6. The Vogue for Exotic Pets

For several centuries, Britain’s colonial empire brought many luxury goods to English ports. While most were inanimate, they also included live animals such as elephants, wildcats, and apes, which were imported in order to startle and amuse a public that had never previously seen such exotic creatures. The animals came mainly from India or Africa, where most of Britain’s colonies were located and many of them passed through the hands of Club Row Market traders during these years. “Here is Bird Fair,” observed one contemporary in 1911, “and here are the animals of the forest and the jungle--the lion, the leopard, and the tiger--and here on any Sunday of the year you may be invited to ‘step inside’ and suit yourself with anything in the menagerie line that you may fancy-- from a humming-bird to an elephant.”

In London, it was possible to purchase wild animals at Harrods Pet Kingdom, which was established in 1917. The department sold every animal under the sun, from baby elephants to monkeys. The novelty and expense of the rarest of these animals meant that Europeans saw them as markers of wealth and culture. This status continued well into the 20th century: the American star performer Josephine Baker famously owned a cheetah named Chiquita.

Yet the status that came with ownership of an exotic animal began to fade by the mid-twentieth-century as wild animals became more affordable for ordinary people. A famous example is the lion Christian, which Australians John Rendall and Anthony “Ace” Bourke bought at Harrods in 1969 for the equivalent of just £250 in today’s money. To put this into perspective, £250 is currently the average price of a domestic cat. Christian the lion lived in their London flat for over a year before being sent to Kenya where he was reintegrated into the wild.

Although Harrods stocked a vast array of wild and rare animals at alarmingly cheap prices, Club Row Market remained the hub of the trade. There are many references to an equally diverse range of exotic animals being sold at the market decades before Harrods went into competition. Records of Club Row Market’s more spectacular exhibits are scarce but a photographer named Marketa Luskacova managed to take a now infamous picture of a lion cub for sale at the market in 1977 (seen to the right). In an interview with Val Williams in 1991, Luskacova explained that "Brick Lane is as close as you can get to the Middle Ages in London . . . And I thought that it (Club Row) could not last. It was so contrary to all of the development in the town. . . . And I thought it would be important to photograph it before it closed." Her photo was taken just months after the passage of the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act had outlawed the sale of wild animals to unlicensed buyers, thereby ending the trade in exotic animals. Club Row Market was closed in 1983 but Harrods Pet Kingdom retained the right to sell domestic animals until as late as 2014, when it too closed.