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Abstract
The subject of this dissertation is the Zoological Gardens of the Zoological Society of London (f. 1826) in the nineteenth century. Located in Regent's Park, it was the express purpose of the Gardens (f. 1828) to function as a testing-ground for acclimatisation and to show the scientific importance of long series of various animal species.
The aim is to analyse what the Gardens meant as a recreational, educational and scientific institution in nineteenth-century London by considering them from four different perspectives: as a part of a newly-founded society, as a part of the leisure culture of mid-Victorian London, as a mediator of popular zoology and as a constituent of the Zoological Society's scientific ambitions.
After an introduction, which describes the development of European zoos, Chapter two recapitulates the early years of the Society and the Gardens. The original aims of the Society—science and acclimatisation located in a museum and zoological garden—as stated in various prospects, are examined.
Chapter three is based primarily on the popular response to the Gardens in the 1850s when, after a period of decline, the institution once again became a common London visiting-place. The most important questions of this chapter concern the public and how it reacted to the Gardens of this period.
Chapter four focuses on the official and non-official guidebooks to the Gardens and the implications of these as mediators of popular zoology. The progress and development of the Society's guidebooks during the nineteenth century is described and the differences between these guidebooks and the non-official ones are examined.
Chapter five is an in-depth study of the zoological science of the Gardens. The Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London's reports that base their findings on animals in the Gardens are then described together with minor detours into the history of taxonomy and morphology.