While reading the January issue of BBC History Magazine, I ran across this great item. As I cannot find it on the web, I will type it in from the magazine:
"A monkey hugs its way into a sailor's possession"
On a quiet Wednesday in 1818, the genteel surroundings of the lord mayor's Mansion House were suddenly rocked by appearance of a sailor, a showman and a monkey.
The sailor had recently visited an exhibition of wild beasts at Saint Bartholomew's Fair, "a school of vice which has initiated many youth into the habits of villainy". It was a place the Newgate Calendar would call the "assemblage of idle people... waiting to plunder the honest part of the people".
For the sailor, just such a misfortune had occurred, as the monkey in question was taken from him and placed into the showman's menagerie, who now claimed ownership of the poor primate. All three parties in question had arrived to settle the dispute. The lord mayor decided that the only way to resolve the case was to let the monkey choose for himself, and, as a curious crowd grew outside, the monkey made it clear he was much more attached to the sailor than the showman, by clinging to his neck with great affection.
From the Bury and Norwich Post / 16 September 1818
News story sourced from britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and rediscovered by Fern Riddell. Fern regularly appears on Radio 3's Night Waves.
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