Nan, a volunteer with The Royal Parks in the First World War, finds out how the War that changed everything changed the London Zoo:
There might have been a war on, but the London Zoo continued to provide recreation to parkgoers. Zoo officials offered reduced or free admission to those who had suffered most from the war, such as Belgian refugees, soldiers, and their families. Wounded soldiers were treated to refreshments and enjoyed rides on the llamas and elephants. Elephant rides were so popular that Zoo officials rerouted them to reduce the danger from air-raids, rather than stop them altogether.
Almost two-thirds of male staff enlisted, so just as at the Home Depot and the Camouflage School, women filled key Zoo roles for the first time during the war. Maud Peavot, whose husband Henry was librarian, took on his job while he was away and Marion Saunders served as the first female zookeeper, specializing in poultry.
By spring 1918, falling revenues and food shortages meant that large zoo animals became very difficult to look after. Civilians were encouraged to eat less meat and grow their own vegetables, but the animals couldn’t be so flexible. Many of the larger carnivores and seafood-eaters had to be sold, loaned out or even donated for food (just the cattle!). ZSL replaced them with “Utility Animals” like pigs and poultry, and used spare ground to grow vegetables for wounded soldiers, zookeepers and herbivorous animals.
A rare wartime addition to the Zoo was a black bear cub named Winnie. Her owner, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, loaned Winnie to the Zoo in 1914 before he shipped over to France to fight, and later donated her permanently. She became very popular with zoogoers, including Christopher Robin Milne, who named his own stuffed bear Winnie the Pooh. Five years’ later, Winnie-the-Pooh, the classic children’s book, appeared in bookshops.
But Winnie didn’t entirely steal the public’s affection for the Zoo’s elephants. In the 1919 Peace Parade, women and children rode through Hyde Park on decorated elephants to celebrate the end of the war.
