Wombwell's menagerie comes prominently into notice about this time. Its proprietor is said to have begun life as a cobbler in Monmouth Street, Seven Dials, then a famous mart of the second-hand clothes trade, and now called Dudley Street. The steps by which he subsequently advanced to the position of an importer of wild animals and proprietor of one of the largest and finest collections that ever travelled are unknown; but that he preceded Jamrach and Rice in the former vocation is proved by the existence of a small yellow card, bearing the device of a tiger, and the inscription-- WOMBWELL, WILD BEAST MERCHANT, _Commercial Road_, LONDON. _All sorts of Foreign Animals, Birds, &c., bought, sold, or exchanged, at the Repository, or the Travelling Menagerie._ Wombwell never missed Bartholomew Fair, as long as it continued to be held, but a story is told of him which shows that he was once very near doing so. His menagerie was at Newcastle-on-Tyne within a fortnight of the time when it should be in Smithfield, and it did not seem possible to reach London in time; but, being in the metropolis on some business connected with his Commercial Road establishment, he found that Atkins was advertising that his menagerie would be "the only wild beast show in the fair." The rivalry which appears to have existed at that time between the two great menagerists prompted Wombwell to post down to Newcastle, and immediately commence a forced march to London. By making extraordinary exertions, he succeeded in reaching the metropolis on the morning of the first day of the fair. But his elephant had exerted itself so much on the journey that it died within a few hours after its arrival on the ground. Atkins heard by some means of his rival's loss, and immediately placarded the neighbourhood with the announcement that his menagerie contained "the only living elephant in the fair." Wombwell resolved that his rival should not make capital of his loss in this manner, and had a long strip of canvas painted with the words--"The only dead elephant in the fair." This bold bid for public patronage proved a complete success. A dead elephant was a greater rarity than a live one, and his show was crowded every day of the fair, while Atkins's was comparatively deserted. The keen rivalry which this story illustrates did not endure for ever, for, during the period of my earliest recollections, from forty to fifty years ago, the two great menageries never visited Croydon Fair together, their proprietors agreeing to take that popular resort in their tours in alternate years.