating.

June 28, 1985 - The Jumbo statue is unveiled in St. Thomas, sculpted by Winston Bronnum and transported from his workshop in Sussex, New Brunswick.

October 22, 1985 - Ruby Copeman dies. She is the last St. Thomas resident alive to have seen Jumbo’s accident. She was 7 at the time, and dies at 106. Ruby, then 98 years old, was on hand when the Jumbo Plaque was unveiled in 1977. Four months before her passing, Ruby had the honour of officially unveiling the new statue of Jumbo on June 28, 1985.

Looking at the year, this means that I first saw the statue when it was only about three years old.  I also had no idea that at the time there was someone who remembered the original incident.

It was raining when we arrived in St. Thomas and we'd had to navigate our way across Ontario using maps we'd downloaded to Amy's iPad before we left our campground in New York (more about that here).  Thankfully it wasn't too far off the road and we found our way to the statue even without GPS or a really good map.  I did actually miss one turn off, but then we drove past the statue and saw it, so I knew to make the next turn and come back on the road that ran right in front of it.  There was a railway car next to the statue that appeared to be a small seasonal tourist information spot--needless to say we were visiting after tourist season.

Despite the rain I climbed onto the platform (no signs said not to and I wanted to recreate the original photograph).  Unfortunately I didn't remember exactly where I'd stood in the older picture so I wasn't in exactly the same spot.

September 2012

The drive was well worth it (not really being that far off our route) to visit something I hadn't seen in so long.

~Matt