George Wombwell

Wombwell began to buy exotic animals from ships that came from Africa, Australia and South America, and collected a whole menagerie and put them on display.

His travelling menagerie included elephants, giraffes, a gorilla, a hyena, kangaroo, leopards, 6 lions, llamas, monkeys, ocelots, onagers, ostriches, panthers, a rhino ("the real unicorn of scripture"), 3 tigers, wildcats and zebras.

Sometimes Wombwell could profitably sell the body to a taxidermist or a medical school; other times he chose to exhibit the dead animal as a curiosity.

In 1825 Warwick, Wombwell, in collaboration with Sam Wedgbury and dog dealer Ben White's assistant Bill George,[1] arranged a Lion-baiting between his docile lion Nero and six bulldogs.

Wombwell was a regular exhibitor at the annual Knott Mill Fair in Manchester, a venue he sometimes shared with Pablo Fanque's circus.

The book George Wombwell (1777 - 1850): Volume One recalls the lion and dog fight in Warwick with well researched evidence, but questions whether it ever actually took place.