The British Seaborne Empire

In the eighteenth century, it would not have been impossible for a visitor to London to encounter an elephant or a kangaroo making its way down the Strand, heading towards the menagerie of Mr Pidcock at the Exeter Change. Pidcock's was just one of a number of commercial menagerists who plied their trade in London in this period – attracting visitors and potential customers - the predecessors to the more formal zoological societies of the Victorian era.