Museum
Manchester Museum
University museum of natural history and world cultures, crowned by a Victorian elephant skeleton.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to Manchester Museum stands you beneath the skeleton of Maharajah, an Asian elephant bought for Belle Vue zoo at an Edinburgh auction in the spring of eighteen seventy-two. It follows his showman keeper, Lorenzo Lawrence, billed as the Lion Tamer, and a railway journey south that went wrong at Waverley Station. Along the way it turns to a Victorian animal painter and a story that one later writer doubted. Best heard in the Welcome Area, looking up at the skull.
This audio guide was created using AI.