Beastly Boston (episode 318)

Transcript

Jake:
[0:08] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the Hub of the Universe.

Introduction to Beastly Boston

Jake:
[0:17] This is episode 318, Beastly Boston. Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I want to talk about Boston’s first encounters with exotic animals. My first thought was lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my. But that’s not exactly where I landed. I will be talking about the very first lion to make an appearance in Boston, but instead of tigers and bears, we’ll take a look at Boston’s experiences with elephants and alligators. Our story will span almost 200 years, with the first lion being imported in the early 1700s, the first elephant in the late 1700s, and the first alligators that most Bostonians got acquainted with, were installed in the public garden in 1901. Can you imagine proper late Victorian Bostonians in their white gloves and spats, or whatever they wore back then, crowding around a pool of alligators to watch them tear live animals limb from limb? I couldn’t either, until digging into this week’s research.

Thanks to Our Supporters

Jake:
[1:24] But before we talk about Boston’s beastly past, I just want to pause and say thank.

Jake:
[1:34] Thanks to listeners like David, I can focus on researching and writing about historical topics for the show, instead of worrying about how I’m going to pay for things like website hosting and security, podcast media hosting, AI tools, newspaper archives, and transcription fees. Our supporters also recently allowed me to subscribe to a modern digital audio workstation that lets me edit audio by editing the transcript like a document. I’m not using it for all my recordings yet, but it’s proving very useful for interviews in particular, where I can quickly cut out the ums and ahs of a natural conversation with a quick select-all type action. Listeners like David, who commit to giving as little as $2 a month on Patreon, provide the ongoing support that lets me not worry about the money. While one-time gifts on PayPal help to offset the unexpected costs that crop up from time to time. To everyone who’s already supporting the show, thank you. If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com slash hubhistory or visit hubhistory.com and click on the Support Us link. And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

The Captive Whale Story

Jake:
[2:50] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Jake:
[2:55] This week’s episode was inspired by a past show that’s become one of my favorites. Way back in May of 2020, episode 185 described how Boston came to host the first captive whale in the world. To recap, back in 1860, an inventor invested his fortune in opening Boston’s first aquarium. Then he managed to captivate a beluga whale to be the centerpiece of this new attraction, before eventually getting cheated out of his business by P.T. Barnum.

Jake:
[3:26] In her diary entries about visiting the Aquarial Gardens, Sally Gould Putnam describes watching two men harness the captive whale so it could pull a woman in a little boat around and around its tiny tank. She also describes seeing a lot of exotic animals that went beyond fish and whales, including monkeys, kangaroos, a moose, bears, a wolf, and even elephants, which she sketched in her diary. I revisited the story of the captive whale last summer to adapt it into a talk for history camp. When I looked at Sally’s sketches, it made me wonder when Boston saw its first elephants and other exotic beasts. Sally was obviously impressed with the bears and elephants, but she didn’t gush over them as something brand new, like she did with the whale. So this clearly wasn’t Boston’s first rodeo. Long before Franklin Park Zoo opened to the public in 1912, Bostonians had plenty of exposure to animals from around the world. When I’m trying to get a gut check on something like this, I always like to check the Adams papers. Between John and Abigail, John Quincy, and Charles Francis Adams, they’ve transcribed and digitized letters and diaries spanning almost a century of Boston history, from the 1750s to the 1840s.

Jake:
[4:45] By 1836, well before any formal aquarial gardens or the Franklin Park Zoo, Boston was visited by traveling menageries. In his diary entry for April 13th, Charles Francis Adams describes visiting a zoological exhibition at 45 Union Street in Boston, which came out of the top of the Bullfinch Triangle, where Charlestown Street and Merrimack Street merged. Today, a single block of Union Street remains, running parallel to Congress Street between Faneuil Hall and the public market, and I think the zoological exhibition was held somewhere in the vicinity of where the bell in hand is now. Charles went to this exhibition with his wife and two children and wrote, There’s a tolerable collection of large animals. A male and female elephant, a rhinoceros, several lionesses, but no lion. Tigers of Java and Bengal. The white polar bear and the black bear. Hyenas, panthers, and leopards in plenty. Also two beautiful zebras, a new or horned horse, a buffalo, several camels and dromedaries, an antelope, llama, and angora goat. Monkeys in plenty, cockatoos, and an anaconda. A curious creature is the kangaroo from New Holland.

Jake:
[6:09] On the whole, an exhibition of this kind is exceedingly interesting, but to enjoy it fully requires the absence of children. For first, they must be taken strict care of. Second, they’re so small and defenseless that one cannot keep out of the imagination a possibility of the breaking of a single iron bar. That’s probably a sentiment that every parent’s had when they watched their toddler press their face up against the glass, inches away from a polar bear or a lion or whatever giant predators inside the enclosure.

Jake:
[6:44] Parenting stresses aside, Charles seems impressed with the animals, but not gobsmacked in the way that you’d expect if it was the very first time they appeared in town. Continuing my search, I found newspaper advertisements for a traveling caravan of natural curiosities that included a leopard, a Bactrian camel, Kangaroos, a Shetland pony, which got surprisingly high billing in this list, a Bengal tiger, and a mature elephant.

Jake:
[7:15] It visited Boston and a number of smaller Massachusetts towns in 1828. For Boston’s first lions, tigers, and bears, oh my, I had to go back to the 1700s. The first lion ever to be seen in North America was brought to Boston by a sea captain with a reputation for going rogue.

Boston’s First Lion

Jake:
[7:38] Arthur Savage had been a merchant with a shop on Long Wharf until he bought a 1 16th share of a ship, alongside of his brother-in-law and some other local merchants. He became the captain of the Province Galley, which was previously owned by the colonial government and used as a military transport during Queen Anne’s War. After the war, it was sold to a group of investors who selected Savage as their captain in 1714. In an article for Old North, where Savage bought a pew in 1725, Mark Hurwitz describes how this brief stint as the captain of the galley went off the rails. Trading mostly in fish, the initial voyages were conducted between Boston and Marblehead. In 1714, he embarked on a voyage to Europe to sell his cargo of fish. Savage was an enterprising man and did not shy away from using his position as captain to pursue his own financial gains. He carried passengers and cargo against orders and at the expense of the owners. Upon his return to Boston, the other owners of the province galley filed a lawsuit against Savage claiming a breach of contract and 2,000 pounds in damages. Savage, in turn, sued them for libel. There are, unfortunately, no records of the results of this case, but when the province galley sailed again in late October 1716, it was under a different captain.

Jake:
[9:07] The province galley was sold at auction to settle the debts from the lawsuits and countersuits, and the new captain wrecked her on Block Island before the end of 1716. Arthur Savage took a job as a constable for the town of Boston in 1716, and later worked in the civil government of Nova Scotia. But in between, he went back to sea as the captain of another vessel, one that I couldn’t find the name for. Most of his voyages were typical New England trading missions, taking salt cod from Gloucester to European ports in exchange for wine, salt, cloth, and other valuable goods. One voyage in the late winter or early spring of 1718 was different, and it led him to place this advertisement in the edition of the Boston newsletter for the first week of April 1718. All persons having the curiosity of seeing the noble and royal beast, the lion, never one before in America, may see him at the house of Captain Arthur Savage near Mr. Coleman’s church, Boston, before he is transported for London. Breaking this down a bit, we’re led to believe that the first living African lion ever to be exhibited in America was on display in a house near Mr. Coleman’s church.

Jake:
[10:26] Samuel Coleman preached at the Brattle Street Church, which was a new, more liberal Puritan congregation and still a fairly new meeting house, having been built less than 20 years earlier in 1699.

Jake:
[10:40] Brattle Street’s gone now, having fallen victim to urban renewal when Scully Square and the surrounding neighborhoods were bulldozed to create Boston City Hall Plaza. In 1718, State Street was still King Street, which turned into Queen Street at the site of the old State House. About a half a block up the hill from the old State House on Queen Street, Now, Court Street was the corner with Brattle Street, and the church was on the first corner, one block to the right of Queen Street. Captain Savage’s house, which John Adams bought a generation later when he moved his law practice from Braintree to Boston, is described as standing on the westerly side of Brattle Square, opposite the church, which is somewhere under City Hall Plaza now. In a 2014 article about slavery in colonial Boston, Jared Ross Hardesty writes, A lion so far from his African homeland was a rare spectacle indeed, and those who wanted to pee could better not hesitate, for the beast would soon be transported to London, likely to join a nobleman’s private zoo or the tower’s royal menagerie. Another African native, perhaps of an even pricklier disposition than the caged lion who had crossed the Atlantic would stand guard. The rest of Captain Savage’s ad introduces this prickly African native who was enslaved by Arthur Savage.

Jake:
[12:09] But to prevent all disputes with the Negro at the gate, who constantly attends each person, whether seen him before or not, is desired to pay to the said Negro six pence apiece. Working from Savage’s probate inventory, Hardesty identified this enslaved Bostonian as a man named Sharper, who was probably middle-aged in 1718. The phrasing of the ad is a bit odd, making it seem like the lion belonged to Sharper, or that he was guarding the lion. I think the idea was to avoid appearing gauche by announcing that the captain was charging an admission fee. Instead, it provides savage with plausible deniability by making the sixpence admission fee a way to avoid the implied savagery of an enslaved African who was seen as little more human than the lion. There isn’t much of a paper trail for the lion beyond the ad in the Boston newsletter, but we can assume that it did eventually go on to London to become part of a nobleman’s menagerie.

The First Elephant’s Arrival

Jake:
[13:10] The first living elephant to be seen in America was brought here almost 80 years after Captain Savage’s lion. Unlike the lion, it didn’t make its first appearance on our shores in Boston. And, also unlike the lion, this elephant has an extensive paper trail. In a 1925 article for the Journal of Mammology, George G. Goodwin traces this paper trail to its origin. The Handwritten Logbook of the Ship America, Which Sailed Out of Salem, Mass.

Jake:
[13:42] The title of the logbook reads, A Journal of the Passage from Bengal to America in the Ship America of Salem, 1796. Nathaniel Hathorne’s book, presented by his esteemed friend Mr. Robert Robinette, October 25, 1795. And below is written, Calcutta.

Jake:
[14:05] The Nathaniel Hathorne, who hand-wrote the logbook for the voyage of the ship America from India back to North America in late 1795, was the father of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the famous author. The elder Nathaniel was working for Jacob Crowninshield, the captain of the America. Goodwin’s article picks out the relevant passage from the logbook. The first page begins abruptly. Calcutta towards America, Tuesday, December 3rd, 1795. Nothing of interest until Wednesday, February 17th, 1796, at St. Helena. This day begins with moderate breezes. Latter part employed in landing 23 sacks of coffee. Took on board several pumpkins and cabbages, some fresh fish for the ship’s use, and greens for the elephant. Below is written in large letters, Elephant on Board.

Jake:
[15:03] They stopped at the Island of Ascension on February 24th. The men picked up several turtles, took some sharks, and saw a large sea lion. Goodwin notes that the crossing was unusually smooth, with no significant storms or other hardships. The America landed at New York Harbor on April 13th, and the article continues, The next record of importance concerning the elephant is an extract from a New York newspaper dated April 1796. The ship America, Captain Jacob Crownenshield of Salem, Mass., commander and owner, has brought home an elephant from Bengal in perfect health. It is the first ever seen in America, and is a great curiosity. It is a female, two years old. News of this giant new arrival in America spread quickly, with the Greenfield Reporter of May 19, 1796, reporting the details for readers in Western Mass in an article that was very similar to others published around the Northeast. The America has brought home an elephant from Bengal, in perfect health. It is the first ever seen in America, and of very great curiosity. It is a female, two years old, and of a species that grows to an enormous size.

Jake:
[16:31] This animal is sold for $10,000, being supposed to be the greatest price ever given for an animal in Europe or America. If this report that the elephant was sold for $10,000 is correct, it means that Captain Crown and Shield got more than his money’s worth. George Goodwin’s article outlines the investment that Crown and Shield made in the elephant and the plans he had for it after getting it to American soil. An extract or two from letters dated in India fixed the time concerning the first elephant. Jacob Crownenshield, writing to his brothers John and George, both in command of the ship Belisarius and on their way to India, November 2nd, 1795, says, We take home a fine young elephant, two years old, at $450. It’s almost as large as a very large ox, and I dare say, shall we get it home safe? If so, it will bring at least $5,000.

Jake:
[17:35] We shall at first be obliged to keep it in the southern states till it becomes hardened to the climate. I suppose you will laugh at the scheme, but I do not mind that. We’ll turn elephant driver. We have plenty of water to the Cape or St. Helena. This is my plan. Ben did not come into it, so if it succeeds, I ought to have the whole credit and honor, too. Of course, you know it’ll be a great thing to carry the first elephant to America. On November 26th, but a very few days later, in another letter, he says, The elephant is on board and quiet. I suppose I shall have to stop at Meridius for water, or the Cape, or St. Helena, though we have 3,500 gallons.

Jake:
[18:24] A letter to the editors of the American Heritage Magazine, in their April 1974 edition, describes how the elephant was displayed in Manhattan in the spring and summer of 1796, after a successful voyage. A few days later, an elephant was exhibited around Beaver Street and Broadway, according to an advertisement in the Argus, April 23, 1796. This area was the location of the Bull’s Head Tavern, a place frequented by ship’s captains, drovers, and a variety of businessmen. Hakaliah Bailey, of Summers, New York, regularly stayed at the Bull’s Head when he took his cattle to the abattoir, which was located nearby. The newspaper reports that the first elephant was sold to a Mr. Owen. Unfortunately, they gave no other information about the man, nor did they tell what he did with the elephant he bought. But Hekaliah Bailey’s business partner and brother-in-law was named Owen.

The Journey of Old Bet

Jake:
[19:24] Hakaliah Bailey founded a circus that his nephew later merged with one belonging to P.T. Barnum, so this elephant could be called the first circus animal in the country.

Jake:
[19:35] After New York, the elephant’s next stop was in Boston. Goodwin notes that, The next record is from a handbill that Mr. John Robinson had in his possession for some time advertising the exhibition of the elephant in Boston. The handbill was printed in Boston by D. Bowen and published on August 18, 1797. It said, In size, he surpasses all other terrestrial creatures. And by his intelligence, he makes as near an approach to man as matter can approach spirit. A sufficient proof that there is not too much said of the knowledge of this animal is that the proprietor, having been absent for ten weeks, the moment he arrived at the door of his apartment and spoke to the keeper, the animal’s knowledge was beyond any doubt confirmed by the cries he uttered forth till his friend came within reach of his trunk, with which he caressed him, to the astonishment of all those who saw him. This most curious and surprising animal has just arrived in this town from Philadelphia, where he will stay but a few weeks.

Jake:
[20:43] He is only four years old and weighs about 3,000 weight, but will not have come to his full growth till he shall be between 30 and 40 years old. He measures from the end of his trunk to the tip of his tail 15 feet 8 inches, round the body 10 feet 6 inches, round his head 7 feet 2 inches, round his leg above the knee 3 feet 3 inches, round his ankle 2 feet 2 inches. He eats 130 weight a day and drinks all kinds of spiritist liquors. Some days, he has drank 30 bottles of porter, drawing the corks with his trunk.

Jake:
[21:25] This handbill would later be reprinted down to this point and reused for later appearances in other cities. In those reprintings, the last paragraph that told audiences how to see the elephant in Boston was omitted, and the local address was written in for each city. Here in Boston, the pre-printed instructions said, A respectable and convenient place is fitted up at Mr. Valentine’s, ahead of the market, for the reception of those ladies and gentlemen who may be pleased to view the greatest natural curiosity ever presented to the curious, and is to be seen from sunrise till sundown, every day in the week, Sundays accepted. Admittance, one quarter of a dollar. Children, nine pence.

Jake:
[22:13] The head of the market likely refers to the end of Market Square that stood opposite from Faneuil Hall. And Mr. Valentine’s was probably a shop there, located conveniently close to the docks. While I was writing this episode, I studied some Boston maps from the late 1790s, but none of them revealed the exact location of Mr. Valentine’s place. And none of them were detailed enough to show what shop would have enough space out back to fence in a growing elephant.

Jake:
[22:43] The elephant stayed at Valentine’s in Boston from July 1797 until the end of August, when it moved on to Salem, then Marblehead, then went to the south, perhaps Charleston, South Carolina, for the winter. While it was in Salem, Reverend William Bentley paid his quarter dollar to see the elephant, recording this description in his diary. He was six feet four inches high. Of large volume, his skin black, as though lately oiled. A short hair was on every part, but not sufficient for a covering. His tail hung one-third of his height, but without any long hairs at the end of it. His legs were still at command at the joints, but he could not be persuaded to lie down. The keeper repeatedly mounted him, but he persisted in shaking him off. Bread and hay were given him, and he took bread out of the pockets of the spectators. He also drank porter and drew the cork, conveying the liquor from his trunk into his throat. His tusks were just to be seen beyond the flesh, and it was said they’d been broken. We say his because of the common language. It is a female, and teats appear just behind the forelegs. She would have sailed as far as the trip to the Carolinas, but for shorter trips, like from Boston to Salem, the elephant would have walked.

Jake:
[24:10] This elephant continued to draw crowds all over the new United States for years, possibly being exhibited under the nickname Old Bet as late as 1816. However, the historical record gets a bit murky, and the country’s first elephant might have died by 1808. If that’s correct, then Old Bet may have actually been the second elephant imported into the country, the one advertised in the New York Evening Post on May 29, 1804. A rare chance for speculation, for sale, a female elephant lately imported from the East Indies. She is about four years old and is rapidly attaining the enormous size peculiar to this animal. At present, she is about seven feet high, 18 feet long from the end of her proboscis to the extreme part of the body, and large in proportion. She is remarkably sagacious, docile, and inoffensive, and is attended by a keeper, a native of Bengal, who will be of great service to a purchaser. Apply at the sign of the rising sun, Marlborough Street, Boston.

Jake:
[25:22] That June, an elephant was exhibited at a Museum of Art and Natural History in Boston that was operated by Edward Savage. In many sources, this exhibit is considered one of the appearances of that original 1796 elephant. But if Old Bette had just been imported into Boston a month before, it seems more likely that she was the object of the June 1804 exhibition.

Jake:
[25:48] Sometime around 1808, the second elephant in the country changed hands, as noted in a different article from George Goodwin. This one published in Natural History magazine in 1951, where he wrote, Old Bet seems to have been the name that was applied to this elephant, and the animal was eventually acquired by Hecaliah Bailey, who got together the first American circus and became the Bailey of Barnum & Bailey Circus fame. He was originally a farmer at Summers, New York. Suffice it to say that the Bailey Circus consisted of four wagons, a trained dog, several pigs, a horse, and, of course, the elephant.

Jake:
[26:30] Bailey toured the country for several years, with Old Bet as his chief attraction. From just about this time onward, Old Bet’s career is better documented, with newspapers and other publications tracing her journeys around the United States until they reached a sudden and premature end on June 26th, 1816, while Obet was passing through the village of Alfred, Maine. The Greenfield Reporter carried the news. The Kinnebunk visitor announces that the elephant, so long and with so much satisfaction exhibited in this town, was wantonly shot on Wednesday last by some unknown wretch in the district of Maine. In the afternoon of that day, this harmless and interesting animal was leaving the town of Alfred by a road skirted with bushes, accompanied by her keepers and 15 or 20 spectators, when a musket was discharged from the covert, which lodged two balls in a vital part of her body, a little in the rear of the shoulder bone. The animal traveled about a half a mile, fell, and expired.

Jake:
[27:40] The balls passed within a few inches of some of the persons in the company. She was very valuable to her owners, as we have heard that her exhibition is netted for several years, upwards of $3,000 annually. We do not recollect an event of this kind which ever excited stronger public indignation against the perpetrator than this barbarous outrage. The late keepers of this elephant have arrived in town with her skin and bones. She was on the return from Maine to Boston, and the keepers speak gratefully of the attentions received in every part of the district, but the place where the outrage was committed. The animal has traveled through every state and territory of the United States and never before received an injury. She lived about 40 minutes after being shot and retained her docility until the last moment. She first landed in Boston from India about 10 years since. It was owned by Messrs. Brun, Bailey, and Purdy of New York.

Jake:
[28:40] When he learned about the death of Old Bet in Maine, Salem’s Reverend William Bentley, who’d marveled at his first glimpse of an elephant almost 20 years earlier, wrote in his diary, We learned that the elephant, exhibited as a curiosity in this town lately, was shot in open day by a villain at Alfred, Maine. We have such wretches in our country who have all the lawlessness of our savages, by which he means Native Americans, and a full share of them in Maine. It is said that the pretense was that money should not be raised in that way in that neighborhood. The poor elephant was destroyed in Maine because he took money from those who could not afford to spend it. This report has led to the persistent belief that Old Bette was killed by someone who believed it was sinful to charge farmers who could barely scratch out a living in the rocky main soil to see a circus consisting of a trained dog, several pigs, a horse, and of course the elephant.

Jake:
[29:45] His motive was never completely clear, but the Portsmouth Oracle soon reported on the arrest of Daniel Davis for this crime. We learn that the person who shot the elephant in Alfred is a man by the name of Davis. He is said to be a miserable vagabond, and the late keepers have declined commencing a suit against him. The life of the elephant is said to be insured in New York. I’ve seen several articles saying that Davis was convicted, though what exactly he was charged with was never exactly clear to me. The Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser reported on the disposition of Betts’ remains on May 27, 1817. The skeleton of the elephant, which was shot in the district of Maine in July last, is now exhibited at New York. The elephant at the time of its death is said to have weighed 7,000 pounds.

Jake:
[30:41] Old Betts’ hide and bones were sold to Scudders Museum in New York, which was later purchased by P.T. Barnum and rebranded as Barnum’s American Museum.

Jake:
[30:54] With one elephant skeleton on its way to Barnum, it’s time for us to hear from Bailey again. On Tuesday, December 2nd, 1817, the New Hampshire Gazette reported on the arrival of two more elephants in the United States. The ship Columbus arrived at Boston on Sunday, 155 days from Calcutta, with sugar, ginger, cotton, gunnybags, twine, etc. To Israel Thorndike, and a fine-living male elephant seven feet high to Brun Boyden and Company. A female elephant of the same size has arrived at New York on the ship Trident from Calcutta. Both these pachyderms were imported by Hecaliah Bailey, and the one that came first to Boston was dubbed Columbus. On December 13, 1817, an ad ran in the Columbian Sentinel announcing, The elephant Columbus is to be seen in the avenue opposite the Old South Meeting House. The elephant is not only the largest and most sagacious animal in the world, but from the peculiar manner on which it takes its food and drink of every kind with its trunk, is acknowledged to be the greatest natural curiosity ever offered to the public. Columbus would remain on public display for 30 years, until 1847.

Alligators in the Public Garden

Jake:
[32:19] When I first thought of the idea for this episode, I spent some time trying to figure out what other animals would be fun to look into. Last fall, I visited southern Alabama and Mississippi for a conference, and there were some very vivid reminders in the bayous there of how terrifying alligators can be. That, in turn, reminded me of an article that I saw in the Boston Guardian in April 2021. It claimed that there had been alligators in the public garden right around the turn of the 20th century. I was surprised to find out that the story was true. I’ll be the first to admit that these were not the first alligators to be publicly exhibited in Boston, as I stumbled across an 1821 advertisement for a live alligator that could be seen at the Market Museum near Faneuil Hall for a few days in June 1821. Unlike an elephant, alligators, especially small ones, aren’t exactly hard to transport. So there are probably others here before 1821, but the ones in the public garden are still notable.

Jake:
[33:25] If you were to walk into the public garden from the entrance facing Com Ave across Arlington Street, you’d see a fountain with a sculpture of a young boy crouching with a bird to your right side before passing the statue of George Washington. It hasn’t changed all that much in the past 124 years.

Jake:
[33:44] In 1901, that fountain was a basin that was known for impressive displays of colorful water lilies. The Boston Evening Transcript described the scene that one might find in this flowery basin on August 3, 1901. A casual observer would never notice anything unusual about the lily fountain at the Commonwealth Avenue entrance to the public garden. And yet the attention would at once be drawn to the place by seeing a crowd of people always surrounding the circle of green, in the midst of which the fountain that tosses up and up the little ball, and whose surface is flecked with lilies. One thinks at first that it is the lilies themselves that call forth such undivided attention. And well they might, for just here are seen splendid specimens of red, white, pink, and blue lilies, and others that are as golden as though King Midas had touched them. In little plots, the lily pads float upon the water in a fascinating way. But one soon disabused of the idea that it’s the lilies that cause all the commotion. For excited youngsters shout, Here he is! And there she is! And where is she? Until even the curiosity of the indifferent is aroused. A close inspection reveals the fact that three baby alligators call this lily-fleck bit of water their own particular home.

Jake:
[35:12] Clearly, alligators that are contained in a basin and well-fed aren’t quite as frightening as the ones that pop out of the dark bayou water nearly under your feet.

Jake:
[35:24] Even the tamest alligators are unpredictable, but as the Boston Post reported on September 19, 1901, these beasts were anything but wild. One of the features that has attracted the attention of visitors to Boston’s public garden the past summer are the four alligators whose home has been in one of the small ponds near the Arlington Street entrance. Three of the alligators were the property of a lady living in Charlestown. Last year, she became afraid of them and presented them to the city of Boston. The fourth alligator was given to the city as a gift by a Chelsea man. Later, the happy family were increased by two turtles, also the property of the city of Boston. From that description, I think that these were basically bathtub gators that somebody brought back from a Florida vacation that got just too big to handle at home. The donor then handed them over to the city, along with instructions for their care, as described by the Boston Evening Transcript on August 10, 1901. The overseer said today that last season, the alligators were owned by a lady who has since given them to Mr. Duke, and during that time, she brought live mice to throw into the pond. The instructions to the caretaker are that a pound of meat be divided amongst the alligators once a week, usually on Saturday.

Jake:
[36:54] Mr. Duke was William Duke, the city’s superintendent of common and public grounds from 1878 to 1906. In the days before Boston had a formal zoo, I guess the public garden was as good a place to put a gator as any. But I have to imagine that a congregation of alligators must have clashed with the serene environment and formal landscape of paths and plantings that the garden is still known for. The commotion they caused when feeding time rolled around had to clash even more jarringly with the peaceful surroundings, with the August 9th Boston Post reporting, These alligators are the property of the city. The city does not feed them in the summer when they are placed in one of the smaller ponds in the garden. The city does not need to. The alligators earn their own living by furnishing amusement to the public. Somebody living in the neighborhood of the garden catches a mouse or a rat. He takes it, in the trap in which it was caught, to the alligator pond. And they’re not dependent on outsiders for their occurrence. When a gardener catches a rat in any of the outhouses, it’s carried alive to the alligators.

Jake:
[38:10] Frequently, mice and frogs are brought. Sometimes meat is brought and biscuits. All things in the eatable line are relished by the alligators. But live meat is the favorite food.

Jake:
[38:24] Then, the newest amusement furnished for Boston’s women and children, who chiefly frequent the garden, begins. Whoever brings the live offering for the alligators gets ready to throw it from the trap. With excitement and shrill shrieks, the children gather. So do the men and women who happen to be about. The victim is thrown into the pond. As it splashes the water, the three alligators start towards it. Kicking and squealing, it’s dragged beneath the water. The reptiles lash the water with their tails. They fight violently. The mud is stirred from the bottom of the shallow pond. The rat struggles hard for its life. It bites vainly at the male-like scales of its captors. Then, through the muddy water, there floats splotches of red. The crowd slowly disperses. the fun is over for the time.

Jake:
[39:25] Very dramatic. In my closest encounter with the gators down in the bayou, there was a chicken wire fence between me and the hungry reptiles in the water, which probably wouldn’t have slowed down a motivated alligator too much, but at least it made me feel better. With all those people crowding around to see Boston’s alligators dispatch their prey, I had to wonder what kind of fence or moat was there to keep the audience safe. The answer, as reported in the Boston Evening Transcript on August 3rd, was basically nothing.

Jake:
[40:03] At night, they’re wide awake, and sometimes when the water gets low, the adventurous ones get out of the stone basin, and one Sunday, one wandered up Arlington Street halfway to the church.

Feeding Time Controversies

Jake:
[40:16] With 124 years of water under the bridge, it’s easy to see the past as a barbaric time. I could easily chalk up the glee with which people fed live rats to bored alligators as a product of a different time with different values. But after a flurry of articles about the gators and their live feedings in the city’s papers in August 1901, those papers also started publishing citizen complaints. Many people thought that it was unnecessarily cruel to feed live animals to the alligators, and some commented that it was likely to scar the many children who gathered to watch the Saurians eat. Others drew parallels from live feeding for alligators, to bear baiting, cockfighting, and pugilism, all of which were illegal in Massachusetts for their cruelty. Some letter writers questioned why the MSPCA hadn’t stepped in to put a stop to this practice.

Jake:
[41:16] The answer to that final question was because the president of the society was out of town for the summer. But the bad publicity alone seemed like it would be enough to end the practice. With a Boston Evening transcript reporting on the backlash on August 10th. Some complaints have been made that rats and mice are furnished to the public garden alligators as a regular diet. Now that the matter has been called to the attention of the city forester, it is likely that the public will witness no more such exhibitions as are said to have taken place.

Jake:
[41:48] A very sarcastic Boston Post article that was also published on August 10th came just one step short of calling everyone who objected snowflakes. Perhaps the publicity given to the daily meals of the pet alligators in the public garden caused a change of diet yesterday. The saurians got no live meat in the shape of rats, but only one poor little mouse projected by a bare-legged urchin from a wooden trap into the waning jaws. All day long, horrified groups of elderly women and trembling youngsters hovered around the little pond, in the hope of catching an occasional glimpse of the ugly gators as they writhe through Duke’s imported lilies.

Jake:
[42:32] The reporter asked the park policeman if any rodents had been furnished during the day. No, replied he. Then hopefully, have you got any? He was evidently anxious to see the rat-eating exhibition. I couldn’t help but notice that the old women and children who were so horrified were also loitering around the basin hoping to see the gators and their victims. And the cop who was there to enforce propriety was the most bloodthirsty of all.

Jake:
[43:03] Luckily, this appeared to be a temporary problem. As summer came to an end, the September 19th Boston Post pointed out the cold-blooded reptiles, even large ones like alligators, couldn’t be left outside in a basin through a Boston winter. As soon as the cold weather sets in about the middle of October, the alligators will be sent to the city’s hothouse in Dorchester, where they will remain all winter. They are at not much expense to the city during the winter, as they do not eat at that season of the year. When cold weather started to settle in that October, it was time to fish the alligators out of the fountain and pack them up for the trip to their winter quarters in the greenhouses at Franklin Park. On October 12th, the Boston Globe reported that the lilies had been taken out of the basin for the season, the water was being drained, and the gardeners were getting ready to scrub the basin. There was just one barrier in the way of their work. Four hungry alligators.

Jake:
[44:09] The Globe describes the hunt for the first gator, which went off without a hitch. The hunt began at ten in the morning. A boss gardener took position on the improvised bridge with a long pole having a wide hook on the end, which every sportsman present promptly jotted down as just the thing to catch an alligator with. The first capture was made very quietly. As the lazy fellow lay floating on the water and blinking sleepily at the curious human spectators, the hook slid quietly underneath and around his body just back of the forelegs, then was raised enough to keep him on the surface while he was gently pushed towards the shore, apparently quite unconscious that anything in particular was happening. At the edge of the basin, however, an assistant was waiting, and before Mr. Alligator could wriggle away, he was seized by the tail, close to the body, so he could not turn and bite his captor’s hand, and then again with the other hand around the body, back of the forelegs. The attendant sportsman made a mental note of how to hold an alligator after he’s caught.

Jake:
[45:22] All struggling was useless, and with threatening open jaws and ominous hissing, a sort of swearing under his breath, the captive was deposited ignominiously in a packing box. The first toothy adversary had been snared so easily that the crowd gathering around the basin all pushed up closer to make sure that they didn’t miss another quick capture, with the globe noting that children in the front row are in constant danger of tumbling down into the water below. Their fears of missing out on some good fun were unfounded, however, with that same Globe article continuing, The moment the next victim felt the hook tickling his ribs, he awoke from his lethargy and showed that he had been no idle observer of the misfortune of his mate. But he was not quick enough to disengage himself from the hook, guided by a practiced hand, and in spite of splashing and squirming, was pushed nearer and nearer the shore. It seemed curious that such a simple hold as the hook afforded could not be broken by his violent struggles. But careful observation showed that the position of the hook around the body, just back of the forelegs, was such that the alligator could not reach the hook or pole with either fore or hind leg to push himself off, however hard he might try. And being held just at the surface of the water, he could not swim or drop off. The only other methods of escape.

Jake:
[46:46] This fellow nearly got away when his feet touched the bottom in shallow water. So nearly, in fact, that he was caught only by the tip of his tail, and doubling in a flash, had the satisfaction of getting a good snap at his captor’s hand, scoring first blood in the battle.

Jake:
[47:04] This availed him little, however, for he was soon counted out and deposited in the box with his friend to discuss the adventure and wonder whether their companions were coming too. The third alligator was quickly snatched up and added to the box with no drama. But then the fourth couldn’t be found. All this gator wrangling had muddied the waters in the basin, and the last animal just couldn’t be seen. The gardeners probed blindly in the murky depths with gator hooks and garden tools. But they felt nothing, and no ripple was observed.

Jake:
[47:39] A little after 11 a.m., after 15 minutes of searching, they gave up and let the dust, or mud in this case, settle. Noon came and went, and then a child in the crowd yelled out, There she blows! And the hunt was on again. The Globe article continues, The bold hunters were called back to the field of battle, and the hook encircled coaxingly the motionless body. But with the touch instantly, as if by electric shock, the powerful tail beat the water into a miniature geyser. And quick as was the movement of the pole to follow the chase, the ripples cleared away serenely over an alligator as effectually lost as before. Park’s staff took this as a sign and announced that it was time for a lunch break. They said that anyone who wanted to could rejoin them in an hour, but now it was time to eat. When the crowd and workers returned an hour later, the mud had settled and the water level had fallen further. In an era before liability lawsuits, the Globe reported how gardeners recruited an eager spectator to help them corral the elusive alligator.

Jake:
[48:55] Successfully this time, he was started, and with much difficulty, forced toward shallow water, where a volunteer citizen of stout proportion stood on the slippery edge of the basin, ready to effect a heroic capture. But he grabbed the tail too near the tip, and as the snapping jaws circled rapidly toward his hand, made a desperate effort to throw the beast out into the crowd, but slipped, dropped his prey, and barely saved himself, while his hat fell gracefully into the water. The excitement was too much for his presence of mind, and apparently fearing that the hat would float away with the tide, he bravely plunged in, ankle-deep to the rescue, while all shouted with glee. The alligators squirmed away again, and the gardeners went back to their other tasks, leaving the civilian volunteer with a rake to keep probing the dark water for the now-angry alligator. Sometime after 2 p.m., in a roundup that had started at 10 a.m., the volunteer struck gold. Or rather, he struck Gator.

Jake:
[50:05] Hitting the creature with his rake, he called out to the gardeners, and the chase was on again. With the globe piece concluding, Again caught in the entangling hook, the cause of all this trouble, and of so many hours of wasted human life, was forced slowly but surely ashore, with the rake still trying to play a part in the capture, and was finally guided toward experienced hands and securely held down by the rake, with 200 pounds of desperation at the other end of it. The alligator was a prisoner, and the holiday was over.

Jake:
[50:40] I’m not exactly sure if the novelty had just worn off the next year or what, but the public garden gators never got as much press coverage again after 1901. I found one or two mentions of alligators each year for the next few years, through 1906, when William Duke retired. When the evening transcript reported on annual efforts to winterize the public garden in October 1902, they included just this brief blurb. But what becomes of the alligators or the turtles or the goldfish? The goldfish are always right there in the garden, and perhaps they prefer winter, for they have more room to swim in and fewer inquisitive persons to look at them. They know when winter is coming because they are then caught in nets and transferred bodily to the big pond in the center. Here they spend the winter under the ice, and if anything should happen to them, there are always more goldfish at the greenhouse to take their places. There is an alligator hunt around the base of the ether fountain. Whether the garden was compelled to remove its saurians, lest their former residents, just to the right hand of General Washington, should be filled with the pebbles and sand which Boston throws at its alligators. In this small basin, there comes eventually an autumn turtle drive, and after that, turtles and alligators are together led away into captivity in the city greenhouse.

Jake:
[52:08] The next summer, 1903, there was a brief mention in the Globe confirming that the alligators had been moved out of their original home at the Basin, perhaps to the Venus Fountain on the other side of the Arlington Street gates. At the right of the Arlington Street entrance is a bed of pyramid cactus with Begonia rex groundwork, and a bordering in rows of Echoraria, Yucca, Lobelia, House Leaks, and Dwarf Unimus. Adjacent to this is the large fountain filled with water lilies in full bloom. White, pink, yellow, cream, and one variety of a rose color named by the donor, a friend of the superintendent, the William Doog lily. The most delicate shading of all the varieties.

Jake:
[52:57] The young alligators, which have disported here for a year or two to the joy of the genus small boy, and the terror of his sister, have been removed to the fountains surrounding the other monument. In June of 1905, the Globe mentioned that the alligators were still in the little fountain to the left of the Washington statue as you entered the garden. The liveliest spot is about the Washington statue and the little ponds on the Arlington Street Walk, and a little to the left in the broad walk where all the gardening takes place. Here, all day long, are laughter and gaiety, fooling and quizzing, wondering at the fishes and the alligators, at the fountain tossing the ball, and at the lady of the fountain.

Jake:
[53:43] In July 1906, just a few months before Duke’s retirement, was another very slim mention in the evening transcript. Though it’s so lightly reported that I’m skeptical that this reporter actually saw the alligators rather than just dredging up a memory from past years. It’s not clear to me whether the four gators that summered in the public garden for a few summers were still in Boston when the Franklin Park Zoo opened in 1912, but there was already a reptile enclosure in the greenhouses in Franklin Park when the city started debating funding for a zoo a half-decade earlier.

The Push for a Boston Zoo

Jake:
[54:21] On April 13, 1901, the Boston transcript reported under the headline, Freakish Legislation, The Common Council, modestly distrustful of its own powers of indefinite entertainment, is bound to have a menagerie, or in brief, a zoo at Franklin Park, and this week places itself on record as favoring an appropriation of $100,000 to start the enterprise.

Jake:
[54:47] The report of the park commissioners that it would take half a million dollars to establish such a plant, and from $75,000 to $100,000 a year to maintain it, did not seem to stagger that fearless body in the slightest. To be sure, it did not insist upon the whole figure at once. It would be willing to make a beginning with a moderate congress of the wild beasts that belonged to the temperate zone. Grizzly bears, mountain lions, coyotes, alligators, and the like. Trusting the providence and the public spirit for periodical additions to the aggregation. The next couple of paragraphs make it clear that their editorial position was entirely opposed to spending public money on a zoo. Objecting on the basis of cost, safety, animal welfare, and education. Today, you can see a pygmy crocodile at the zoo, but there are no American alligators in Franklin Park. You might just have to go south for that.

Conclusion and Show Notes

Jake:
[55:49] To learn more about Boston’s beastly past, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 318. There will be pictures of our first elephants from newspapers and a promotional handbill, and a newspaper illustration of proper Bostonians crowding around the Gator Basin in the public garden. I’ll have links to all the articles from the Boston papers about public garden alligators that I quoted from, as well as the Boston Guardian article that sent me down that rat hole. I’ll link to the article about Arthur Savage and his lion from Mark Hurwitz, A Savage Family History, and a paper from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. For context about the enslaved African man who collected admission fees for the lion, I’ll also link to Jared Ross Hardesty’s article that I mentioned. When it comes to the story of the elephant, or perhaps elephants, I’ll link to two different articles on the subject from George Goodwin, the diaries of William Bentley and Charles Francis Adams, and Sally Gould Putnam’s sketches of the elephants at the Aquarial Gardens.

Jake:
[56:57] I’ll also link to the newspaper articles that I quoted from in that part of the story as well. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. We are Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but lately I’ve been most active on Blue Sky, where you can find me by searching for hubhistory.com. I haven’t been as active on Mastodon, but you can find me over there as at hubhistoryatbetter.boston. If none of that’s up your alley, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. If you do, drop me a line, and I’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.