AHG Seminar - The Elephant in the Archive

Much has been written about the lives of ‘celebrity’ elephants who lived in zoos or performed in circuses. These animals were usually given names and their fame often followed them beyond death. Several ended up in museum collections, where they became mascots.

The Powell-Cotton Museum’s bull African Savannah Elephant (Loxodonta africana) was not a celebrity in his lifetime. He was an anonymous free-living animal until Percy Powell-Cotton set his rifle sights on him in 1905, in northern Uganda. In death, the taxidermied elephant became the star of the Museum, and helped boost Powell-Cotton’s own claims to fame as a hunter. The elephant has been a favourite with visitors for over a century. However, his individual history – as both a living animal and a specimen – has never been investigated.

This paper will explore what can be recovered of the animal’s life, death, and afterlife from the Powell-Cotton Museum’s archives. I will examine how the elephant has been represented, and whether he really was – as claimed - “The Tallest Elephant yet brought out of Africa”.