Edwardian Britain's Forest Pygmies

On June 10th, 1905, The Era reported a new act at the London Hippodrome:

The curtain rose upon a scene which represented a tropical forest, in the midst of which is an opening, containing four wigwams of small dimensions. Outside were the group of little people who will for some time be objects of curiosity to amusement-seeking Londoners ... the scene represented a fairly exact picture of the pigmies' homes in the Ituri Forest of Central Africa.

The six pygmies drew 'big business' to the Hippodrome for fourteen weeks and then toured provincial cities until Christmas. About a million people saw them before they left for the rain forests of the Congo in November 1907.

The 'dwarf savages', 'strange apelike people' who had been 'captured in Central Africa' were described in the British press in May-June 1905 as living in trees. The elder woman was 'the nearest thing to a human monkey Europe has ever seen' according to The Sphere. Yet The Era recommended on August 5th, 'everyone in London should see these little people, who are a revelation in strange humanity'. The personalities of the six pygmies became visible through fantasies and publicity to the extent that they were invited to aristocratic homes and, with their spears and bows and arrows, to mix with the nation's rulers at the House of Commons and Buckingham Palace.

When they were not touring the four men and two women lived at the home of Colonel James Jonathan Harrison in Brandesburton, South Yorkshire. The villagers found them to be unusual but pleasant neighbours, and had respect for them as people. Harrison, the local squire, educated at Harrow and Oxford, was an officer in an elitist yeomanry cavalry regiment but had seen no war service. His travels and big game hunting trips had taken him to Japan, India, Africa and America.

Brandesburton Hall had hundreds of trophies, but not an okapi or a white rhino despite his hunting trip to the Congo. His friends, viewing photographs of that 1904 Congo trip, asked why he had not returned with live pygmies. Harrison went to the Ituri Forest of the eastern Congo in 1905 to bring back human trophies.

The first pygmy contact Harrison made was with Mongonga, who led the colonel's party into the forests and then, with other pygmies, accompanied him north through Uganda and the Sudan into Egypt. Harrison's diary suggests that he was seeking dancers, so a theatrical troupe must have been planned before he left for Africa. Apart from Mongonga, recruiting was far from easy. The diary also reveals the colonel's need to gel; out of the forests before the rains started.

Telegrams were sent from Khartoum and the British press reported that six pygmies were to visit Britain. The British knew that short adult Africans lived in the forests that explorer H.M. Stanley had penetrated in the 1880s, from his In Darkest Africa of 1890. Veteran MP and President of the Church Missionary Society, Sir John Kennaway contacted Lord Lansdowne, the Foreign Secretary, about Harrison. Lansdowne cabled the de facto ruler of Egypt, Lord Cromer, on April 15th, asking if the six were volunteers. Cromer sent for Harrison and discovered his plan to exhibit the six in England. Dr Goodman of the Egyptian Sanitary Department examined them and reported they were ill with coughs, had enlarged spleens and livers, and were anaemic. The older woman had an arrow wound, was emaciated, had a curved spine and a feeble pulse. Only two were judged fit enough to travel to England. All were sent to a Cairo hospital, which the Pall Mall Gazette reported on April 28th. Harrison had rushed to London via Italy to have an interview with Lansdowne, whose view was that bringing the pygmies to be put on exhibition 'would be very undesirable'. Then he saw the Pall Mall Gazette and again contacted Lord Cromer. Harrison had believed that Lansdowne and Cromer could prohibit the pygmies leaving for England. He was wrong. The Africans were not British subjects.

The Congo was ruled by King Leopold of the Belgians as his own property, and Harrison later wrote that he had Leopold's permission. Leopold's regime in the Congo had been worrying some Britons since the 1890s, and the Foreign Office had opened a 'Congo Atrocities' file. Roger Casement's official report, which confirmed that violence and threats were used to coerce Congo people into gathering wild rubber, was discussed in Parliament on June 9th, 1904. The next day The Times published Harrison's letter which noted he had read Casement's report when in Africa, and went on to praise Leopold's regime. On October 1st The Times again published a letter from Harrison, claiming that Britons doubted 'the truth in all these countless atrocities' in the Congo.

Others did believe the stories, and E.D. Morel began the Congo Reform Association with support from influential Britons. Morel and Casement were challenged by Harrison and Morel wrote to the Morning Post in July 1905 stating that Harrison was 'an aggressive controversialist' who had said that the British government's confidence in Casement 'was a most unfortunate error'. Around this time Casement, in a letter to Morel, referred to Harrison as an "addlepated dwarf impresario'.

The widespread publicity in April and May against the background of Congo reform agitation was useful to Harrison. It continued into June as the Orestes sailed up the Channel into London. Some of what was written was nonsense. That their language 'is confined to words of two syllables' contradicted reports of their names, all having at least three syllables. This language 'of strange clicking sounds' spoken by 'absolute specimens of primitive creation' whose dancing was 'intended to imitate the play of monkeys' reflects the ignorance of the British. As they met the six Africans they saw people, not animals.

When they arrived in London it was reported that the pygmy leader (the 'chief’, who was supposed to be forty years old) 'was not astonished by the vastness of London. He walked with quiet dignity along the pier and up the steps, puffing at a long cigar and swinging his fly flapper as a European dandy would his cane'.

They visited the Foreign Office on June 8th, and the Variety Theatre suggested on June 23rd that they were expected to meet Edward VII. Five went by car to have lunch at the George Hotel in Crawley in Sussex. The Southern Weekly News reported on June 24th, that one of the women was having surgery, so Dr Goodman's fears had been realised. 'The men were all dressed alike in knickerbocker sailor suits, with blue stockings to match'. The small town had seen the Hippodrome's Russian giant earlier that year. Its expectations that the 'little cannibals' would 'devour raw flesh' were false - 'Knives and forks were used as if to the custom born'.

They had their spears and bows and arrows with them, as they did at Westminster on June 29th, where five, with various MPs, posed for Benjamin Stone who described them as 'children of primitive nature'. Exactly why primitives 'armed to the teeth with their weapons of war' were permitted to be so close to members of parliament, and with over a hundred other guests at a garden party graced by Queen Alexandra at Buckingham Palace on July 6th, was not stated.

Acting as interpreter at Westminster was William Hoffman, who had been Stanley's servant in the trans-Africa explorations described in In Darkest Africa, and then had worked in the Congo in the 1890s. Hoffman's With Stanley in Africa was published in 1938: the final chapter details his work with Harrison's pygmies and, with his manuscript account of his time touring Britain with the six Africans, reveals other aspects of their humanity.

During the Hippodrome employment they became friendly with some Cockney paper boys. They threw them coins:

Then nothing delighted them more than to strut round the room, with little more than a strip of cloth for covering, shouting, 'Paper! Paper!' in the purest Cockney.

Hoffman conversed with them in Swahili, but his wife Elizabeth 'Jani' Hoffman knew no African language: nor did the many private visitors who called on the six at their lodgings in North Crescent, off Tottenham Court Road. Stanley's widow was one such visitor. From these contacts the so-called primitives must have learned English.

Harrison knew Lord Londesborough, one of whose five homes was Londesborough Park at Market Weighton, Yorkshire. The pygmies went there in late July, after a two-day appearance at Harrison's home when thousands went to see them on both days. The garden party at Londesborough Park 'despite the somewhat heavy charges', attracted hundreds: 'They seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves, mixing with the crowd when not seated on the platform' noted the Scarborough Post. They made a second appearance at Londesborough Park in late August. The Era reported, 'one Pigmy [sic] killed two running rabbits with his bow and arrow'. One veteran, interviewed in 1977, recalled that the rabbits were let out of a sack and that the Africans' hunting skills were remarkable.

The Hippodrome work ended in late August. On August 25th, the six went to record for the Gramophone Company, making five single-sided 78 rpm discs. These were the first commercial recordings of Africans made in Britain. They were listed in the January-February 1906 catalogue, promoted as incomprehensible language recordings by short black people who, of course, could not be seen. One side is in Swahili, the lingua franca of eastern Africa, used during their medical examination in Cairo and by Hoffman. That they could speak some Swahili suggests that they were not from an isolated community, and could adjust to meet the requirements of a stage show as 'savage' Africans.

'The Pygmies now dance and sing - there is no other word for it - as if their heart were in the work' reported Entr'Acte on July 1st. The Encore of June 15th, commented that 'They do not seem to recognise that they are being made a show of, but Hoffman recalled that sometimes 'they refused to perform' when the curtain rose, so T had to lengthen my lecture to fill up the allotted time'. They did not perform to order off stage, either. Entr'Acte of June 17th reported:

The South African Pigmies [sic] held a reception to anthropologists the other day ... The guests were received quite graciously, until the curiosity of the scientists became rather irksome. The two lady pigmies modestly and flatly refused to be measured, and the attempt had to be abandoned.

Even Mongonga, who was to amuse himself by staring at the people in Crawley High Street as they stared at him, refused at first to have his mouth examined. Hoffman recalled that they objected to 'multitudes of doctors and dentists always asking to examine their teeth and limbs ... to see how they differed from white men'.

A rest at Brandesburton Hall in August-September 1905 was followed by a gruelling tour of provincial Britain, starting in nearby Beverley on October 14th, with Hoffman and his wife. They went to Lincoln, and then Manchester on the Empire Theatre circuit. The provincial reporters echoed the London press with views that included imperialist attitudes, ill-digested Darwinism, confusion with black American and minstrel shows, and, again, glimpses of strangers who were humans, not exhibits.

'These mysterious visitors seemed scarcely human at all. One of the two women actually giggled like a giddy young English girl' and some of them said goodbye at the end of the performance, commented the Manchester Evening News. Liverpool's Empire Theatre advertised them as 'The talk of all Europe! The most curious people ever seen. They are half-way between anthropoid apes and man!' Smith's Liverpool Weekly commented that the 'music-hall stage is scarcely the place whence to promulgate the principles of Darwinism'. As in Manchester, spectators in the cheaper seats were rowdy.

The pygmies moved on to Edinburgh to the Empire Palace on November 6th. 'Something of a novelty' the Africans again did not start their performance 'until the spirit moved them'. They went on to Glasgow, where the advertisements have them as the 'missing link'. Nevertheless, their "very good English' was noted by the Glasgow Evening Times. They were now appearing twice a night, with a third performance in the afternoon twice a week, with one hour at Glasgow zoo on three afternoons. The reports state 'five Africans', for one male was ill.

In late November, in Birmingham, the Birmingham Daily Mail commented: 'Officially stated to be the missing link between the ape and man, the pygmies, by their appearance, certainly do not suggest the connection' and went on to note that in the war dance 'one seems to trace the origins of the cake-walk" - the comparison with an American dance from the 1890s reflects on the powerful impact then being made by American popular music in Britain. Presentations of alleged savages and strangers from distant lands had a long history in Britain, with an eighteenth-century fad for black servants, burnt-cork minstrel shows from the 1840s, and 'freaks' in sideshows in touring circus and fairground shows. A large group of 'Dahomey Warriors' toured Britain throughout the 1900s, and smaller groups of African people including children were on show at large exhibitions. 'African villages' were commercial propositions, with over 120 Senegalese spending months in London in 1908, while thirty Somalis were in Bradford in 1904. Mandingo children from Sierra Leone were on public display at a toy fair in London in 1908; bandsmen of the West India Regiment played at the Crystal Palace exhibition centre in south London in 1905; a Jamaican choir toured Britain three times between 1906 and 1908, reaching Wrexham, Whitby, Ennis and Belfast. 'Savage South Africa' and 'Savage Australia' shows also toured between 1899 and 1901 and there were 'Wild West', Indian and Chinese groups too.

In Bradford, where just four pygmies appeared after a week in west London, the Bradford Daily Argus reported that their performance 'should appeal to ethnological students'. The same refusal-to-perform-to-order attitude continued. The Bradford Telegraph reported 'their agent states, these diminutive little fellows are not to be hurried' and they showed 'what a great work there is for those who have in hand the civilisation of the races of Central Africa'.

Touring on the Empire Theatre circuit was the best music hall work available in 1905 Britain, and performers were reviewed and promoted in the national entertainment press. From December 1905 a scattering of evidence found in postcards and handbills, or revealed by a random search of provincial newspapers, shows that the pygmies continued to appear in public.

Harrison had a glass hot-house erected at Brandesburton Hall to reproduce the temperatures of the equatorial rain forests. The children of the village, a farming and quarrying community, made friends with the pygmies, who walked about the village and spent hours at the blacksmith's forge, using the cast-off ends of horseshoe nails for arrow heads. They got used to coins and used the village shop and taught the children their word for going to the toilet. When gathering honey they ignored bee-stings. One veteran recalled in 1991 that they 'knew what they were doing' and were 'very clever'. Brandesburton people remember that a child was born, but died; and, incorrectly, that cold winters caused the deaths of one or two adults. Hoffman states that a child was still-born. But eventually all six did return to Africa.

Beyond the newspaper clippings, what legacy did they leave? Harrison had arranged for commercial postcards of the pygmies to be sold, and these survive in quantity. In 1906 a second set of poses was taken, and they are rarer. The gramophone discs are very rare, for they were fragile. A twenty-four page book with photographs was published in London in 1905. Brandesburton people had copies, and some had arrows and other items made by their six African guests. Tales of the pygmies have lasted into the 1990s, and one farmer who migrated to Kenya had the ambition to follow in the steps of Harrison and the six from the Congo to Cairo.

In the summer of 1906 the Royal Academy in London exhibited William Goscombe John's sculpted head of Bokani, the pygmy chief. This had been started in late 1905 and may have resulted from John's friendship with sculptor Herbert Ward, who had gone to Africa in 1884 and had joined with Stanley and Hoffman on the Congo expedition.

In July 1906 the Beverley Guardian, the local weekly, reported that the pygmies were coming back from Berlin and would be on show in Yorkshire resorts before returning to Brandesburton where they and Harrison's trophies - including two okapi skins - could be seen in August. Over the month, they appeared in Grimsby, Bridlington and Whitby where the Whitby Times indicated they would soon be leaving for Africa. This must have been part of Harrison's publicity, however, for they were on the south coast, at Eastbourne's New Pavilion, from October 2nd-5th. The handbill quotes Harrison as commenting 'the kindness extended to [my| little people by every class of person has been remarkable'. The food, medical treatment and accommodation costs for the Africans must have made a considerable dent into Harrison's wealth. Hoffman, a Londoner born in Saxony, would have been with them in Germany, but by September 1906 had severed his connection with them as 'they are not doing anything at present'.

In late February 1907 they were in Southend, Essex, at the King's Hall, Westcliff, making a 'farewell appearance before leaving for the forest'. John Osborne was their presenter. Another 'farewell visit' took place at the end of May when they appeared at the Colston Hall in Bristol. They were now scheduled to leave in July. Both the Echo and Evening News carried advertisements for them and the Bristol Guardian noted they had been in the city before.

The six Africans did not leave in July, however, for they were at work in London from early June, appearing at the Balkan States Exhibition at Earls Court. Despite the show's title, they were not the only exotic element there: 'Hindoo freaks', a flying machine and Japanese fishing cormorants were noted in The Era on July 8th, 1907, which added that the pygmies 'are going back to their native forest at the close of the Exhibition'.

Hundreds, if riot thousands, of people saw them in London every day throughout the summer of 1907. They were described in Punch on August 28th, with the women making fools of English men and the chief observing that 'these big white folk, though they have their uses in providing him with cigarettes, do seem to him to be rather lacking in intelligence'.

The Africans got out and about, though probably not to any great extent as the public would not purchase tickets to see people they could observe in the streets. On a shopping trip in October 1907, they had purchased a watch, found it to be cheap and unreliable, and so returned it with John Osborne. The shopkeeper was scared by the two Africans armed with bows and arrows. He took legal action against Osborne for 'using threats'. The defence pointed out that the Africans were only 2ft 6ins (85cm) tall (which seems untrue as a 1906 postcard states Mongonga - the shortest - was 3ft 10ins tall). The case was adjourned as there was no evidence that Osborne had used threats and the pygmies got a refund.

In November the pygmies made their final theatrical appearance in Britain at Hull's Albert Lecture Room from 2-10pm with a half hour break. The next day, November 17th, 1907, they set sail on a cargo boat for Mombasa where Harrison joined them. They went by railway via Nairobi and crossed Lake Victoria. On January 1st, 1908. Harrison and the four male pygmies were at Government House, Entebbe.

They crossed Uganda in two weeks, with the two women being carried, and got to the rain forests of the eastern Congo in late January. Harrison's diary records their arrival, 'Great excitement' when they reached Bokani's village on January 23rd. The 'miserable' village had eight huts -and just four were complete. Harrison shot an elephant for food. He and Osborne left, sent telegrams and broke the news in England that the six Africans had got back to their Ituri Forest home almost three years after they had first met the colonel.

Harrison looked for them again in 1909 but to no avail. But on January 20th, 1910, he found one of them wearing 'his old fustian breeches'. Harrison married an American, in London, in November 1910 at the age of fifty-two. He seems thereafter to have ceased his travels and he died in Brandesburton in 1923. Following his wife's death in 1932, the Hall became a mental hospital. The hundreds of stuffed animals were dispersed. The diaries, glass slides, photograph albums and other documents ended up in a museum in Scarborough, which had been the home of the Sitwell family.

Osbert Sitwell recalled Harrison and the six Africans of his childhood, in the poem 'Colonel Grindle' published in Wrack at Tidesend in 1952.

Grindle, who is Harrison, lived surrounded by 'tusks or rugose heads' and 'shaking with inappropriate jungle fevers' in England. 'His world was still exotic: The sound of strange, unworldly conversations echoed from the direction of the stables, that annexe of the Equator, where lived a whole tribe of pygmies' who accompanied the colonel to Scarborough in the summer. 'A posse of chattering manikins ... on their way to be shown at some Church Fete or Primrose League Bazaar' where these 'German gnomes dipped in coffee ... were thus exhibited for a good cause upon trim lawns'. Sitwell's poem ends 'Or sometimes they would dance - No decorous measure, but a laughing prophecy of the jazz wind that would soon sweep the world'.

Those who had seen them as an eight-minute act on the music hall stage must have reacted in the superficial way that we can see in newspaper reports. Those who made closer contact at the various receptions from 1906 experienced English-speaking Africans. That alleged savages could speak English, or be welcomed fully armed, was not expected. Their skills in hut making, using weapons, playing soccer against Brandesburton children when their adult muscles made them superior, and keeping to their own ways were all admired. Yet for the bulk of the million or so who saw the six Ituri Forest pygmies on their visit to Britain we can only guess at the impact they had. We can also only guess at the effect of the experience on the pygmies.

The interest in the pygmies in Britain tied in with a Europe-wide curiosity in Africa and its inhabitants - and the Mbuti pygmies still live in eastern Zaire, and Europeans still treat them as objects of curiosity. It is assumed that the Mbuti are isolated and out of contact with the world outside the forests. The six who returned in 1908 may well have spread knowledge of that world, and so prepared their people for their role as innocents. Thus, yet again, Africans are seen with prejudiced eyes.

Further Reading:

Colin Turnbull, The Forest People (Chatto, 1961)
Kevin Duffy, Children of the Forest: Life with the Mbuti Pygmies (Robert Hale, 1986)
Joan Mark, The King of the World in the Land of the Pygmies (University of Nebraska Press, 1995)
Brian Inglis, Roger Casement (Hodder & Stoughton, 1973)
Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume Ota Benga, The Pygmy in the Zoo (St Martin's Press, 1992)
William Hoffman [sic] With Stanley in Africa (Cassell, 1938).

• Jeffrey Green is a freelance researcher specialising in Afro-Caribbean experience in Britain and author of Edmund Thornton Jenkins (Greenwood Press, 1982).