Lakshmi arrived at London Zoo in 1953, so she would have been in the old enclosure before the Casson Pavilion was built. She was sent to Rotterdam in 1980; I am not sure if she came from there in the first place.
‘Rusty’ lived until 1969, so she too would have been one of the original elephants in the Casson Pavilion.
Yes, I too have heard that it was ‘Lakshmi’ who pushed ‘Diksie’ into the ditch, but I don’t know for sure that she was responsible. The ZSL Annual Report for 1967 states that ‘Diksie’ was “nudged by another elephant and overbalanced into the moat” without identifying the elephant concerned.
I looked up both Rusty and Lakshmi on the Elephant Databases.
'Lakshmi' did come from Rotterdam originally and was also sent back there again when she left London.
Yes, 'Rusty' must have been in the Casson, I've thought hard(!) about this and I do think I can remember her in there- she was a smaller elephant than 'Lakshmi' with a lot of pigment 'speckling' on her head. I found a couple of short Pathe videos that feature her too( being washed by a keeper but with no identifiable background)
So the original Elephants that moved into the Casson when it opened would have been Dicksie/Rusty/Lakshmi and also Toto?
I have Michael Lyster postcard that shows four elephants in the outdoor area of the Casson- these presumably being(l.to r) 'Rusty' 'Dicksie' 'Lakshmi'(in shadow) and 'Toto' (carrying a car tyre). No date/postmark but this must have been between 1962-9.
I also hadn't realised that 'Rusty' outlived 'Dicksie', but she did, by two years.
I'm actually surprised more Zoo elephants haven't fallen into moats, I have seen endless photos of them in many places stretching out precariously for food, often balancing on three legs to gain a few more inches of 'reach'.
This is very interesting; I knew she arrived at London Zoo in 1953 and knew she was sent to Rotterdam in 1980, but hadn’t realised that she was returning to where she’d come from 27 years earlier.
I'm actually surprised more Zoo elephants haven't fallen into moats, I have seen endless photos of them in many places stretching out precariously for food, often balancing on three legs to gain a few more inches of 'reach'.
This is very interesting; I knew she arrived at London Zoo in 1953 and knew she was sent to Rotterdam in 1980, but hadn’t realised that she was returning to where she’d come from 27 years earlier.
We've now established from E.P. Gee's book' The Wildlife of India' that Lakshmi was bought by him from a logging company who captured her mother and a family of four calves from the wild. Lakshmi being the youngest of the four. She was sent by air to London so my original repeated suggestion that she came from Rotterdam is obviously quite wrong.
The bearded pigs? Yes, once, shortly after they arrived. I believe London acquired 1.3 around 2002, initially these were kept in one of the lower cotton terraces enclosures (before hunting dogs arrived), in what is now the right-hand side of the original hunting dog exhibit. They arrived at the same time as the red river hogs, which were kept next door (until recently when the hunting dog enclosure was extended there). The remainder of the Arabian oryx were kept in the enclosures to their left on the cottons. They produced at least one litter of piglets on the cotton terraces, before being moved to the Casson as one large group not long after Jos the black rhino left the zoo around 2003. Other members on here have said the males were castrated after this move, so no further breeding is likely if this is the case.
Thanks Tim. In those days you could still feed them across the moat. The Elephants I remember from that era were Dicksie (African) and Rusty (Asian) but there was probably at least one more.
I was going to go back several steps on the thread, and suggest that the best use for the Lubetkin Penguin Pool would be to removed from RP and installed at Tate Modern, but that's rather taken the wind out of my sails.
I have a firm memory of Dicksie's demise in 1967, when I was 4. I wonder how many people realised at that stage just what a blunder ZSL had made with the design of its new elephant house.
I was going to go back several steps on the thread, and suggest that the best use for the Lubetkin Penguin Pool would be to removed from RP and installed at Tate Modern, but that's rather taken the wind out of my sails.
I have a firm memory of Dicksie's demise in 1967, when I was 4. I wonder how many people realised at that stage just what a blunder ZSL had made with the design of its new elephant house.
@Ian and other London Zoo aficionados: can you give a brief history of the elephant house in the picture? I know only that it is protected and was built in the 1960s. Do the towers on the building have any functional purpose (e.g. air circulation) or are they meant as a literal architectural representation (mountain peaks like Kilimanjaro?) or did the architect just think they looked cool? Is the architect famous, or what is the reason that this building is protected (I ask this sincerely as I do not know).
What animals were kept here historically beyond Asian and African elephants and black rhinos? I saw it in 1997 and 2001 when there were Asian eles and black rhinos in it.
Were there ever any discussions of building a new elephant facility before the decision to just end the ele program at London following the tragic keeper death?
Any history/information would be appreciated as I have always found this exhibit and the history of elephants at London interesting. Your zoo definitely does have a "soul" that few other zoos do given its historical significance in zoology generally and zoo design, keeping, etc. I really enjoyed my visits there.
The Casson Pavilion opened in 1965; it originally housed African and Asiatic elephants, white rhinos and black rhinos.
It is worth mentioning the male white rhinoceros ‘Ben’, who arrived at the zoo in 1955 and was previously housed in the old Deer & Cattle Sheds, was a Northern white rhinoceros; he was sent to Dvur Kralove in 1986.
For a time in the mid nineteen seventies, this building housed three species of rhinoceros as the female Indian rhino ‘Mohini’, who had previously been at Whipsnade for many years, spent some time in London Zoo before being sent to Amsterdam (Artis) Zoo.
For a while in 1966 / 1967, the indoor elephant bathing pool held a young walrus ‘Alice’; this pool was subsequently used for pigmy hippos.
Do the towers on the building have any functional purpose (e.g. air circulation) or are they meant as a literal architectural representation (mountain peaks like Kilimanjaro?) or did the architect just think they looked cool? Is the architect famous, or what is the reason that this building is protected (I ask this sincerely as I do not know).
There is a thinly disguised (but unremitting) assault on this appalling building in Gerald Durrell's book "The Stationary Ark" in which he describes to a foreign director how the structure, described by Durrell very accurately as being rather like a deformed cathedral, is supposed to represent a group of elephants at a water hole. His horrified companion is supposed to have enquired whether it was thought that the elephants would fly up into the rafters at night to sleep.
For the record, the green snorkels are skylights into the animals' dens....
