Chunee

Chunee (also known as Chuny or Chuneelah; born c. 1804 – died 1 May 1826) was an Indian elephant in Regency London.

Chunee's skeleton

Three elephants were brought to England in East India Company ships between 1809 and 1811. The third of these was Chunee. He travelled on the East Indiaman, Astell, from Bengal, arriving in England in July 1811. Two other two elephants, also owned by Stephen Polito at some point, arrived in England. The first arrived in September 1809.

The second elephant was brought to England from Sri Lanka on the East India Company ship Walthamstow in June 1810.

Mr Polito ... has obtained possession of a remarkably fine Elephant, brought to England in the Hon. East India Company's ship, Winchelsea, Capt. William Moffat, which will be exhibited at Rumsey [sic] fair on Monday; and it is expected he will be offered for public inspection for a day or two, in this town [Winchester], on his way to the Exeter 'Change London.

— Hampshire Chronicle, 23 April 1810.

Chunee arrived in 1811 and was originally exhibited at the Covent Garden Theatre, but was bought by Polito (along with a two-headed cow, kangaroos, beavers, and exotic birds) from the estate of a Mr. Pidcock of the Exeter Exchange after Pidcock's death in 1810. After Polito's death, the menagerie was eventually purchased by Edward Cross in 1817. The events which led to Chunee being put to death fifteen years later became a cause célèbre.

At the time of Chunee's death around the age of 22, he weighed at least 5 tonnes, was 11 feet tall, and was valued at £1,000. Crook had insured him for £500.

Career

Chunee was described at one point as "between ten and eleven feet in height, and weighs at least, by computation, between four and five tons. This huge mountain of flesh consumes daily three trusses of hay, and about two hundred weight of carrots and other fresh vegetables, together with from sixty to eighty gallons of water".

Tame most of his life, Chunee was originally a theatrical animal, appearing on stage with Edmund Kean. His plays included Blue Beard, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and the pantomime Harlequin and Padmanaba, or the Golden Fish, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He was retired from acting due to generally poor reviews from audiences and critics. He learned tricks including being trained to take a sixpence from visitors to the menagerie to hold with his trunk before returning it. He was also trained to ring the bell for the menagerie supper every evening at nine o'clock. He could use his trunk to take a penny from his keeper to buy food from an old cake-seller. An entry in Lord Byron's journal records a visit to Exeter Exchange on 14 November 1813, when "The elephant took and gave me my money again—took off my hat—opened a door—trunked a whip—and behaved so well, that I wish he was [sic] my butler."

Death

Illustration for magazine article by engraver Joseph Swain depicting the shooting of Chunee

By 1820, Chunee had doubled in size since his arrival in England, requiring new quarters -- an "upstairs cage, made of iron-bound oak bars, three feet in girth" -- which cost Crook £350. Chunee by then was consuming 800 pounds of hay, corn, straw, carrots, mangel wurzel, and biscuit daily.

Dangerously violent in his last years, attributed to an "annual paroxysm" (musth) aggravated latterly by a rotten tusk which gave him a bad toothache, which, according to William Ellis-Rees, Chunee brought on himself, when, while assailing the wooden bars of the den cage, a "splinter of ivory set up an inflammation in the pulp of the tusk, and Chuny, maddened by the pain, went berserk." A laxative made "of salts, treacle, calomel (a fungicide), tartar emetic (expectorant), gamboge (purgative), and croton oil (purgative)" failed to work. Six pounds of bone marrow, however, ameliorated Chunee but only briefly and more was given.

In November 1825, while on his usual Sunday walk along the Strand, Chunee ran amok, killing one of his keepers, Johann Tietjen, a native of Germany. Fearing for his reputation, Cross tried to sell Chunee for £500 to an American showman, then travelling through England. No ship captain would agree, however, to take aboard such a huge creature on the long voyage.

Chunee was now permanently enraged. The elephant's "eyes now glared like lenses of glass reflecting a red and burning light", according to one account. On 26 February 1826, he was close to destroying his den that had withstood his lunges over the previous four years. There was great fear that his lunges would bring down the ceiling or allow him to burst through the bars and escape into the Strand with resultant human casualties. Carpenters refused to mend the damage out of fear of the enraged pachyderm. It was decided that Chunee was too dangerous. Three days later, Wednesday, 1 March, his keeper tried to feed him food which had been laced with poison but Chunee refused each time to eat it. Soldiers were summoned from Somerset House to shoot Chunee with their muskets.

Chunee was reportedly hit by a total of 152 musket balls, but kept rising each time he had been thought to be mortally wounded, appearing more frantic each time and on the verge of bringing down the entire exchange building. Muskets which had been aimed at his heart had instead hit his shoulder blade. He was finally shot in the gullet and fell while the firing continued. The gullet shot was reportedly delivered by William Herring, who was Edward Cross's brother-in-law. Spears were then used. Chunee was finally finished off by either a sabre attached to a pole, or, according to at least one source, a poisoned harpoon. Some called him "the elephant who refused to die".

It was reported that the "quantity of blood that flowed was very considerable, and flooded the den to a great depth."

Aftermath

Hundreds of people paid the usual shilling entrance fee to see his carcass butchered, and then dissected by doctors and medical students from the Royal College of Surgeons. His skeleton weighed 876 lb (397 kg), and was sold for £100 and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, and later at the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the bullet holes clearly visible. His skin weighed 17 cwt (1,900 lb or 860 kg), and was sold to a tanner for £50. Chunee's skeleton, along with a display of the affected tusk, was on display in the Royal College of Surgeons Museum until 11 May 1941 when the museum was almost entirely destroyed by a direct hit from an Axis bombing during WWII. Chunee's skeleton was destroyed.

The manner of Chunee's death was widely publicised, with illustrations printed in popular newssheets of volley after volley being shot into his profusely bleeding body. Recipes were published for elephant stew, along with maudlin poems saying "Farewell, poor Chuny". Letters were printed in The Times protesting at the barbarity of the process, and the alleged poor quality of the living conditions of the animals in the menagerie. The Zoological Society of London was founded in April 1826. The controversy was the inspiration for a successful play at Sadler's Wells, entitled Chuneelah; or, The Death of the Elephant at Exeter 'Change.

The menagerie at Exeter Exchange declined in popularity after Chunee's death. The animals were moved to King's Mews in 1828, and the building was demolished in 1829.

See also

• List of individual elephants
• Mary (elephant)
• Topsy (elephant)
• Tyke (elephant)

Further reading

• Donald, Diana (2007). A divided nature : the representation of animals in Britain, c.1750-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 171–173. ISBN 978-0300126792.