Ellis Stanley Joseph (also known as Ellis Joseph or Ellis S. Joseph) was a collector and trader in wildlife in the early part of the 20th century. An animal trainer of remarkable ability, he also trained some of his captive wildlife to perform in public.
Biography Much of what is known of Ellis Joseph's childhood and early adult years comes from three lengthy interviews that he gave to newspapers—the Barrier Miner in April 1910, the Sunday Times (Perth) in July 1912, and the Sun (Sydney) in September 1912.
In the interview for The Barrier Miner in April 1910, Ellis Joseph said that he was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India to Welsh parents of Jewish religion. Joseph is a Jewish surname, although not exclusively so and, amongst others, it is a Welsh name. He was recognised as being Jewish in the U.S.A. Despite Joseph's own statement on his Welsh ethnicity, it is very likely that he actually was of Indian-Jewish origin, but hid that Indian origin due to the then prevailing racial policies in Australia. Evidence supporting that hypothesis is that his surname 'Joseph' was common in some Indian communities (particularly the Baghdadi Sephardic Jewish community, but also the Syriac Christians); he was born at Bombay in India (a city with a significant local Jewish population and history); he was described as having "dark-tanned skin", and his physical appearance in newspaper photographs. By the time that Ellis Joseph was born, many Baghdadi Jews were engaged in colonial commerce, were western-educated, and used English first names or English variants of Jewish first names. 'Ellis' may have been an anglicized version of Elias / Elijah, derived from the Hebrew name Eliyahu; Elis is its Welsh form.
Ellis Joseph said that the family moved to San Francisco in the United States when he was nine months old. In 1912, he said that he had lived near Van Ness Avenue and attended the Geary-street Public School. An obituary—published in the U.S. after his death in 1938—stated that he was educated at an English school in Shanghai. However, Ellis Joseph himself stated that he had an American upbringing and schooling, and that seems far more consistent with his adult personality and that, in later life, he chose to live in the United States. Joseph gave this account of how he left home in the 1912 newspaper interview.
This 1912 account is similar to an earlier one given in 1910.
In adulthood, Ellis Joseph was a physically large man—six feet six inches (1.98 m) tall and 21 stone (294 lb or 134 kg) in weight—who was renowned for his seemingly boundless energy. For most of his adult life, he made his living by the import, export and sale of living creatures, capturing many of them himself on expeditions.
There is no doubt of his genuine enthusiasm for wildlife of all kinds. In an interview he stated, reportedly with a sigh, "If I were a wealthy man, I'd have people collecting animals, for my zoo, instead of me collecting for other people's zoos." He had a real gift for relating to and training animals but he was unsentimental about selling even pet animals, and he made large sums of money by trading in wildlife. By the standards of today, his methods of capturing and handling of living creatures would be seen as causing unacceptable suffering, too high an environmental impact, and an excessive death rate.
From some time prior to 1901 up to 1923, he lived in Australia, when not travelling which he frequently did. His travel during these years took him to North America, South America, India, West Africa, and South Africa. From November 1918 to 1926, Joseph owned a 17-acre estate called 'Highfield Hall', which was located in what was then part of Granville but is now within the suburb of Guildford in Sydney. As well as being Joseph's home, 'Highfield Hall' became both a private zoo and a temporary home for animals in transit to or from other countries.
No mention has been found of Joseph ever marrying. He returned to the United States in 1923. He suffered bad health in his final years and died on 16 September 1938, of a heart attack aged 66 years old, at his home at 179 Mosholu Parkway, the Bronx.
Wildlife trading
Early years At the age of 13, Joseph discovered that there was money to be made in trading birds. While on a holiday trip with his father to Panama, he bought some green parrots at Central American ports and sold these at a profit when he returned to San Francisco. He left home at 15 and made his living trapping and selling birds on the US West Coast, also making a trip to Corinto, in Nicaragua to obtain birds. After a brief interlude during which he was returned to his home and to school, he once again left home at 17 years of age and traded—by his own account—birds from Mexico to Seattle and Tacoma.
It seems that it was trading in birds from the Americas that brought him to Australia but, during an interview in 1910, he said that he also had held other jobs during those early years, including as a fireman in Melbourne (1901) and a railway yard foreman in Auckland, New Zealand. Once familiar with his new environment, he began exporting Australian birds to Europe.
By 1904, Ellis Joseph appears to have based himself in the Western Australian Goldfields Region. In December 1904, he was in Boulder near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia selling caged birds, when one cage containing two 'Californian parakeets' was stolen from him. In September 1906, 'Ellis Josephs' was operating 'a newly-opened bird shop' in Maritana Street Kalgoorlie, was charged with 'cruelly treating a large number of birds by over-crowding them into cages', and fined £1 with 2s costs. In his defence, he stated that the birds had been shipped from Durban in the same cages, and had been inspected upon arrival in port by the 'Chief Stock Inspector and the manager of the Zoological Gardens'. Soon afterwards Ellis Joseph decided to leave Western Australia. In an advertisement for his Kalgoorlie bird shop on 14 September 1906, he announced that "I am leaving for the Eastern States" (of Australia). Hundreds of birds and other items were sold at auction in Perth on 25 September 1906 in preparation for his move.
It is likely that, while in Western Australia, Ellis Joseph had made the acquaintance of Ernest Albert Le Souef, first director of the Perth Zoo from 1898 to 1935. He then began making larger scale expeditions and trading in larger animals.
Early expeditions to capture wildlife and trained animal exhibits Ellis Joseph's first venture into the 'big game' animal market was in India, as he stated in a lengthy interview as reported by the Barrier Miner newspaper in April 1910,
"I embarked on the British India liner Mombassa at London for East India, and landed at Bombay. From there I travelled on to Poona, and thence onward to Surat. On arrival at Surat I bought two tigers, and caught two leopards, three spotted deer, and a large number of birds, including vultures. These I took to Europe, and eventually disposed of the lot at Marseilles."
By 1908, his attention turned to Africa, and he stated in the Barrier Miner interview that he had worked there alongside a big game hunter of the time.
"My next journey was to Africa. I landed at Durban, and went to Bulawayo in company with a man named Van Ruyen, who at the present time is the greatest hunter in Africa, next to Sleus, the man who accompanied ex-president Roosevelt on his hunting tour. At Bulawayo we captured four lions, a number of elands, antelopes, water and spring bocks, sable antetopes, crown cranes, secretary birds, and a large number of other species. These were also taken to Europe, and I disposed of the lot to Carl Hagenback [sic], the great Hamburg animal trainer and dealer."
Joseph's companion on this expedition—the hunter reported as 'Van Ruyen'—almost certainly, was Cornelius van Rooyen (1860-1915), big game hunter and first breeder of the Rhodesian Ridgeback (previously known as 'Van Rooyen's lion dog'). The hunter reported as 'Sleus' is almost certainly the famous big game hunter, Frederick Selous (1851-1917), who was a friend of Cornelius van Rooyen, and who accompanied Theodore Roosevelt on the Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition in 1909.
In April 1908, about 80-miles away from Bulawayo, Joseph was injured on the forearm by a lioness that he had captured during this expedition.
It seems that, between his 1908 and 1911-1912 expeditions outside Australia, Joseph made a living exhibiting trained chimpanzees—ones he captured in Ashanti (now Ghana)—while travelling in Australia and, very likely, capturing or buying Australian animals and birds for export as he went along. In May 1909, Ellis Joseph was in Brisbane exhibiting two chimpanzees that had been trained to perform, but when he gave his long interview to the Barrier Miner in April 1910, was at Broken Hill with just one called 'Casey'. The second chimpanzee 'Baldy' had died in Queensland, in May 1909, of pneumonia, and its body had been sold by Joseph to a Brisbane museum for use as an exhibit. A third chimp, 'Joseph' (or 'Joe'), had died in Melbourne, of marasmus—suggesting loss of appetite and a miserable end—before 'Baldy' had died, and his body had been turned into an exhibit at the museum in Melbourne. In June 1909, 'Casey' was performing in Mackay and Charters Towers, before heading to Townsville and Cairns, keeping to the warmer parts of Queensland, during the winter of that year, probably with Casey's health in mind.
In May 1910, 'Casey' was performing in Broken Hill, where it was reported that his "utterly human behaviour has astounded the city", and later that month in Adelaide. In August of the same year, Casey performed in Kalgoorlie, and in November in Hobart. 'Casey' had been trained in various human-like behaviours and, as well as performing acrobatic displays, would shake hands with onlookers, drink milk from a glass, use a pencil to scrawl an autograph on paper, wind a watch, smoke a cigarette or pipe, play music including on the mouth organ, sweep with a broom, and "nurse any babies handed to him with wonderful care".
The range of trained behaviours demonstrated Joseph's considerable skill and achievement as an animal trainer, and hints at a level of attachment between 'Casey' and his owner. However, Joseph was not above putting a monetary value upon 'Casey'; he was first and foremost an animal trader. In a newspaper interview, in May 1910, he explained that, before he could obtain two hippos for Melbourne Zoo, he would need to sell 'Casey'. He apparently did sell 'Casey' to Thomas Fox. ('Casey' escaped in December 1914 and was shot in the foot by police in Marrickville, Sydney, after allegedly frightening a woman to death. Fox lost an eye in the same incident and, after being fined £2 and paying £300 in compensation to the dead woman's estate, he took 'Casey' to the U.S.A. Casey died at Tampa, Florida in January 1917.)
During the long interview of April 1910, Ellis Joseph stated that he had supplied animals to the Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney Zoos, zoos in Europe and America, and the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa. He also stated that he had made an expedition to Argentina to capture wildlife including pumas, as well as several expeditions to Africa.
By late 1911, he was making another expedition to West Africa to collect specimens, some of which he sold to the Perth Zoo upon his return in 1912, and was shipping significant numbers of birds and animals.
Once the connection with zoos had been made, Joseph had customers ready to take creatures he captured and his reputation as a major dealer in wildlife grew. He also sold animals to private wildlife collectors, among others Walter Rothschild, who himself had zoological training and was renowned for his carriage drawn by four zebra.