A view here reproduced represents these once famous gardens as they appeared in the early thirties. They were in existence, somewhat transformed, as late as 1877, but it is now difficult to imagine that they were situated in a populous region between the Kennington and Walworth Roads.

The ‘Zoo’ which found a home in a beautiful garden in the south of London was for some time no mean rival to the Zoo par excellence in Regent’s Park, while, as a place of public entertainment, the Surrey Gardens had something of the popularity of Cremorne, with which they were, in fact, nearly coeval. But here the resemblance ends, for the Surrey Zoo had no dancing-platform, [83] no alcoholic drinks for more than thirteen years, and rarely furnished to the police-court reporter any copy worthy of his notice. The gardens were generally closed at 10 p.m., and the addition in 1846 of two new constables to the permanent staff was advertised as an effective terror to evil-doers. The gardens were by no means solely frequented by South Londoners, though they were far from the luxurious west, and on the wrong side of the Thames. Fireworks, promenade concerts and ballooning were a bait for the shillings of the sightseer, but for more than twenty years at least these attractions never quite sophisticated the simple recreation afforded by the Zoological Garden.

A South-East View in the Surrey Zoological Gardens. After a lithograph published by Havell, 1832

The founder, and for many years the proprietor, of these gardens was Edward Cross, whose menagerie at Exeter Change was once a London sight and the abode of the famous elephant Chunee. But Exeter Change, as old views of London clearly show, projected itself in an obstructive way across the pavement of the Strand, and in 1829 was removed for the formation of Burleigh Street. Mr. Cross then moved his animals to a temporary home in the King’s Mews (the site of Trafalgar Square). In the autumn of 1831 the menagerie found itself in South London. The Manor-House, Walworth, had attached to it a fine garden of fifteen acres and a lake of three acres, [84] which was not only a picturesque feature, but, as we shall afterwards see, a valuable theatrical asset as ‘real water.’ The owner of the Manor-House had already spent several thousands on his grounds, and it was not difficult for Cross to make the necessary alterations. The gardens were remodelled or laid out anew by Henry Phillips, author of Sylva Florifera, with flower-beds, walks, and undulating lawns, and an early guidebook to the gardens gives a list of its two hundred varieties of hardy trees. Aviaries were soon put up for the singing birds, and swings and cages for the parrots. The water-birds readily took to the little ponds, and the swans and herons were soon at home in the Great Lake, where they found an island haven overhung by drooping willows. The lions and tigers were caged in a great circular conservatory of glass (something like the palm-house at Kew), 300 feet long, and constructed nearly in the centre of the grounds. A still larger octagon building with enclosed paddocks was erected for the zebras, emus, and kangaroos.

The Companion to the gardens, issued in 1835, duly sets forth the catalogue of the animals and birds, and many numbers of the Mirror magazine give neat woodcuts of the ‘latest additions,’ at that time apparently rare or curious, though now sufficiently familiar. The greatest popular successes were the three giraffes—the first ever seen in England—brought over in 1836 from Alexandria; the orang-outang; the Indian one-horned rhinoceros (1834); Nero, the lion who cost £800, and was stated to be twenty years old; and a gigantic tortoise, which small children used to ride.

The Zoological Garden was inaugurated under distinguished auspices, and the prospectus of 1831 proclaims as patrons the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, the Princess Victoria, and an imposing array of Dukes and Marquises. The season tickets were a guinea, and the admission at the gates was from first to last one shilling. In this prospectus nothing was said about popular amusements, and for several years nothing much was done in this direction beyond anniversary fÊtes of the fancy fair description. On such occasions performers like Ramo Samee, the sword-swallower, and Blackmore of Vauxhall made their appearance, Blackmore’s function being to cross the lake on a rope sixty feet high.

In 1837 the South London Horticultural Society, formed in the preceding year, held the first of many successful flower-shows in the gardens. In the same year the first panorama was displayed—‘Vesuvius, with the town and port of Posilippo.’ The lake was, of course, the Bay of Naples, with feluccas and a miniature British frigate lying at anchor. The painter of Vesuvius, as of many of the later panoramas, was George Danson, the scene-painter at Astley’s. Danson was a clever artist in his way; his panoramic drawing was good, and his colouring well kept under, so that his productions would bear inspection by daylight. At night-time the fireworker of the gardens, J. Southby, appeared on the scene, and Vesuvius was soon in eruption. On the day when the first eruption was to take place the manager of the gardens—if Bell’s Life is not misleading us—solemnly warned the chief fireman of the City, in case he should send to Walworth engines that might be more needed elsewhere.

Vesuvius was repeated in 1838, and henceforth the Surrey Zoo was never without an exhibition of the kind. It is a good rule always to see a panorama or a big model whenever one has the opportunity, but the reader will perhaps be contented if I set forth the chronology of the Surrey panoramas in a footnote. [86a] However carefully painted the canvas might be, a subject was preferred that lent itself to treatment by gunpowder and fireworks. Thus, Vesuvius was followed by Mount Hecla; Old London was burnt in the Great Fire of 1666; Gibraltar was besieged; Badajoz stormed ‘with effects of real ordnance’; and the taking of Sebastopol was truly terrific.

The city of Rome (covering five acres) was a favourite subject. The scene showed the bridge over the Tiber, St. Peter’s, and the Castle of St. Angelo. At night-time Southby’s fireworks legitimately reproduced the Roman Girandola of Easter Monday:

“At the Surrey Menagerie every one knows
(Because ’tis a place to which every one goes)
There’s a model of Rome: and as round it one struts
One sinks the remembrance of Newington Butts;
And having one’s shilling laid down at the portal,
One fancies oneself in the City Immortal.” [86b]

Quieter efforts were the Temples of Elora, and Edinburgh, a subject suggested by Prince Albert.

Stirring up the Great Fire of London (Surrey Zoo). After George Cruikshank, 1844

Balloon ascents, which had such a strange fascination for the frequenters of Vauxhall in the thirties and forties, and which were always an attraction at Cremorne, do not seem to have been a feature of the Surrey Gardens. An ascent by Henry Coxwell, on September 7, 1854, was of some importance, as the balloonist for the first time gave a public exhibition of his methods of balloon-signalling in war. His apparatus was attached to the car, and the signals were supposed to be addressed to the beleaguered fortress of Sebastopol. Some pigeons were also taken up, and sent forth from the balloon with messages.

Two curiosities of ballooning are connected with these gardens. In May, 1837, Mr. and Mrs. Graham took up in a parachute attached to their balloon a monkey named Signor Jacopo, attired in a scarlet coat and feathers. The monkey descended in his parachute on Walworth Common, and, being duly labelled with ‘two pounds reward,’ was promptly returned to Mr. Cross. In 1838 the appearance of the ‘Montgolfier’ balloon [88a] excited no ordinary interest. It was a monstrous machine made of lawn varnished, and was said to be ‘of the height of the York Column, with a circumference nearly half that of the dome of St. Paul’s.’ It was announced to ascend on May 24, and people began to assemble in the grounds at noon. By seven o’clock there were nearly 5,000 spectators, and, behind a huge tarpaulin, the balloon was supposed to be in process of inflation. The balloon was attached to a platform in the middle of the lake, and its peculiarity was that it had to be inflated by chopped straw burnt in a brazier under the orifice of the bag. The size of the furnace had been miscalculated, and after the balloon had twice been set on fire, the ‘intrepid aeronaut’ decided not to ascend. Some of the spectators considered that, at any rate, the balloon could be punished, and ‘a well-directed volley of stones’ soon left the monster prostrate on the lake. An attempt was made to drag it on shore and tear it in pieces, but at this moment the cord broke. Some of the rowdier spirits now sought out the proprietor, hoping to duck him in one of his own ponds. And when this failed, they attacked the glass panes of the lion’s conservatory. But suddenly the police appeared and Vesuvius burst forth in all its fury, and when the fireworks were over the visitors quietly dispersed.

From 1839 to 1844 orchestral concerts, without vocalists, were one of the principal attractions. A good band, under C. Godfrey, performed music of the promenade-concert type—operatic overtures, dance-music by Strauss and Musard, with an occasional ‘classical’ first part, when Handel and Beethoven had their turn.

In 1844 there was a change of proprietors. Edward Cross retired, [88b] and was succeeded by William Tyler, who had been the secretary to the gardens. Next year a gigantic and very ugly orchestra was erected for the accommodation of a band of 300 under Jullien, [89] who had made a name by his promenade concerts at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Post-horn gallops and polkas now enlivened the multitude, and in this ‘Concert monstre’ the brass too often got the better of the strings. Some vocalists (Mlle. Lovarny and Miss Huddart) were also introduced (1848). These concerts and the panoramas bring us to 1855, which was practically the last year of the old Zoo. For Tyler then disposed of his property, and sold off the wild beasts. The popular taste was no doubt changing, though Tyler had done his best, and lit up the glass conservatory so that (as his advertisements stated) the ‘matchless collection of carnivora could be viewed by gaslight.’

‘Old London’ at the Surrey Zoological Gardens. After a lithograph published by Webb, 1844

The gardens were now taken in hand by the Surrey Music-Hall Company, who had a working capital of over £30,000, and rented the gardens for £346. The chairman of this company was Sir W. de Bathe, but Jullien had a considerable stake in the enterprise. At a cost of £18,200 a music-hall (in the classical sense of the word) was erected near the lake, on the site of the circular conservatory. This building, by Horace Jones, was on a great scale, and would hold an audience of 12,000 and an orchestra of 1,000. Its general appearance was not ineffective, but a critic described its style as degenerate Italian relieved in the French taste. It was opened on July, 15, 1856, with a performance of ‘The Messiah,’ with Jullien, Clara Novello, Sims Reeves, Miss Dolby, and Piatti.

In the autumn the new hall had a strange tenant in Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, who, finding Exeter Hall and his own chapel too small, hired the building for four Sundays for a payment of £15 each Sunday. On the evening of October 19 there was an enormous congregation. While Spurgeon was engaged in prayer an extraordinary panic occurred. Some mischief-maker raised a shout of ‘Fire!’ or, according to another account, there was an agonized cry of ‘The roof! The roof!’ A mad rush was made for the doors, some of which seem to have been locked to prevent people strolling in and out of the gardens. Spurgeon kept calm, and, when the terror subsided, some of the congregation found their way back to the hall, but seven persons had been killed and about fifty injured in the crush.

The new company was soon in difficulties, and in August of 1857 the directors were behindhand with their rates. At a meeting of the shareholders Jullien complained bitterly that, though a profit of £1,000 had been made, he was given no money to pay his band. He had lost—as he put it—£2,000 by his unpaid salary, and £2,000 by his worthless shares. In 1859 there was a more modest orchestra of sixty, and the Surrey Gardens Choir performed madrigals; but in the background there were proceedings in Chancery, and in April the gardens—now described as of ten acres—were advertised for sale. In June, 1861, the music-hall was burnt out, and though in the following year a picture of the Bay of Naples was offered to the public, the life of the gardens was wellnigh extinct. It happened that at this time (1862) the authorities of St. Thomas’s Hospital had to leave their old home in Southwark, and needed a temporary resting-place. They had the music-hall rebuilt, and used it for the reception of patients until 1871. Then the new hospital was opened on the Albert Embankment.

The gardens nearly outlasted the seventies. In May 1872, an enterprising lessee, Frederick Strange, who had been manager and proprietor of the Alhambra, opened the gardens for concerts, operettas, and ballets. [90] The grounds had become a wilderness, and had to be considerably ‘improved.’ The theatre was the old music-hall remodelled. At the opening concert Mme. Marimon and other members of Mapleson’s opera company appeared, and Sims Reeves and Mme. Patey sang at one of the ballad concerts. But in 1873 the entertainments were fashioned on those of Cremorne. There were Derby and Oaks ‘Festivals’ in May, and that unfortunate nobleman, ‘Sir Roger Tichborne,’ was announced to appear in the theatre. In September there was a gala with ‘50,000’ lamps for the benefit of Robert Duffell, who had for half a century illumined Vauxhall, Cremorne, and smaller public gardens.

In 1875 the lessees were Messrs. Poole and Stacey, who produced comic opera and ballet. Captain Boyton this year exhibited the life-saving apparatus with which he had crossed the Channel. In 1877 a new manager or lessee, John Reeves, offered for a sixpenny admission an open-air dancing-platform, a variety entertainment, and the sight of a Canadian ox of 400 stone. The last regular entertainment took place in the theatre on August 14, 1877.

In March, 1878, the theatre was hired for a single performance, a boxing match between Rooke and Harrington. A rough company of 800 people were got together, and the prize, a splendid silver vase valued at £100, was ostentatiously displayed to the audience. An old ‘Surrey’ waiter who was present is said to have recognized in this noble trophy a capacious leaden vessel which had stood on one of the refreshment counters in the water-drinking days of the Zoological Gardens. [91][This account is mainly based on a large collection of bills, views, and newspaper matter formed by the writer. Some interesting details in Bishop H. H. Montgomery’s Kennington, 1889, chap. xi.; Walford, Old and New London; Blanchard in Era Almanack, 1871, p. 4; Blanchard’s Life.

Views: Plan of the gardens prefixed to the Companion to the Royal Surrey Gardens, third edition, 1835. Lithograph published by Havell in 1832 (W.). Lithograph by Alvey, 1836. Views in the Mirror, 1832. Illustrated London News, July 19, 1856 (view of gardens in 1856). The annual panoramas were regularly pictured in the Mirror and the Illustrated London News.]