Jumbo and the Brooklyn Bridge

Jumbo was an African Bush elephant born in Sudan in 1860. Being a baby, he was sold to the Italian dealer Lorenzo Casanova, who carried him to Europe and sold it to Gottlieb Kreutzberg, who, after a short period of time sold him to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Still small, he was overshadowed by a couple of elephants bigger and nicer than him. Another top zoo in Europe, London Garden, was looking desperately for an African Elephant. Finally, they acquired the Elephant (still nameless) in exchange for a rhinoceros, two dingoes, a jackal, a possum, a kangaroo and a pair of eagles; ill and in poor condition, he is shipped to England on June 26, 1865. 

Matthew Scott, Scotty, becomes his new nurse, trainer and the friend who will be at his side till the very end. He was the one who names the elephant Jumbo. Time passes and Jumbo grows more and more. And more: 12 feet in height, 14 feet in length and seven tones. And he becomes more and more famous. Thanks to his friendly character, he begins giving rides to children; among those children were a young Winston Churchill and the Prince of Wales. He was the most important attraction of the zoo, reason why a new house was build for him and an elephant girl, Alice, was chosen to live with him in their new elephant house with bath pool. From that moment he won´t need to walk to the Themes to have regular baths. 

In 1881, the probably most important circus magnate P.T. Barnum, wanted the by far largest known elephant in the world: Jumbo. The zoo, aware of the fact that Jumbo was approaching his ‘musth’ period, sold him for 20.000 £. The whole process was held under a quite dark negotiation, and the zoo tried to revoke the sale after furious pressures by the population trying not to lose their beloved animal (The Elephant War, 1960, by Gillian Avery is a historical novel featuring the protest movement based in Oxford). 

But Barnum wasn´t a magnate for having a big hearth so on March 24, 1883, Jumbo and Scotty depart towards America, where they arrive on April 9 and debut in Madison Square Garden, New York the next day. After 31 weeks of circus tour, Barnum won $1.75 million thanks to the new attraction, Jumbo.

Brooklyn bridge was completed in 1883, but many people was skeptical about it stability. 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.
His theory was that if the bridge could easily hold Jumbo and his pals, the bridge could easily hold as many pedestrians as New York could throw at it. Barnum originally offered Jumbo to open the bridge the previous year and was turned down.

In September 15, 1883 Jumbo dies stuck by a train when he was entering his train. Many metallic objects were found in the elephant's stomach, including pennies, keys, rivets, and a police whistle. His skeleton was shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The elephant's heart was sold to Cornell University; his hide went to Tufts University in Massachusetts, where a fire in 1975 will destroy it. The elephant's ashes are kept in a 14-ounce Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director, while his taxidermied tail, removed during earlier renovations, resides in the holdings of the Tufts Digital Collections and Archives.

Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney inspirited in Jumbo.