2.5 Tippoo's Tiger: On Show, Leadenhall St Museum

©Victoria and Albert Museum, London The East India Company's Museum In Leadenhall Street: Interior, With Tippoo's Tiger On Display Engraving, reproduced in Charles Knight's 'London,' London 1851, Vol V, Chapter CIV

		rawings and a Memorandum preceeded the arrival of Tippoo's Tiger in England, and it was placed in storage until 1808, when it was deposited in the Company's Library and Museum. The daybook entry for 29th July 1808 is very brief: 'Rec'd Tippoo's Musical Tiger.' It was placed on public display at Leadenhall Street, where it was seen - and heard - by the poet John Keats. Keats visited the Offices in 1819 to enquire about passage to India, having been advised that a sea voyage might improve his health. His satire 'Cap and Bells,' mocking the Prince Regent and his female companions, describes an Emperor (alias the Prince Regent) whose page '�������feared less A dose of senna-tea or nightmare Gorgon Than the Emperor when he play'd on his Man-Tiger-Organ'. Popular interest in the tiger is evident from the inclusion in The Penny Magazine of 1835, of an engraving and a detailed description of the mechanism. This may also have been known to the French poet, August Barbier, whose poem,'Le Joujou du Sultan' published in 1837, clearly describes the workings of the tiger. In 1858, with the transfer of the Company's property to the Crown, the Museum was moved from Leadenhall Street to temporary storage in Fife House, Whitehall, and then to a separate Museum room in the New India Office in King Charles Street. The tiger's popularity continued, undiminished - except when the mechanism broke down. A letter to The Athenaeum in 1869, provides an amusing description of the scene at Leadenhall Street, some years earlier: '�.we almost forgot our old friend, the tiger. Who has not seen and, what is more, heard him at the old India House? And who, having suffered under his unearthly sounds, can ever dismiss him from his memory?�.These shrieks and growls were the constant plague of the student, busy at work in the Library of the old India House, when the Leadenhall Street public, unremittingly, it appears, were bent on keeping up the performance of this barbarous machine���.Luckily he is now removed from the Library; but what is also lucky, a kind fate has deprived him of his handle, and stopped up, we are happy to think, some of his internal organs; or , as an ignorant visitor would say, he is out of repair; and we do sincerely hope that he will remain so, to be seen and to be admired if necessary, but to be heard no more.'