Chromolithograph circus poster advertisement for “Great Jumbo’s Skeleton”, ca. 1885–90. The caption continues in yellow: “The colossal and prodigious frame of the largest and noblest animal that ever lived. The only elephant skeleton ever publicly exhibited.”.
Featured on PDR in the essay Jumbo’s Ghost: Elephants and Machines in Motion
On September 15, 1885, twenty-five years after his capture in Sudan, Jumbo the elephant tragically died when struck by a freight train. Ross Bullen takes us on a spectral journey through other collisions between elephant and machine — in adventure novels, abandoned roadside hotels, and psychic science — revealing latent anxieties at the century’s turn.
Also appearing in the essay…
Great Jumbo’s Skeleton
Date
ca. 1885–90
Digital Rights
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