My mother visited Whipsnade as a teenager with her family (but she was never a zoo person). This must have been shortly after it opened. When I was child she gave me the guidebook from that visit, which was fascinating, but it was old and the paper was fragile, so it soon fell apart in my hands. I dare say there will be copies in the ZSL library. I remember a photo of two youngish chimps on the island.
The ZSL Annual Report for 1936 lists the Chimpanzee Island as one of the new works being undertaken that year and there is no photograph of the Chimpanzee Island in the 1936 Whipsnade guidebook.
I don't have a copy of the 1937 or 1938 Whipsnade guide but there is a photograph of the Chimpanzee Island in both the 1939 and 1940 guide.
