Jumbo at Tufts

By Russell Working

Recently a very smart communications expert reminded me of the great elephant Jumbo’s connection with Tufts University in Massachusetts.

When the famed showman P.T. Barnum imported Jumbo from London to the United States in 1882, no one had ever seen an African elephant in North America, Canada’s CBC reports. He was an animal superstar. An estimated 20 million people visited the prodigious pachyderm during his times in zoos, parades, and circuses.

Barnum knew how to get his great elephant into the news. Encyclopedia Britannica reports: “In May 1884 Barnum engineered a bounty of publicity for the circus by parading Jumbo, 20 other elephants, and 17 camels across the recently constructed Brooklyn Bridge to prove its structural integrity.”

Sadly, Jumbo died in September 1885 after a train hit him in a railyard in Ontario, Canada, where he was being loaded in a boxcar after a performance. Barnum donated the stuffed hide to Tufts, where Jumbo became the college mascot.

“For 86 years,” Tufts relates, “Jumbo stood in Barnum Hall and was a veritable mecca on campus. Students, parents and other campus visitors would pop pennies in his trunk or give a tug on his tail to bring luck for an upcoming exam or athletic competition. Jumbo mania came to a fiery end on April 14, 1975 when Barnum Hall and the beloved elephant were consumed in an electrical fire.”

Here’s a video from Tufts about the titanic tusker:

Jumbo’s skeleton survived the fire. The Canadian report promotes a documentary about how an international team of scientists is examining Jumbo’s bones to uncover answers about the elephant superstar’s death.

“Travelling to Africa,” CBC says, “we will examine the latest science that reveals that elephants can suffer from a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We will uncover the importance of the relationship between mothers and their babies and highlight the extraordinary work of The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya who rescue orphaned elephants and return them to the wild.”

Unfortunately, the CBC website tells me the documentary isn’t available in my Chicagoland location. Or have they locked out the entire United States? (Possibly relevant: in the late 1800s, Canadians used to boo the Stars and Stripes when Ringling paraded there, route books report.) Either way, the Jumbo saga exemplifies our fascination with the “Magnificent Mastodons,” as the circuses used to ballyhoo them. And his sad tale illustrates once again how our puny species has mistreated these great beasts.

For more about my novel manuscript, The Elephant Box, click here. Why a circus blog? Learn more here.