Staring out from his glass case in New York’s Museum of Natural History, exhibit No. 54084 sits on a tree stump beneath a sign that simply reads: “Gorilla.”
Hundreds of visitors file past him every day in the Hall of Primates, which houses animals ranging from lemurs and chimpanzees to orangutans. But few know the true story behind the primate who is merely noted for his “small ears,” “prominent brow ridge” and “comparatively large” nostrils.
This anonymous scientific specimen lived a remarkable — and tragic — life. Named John Daniel, he was raised in England a century ago by an aristocratic clan who treated the gorilla like a human boy. He played rugby with his pals, slept in his own bedroom, washed up after himself and tended the hearth. He was a friend to local children and a true companion to his family.
But in 1921, at the age of 4, he’d grown too large to comfortably keep at home — and a fateful misunderstanding led him to a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus special exhibit based at Madison Square Garden and, soon enough, his death.
“It’s a terribly sad tale,” said Margaret Groom, a historian from the tiny, rural English village called Uley, who wrote about John Daniel in her recently self-published book “Notes from the Uley Archives.”
“It is widely believed that he died of a broken heart.”
Now villagers and politicians from Gloucestershire, the county in which Uley sits, have launched a campaign to have John Daniel returned home, if only temporarily.
They are planning a photo exhibition to celebrate the primate’s life and want to include John Daniel himself. “We would like our gorilla back, at least for a while,” said Stroud District Council leader Steve Lydon. “It would be amazing if he could return to the place where he lived his happiest days.”
Of course, England was not John Daniel’s mother country.
In 1917, when he was just an infant, his parents were shot by German army officers near the Cameroon border in Gabon, and the baby gorilla was taken captive by the soldiers.
He was later interred by French forces, along with his captors, at a small station on Africa’s west coast, until the 1918 armistice, when he was taken to Le Havre in Normandy, France. From there, he was transferred to England, where he was offered to zoos in London and New York City. Both declined; the baby primate was considered “a risky investment” since gorillas were not known to thrive in captivity at that time.
Instead, he was snapped up by an upscale London department store, Derry & Toms, to exhibit in its windows and eventually sell.
Luckily for John Daniel, around Christmastime in 1918, he was purchased for 375 pounds (around $22,500 today) by Royal Air Force officer Maj. Rupert Penny. The gorilla quickly developed human habits — eating off proper dishware and playing with toys in the military man’s posh Regent’s Park home. A favorite pastime was to warm himself in front of the fireplace, and he became expert at tending the fire with tongs to keep it alight.
“The Penny boys — Rupert and his brothers — were known to dress up John Daniel in rugby clothes and play [the sport],” recalled Maj. Penny’s nephew, Christopher Penny, 84, of Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
It is widely believed that he died of a broken heart.
Christopher’s daughter Gillie Nicholls, 56, also revealed how John Daniel would answer the door when the mailman knocked. “People who [visited] the house were always quite shocked to see a little gorilla roaming around,” said Nicholls, who splits her time between the UK and Burkina Faso.
In 1919, however, Maj. Penny was concerned about the city’s effect on the gorilla’s health. He entrusted John Daniel to the care of his sister Alyce Cunningham, who owned a country home in Uley.
“She thought the world of John Daniel,” said Nicholls. “She was his surrogate mother.” And the gorilla loved his new companion and his new home.
“The people of Uley took him to their hearts and accepted him as part of the community,” said Groom. “He was popular with the schoolchildren who used to push him around in a wooden wheelbarrow.”
John Daniel was known to wander the village green after breakfast and sometimes steal neighbors’ roses for a snack. According to Groom, he developed a fascination with the local cobbler and would watch him for hours, “transfixed.” He also knew where the cider was kept in one neighbor’s house and would often draw himself a mug.
“It is said that, during the day, he drank three large shots of whiskey and sometimes a glass of sherry or port before going to bed,” Groom writes. “He had his own bedroom . . . [and] he learned to use the light switches and the lavatory. He made his own bed and did the washing up.”
He also occasionally accompanied Cunningham to her tony London residence.
“He enjoyed upper-class parties at her home and was well-known for his impeccable manners, including the correct use of a napkin” writes Groom. “He had tea at 5 p.m. and coffee after dinner.”
BY 1921, John Daniel had grown from a 32-pound toddler to a 183-pound juvenile, standing 3-feet-4-inches tall. As much as she loved him — and as independent as he was — Cunningham found it increasingly difficult to take proper care of him.
Cunningham sold John Daniel to an unknown American for 1,050 pounds (about $65,000 in today’s American dollars). The American promised the gorilla a home in a Florida park, complete with the sunshine and balmy temperatures that he loved.
But the family soon discovered they had been deceived and John Daniel was going to a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus animal show in New York City.
“Alyce was tricked. She would never have sold him if she knew what was going to happen,” Nicholls told The Post.
John Daniel’s passage across the Atlantic was much anticipated by the New York press, which reported on his March 1921 arrival.
“Wearing a natty sailor suit with gay ribbon trimmings, John Daniels [sic], said to be the only gorilla ever seen in this country arrived here yesterday,” reported the New York Times. The paper described how a brass band was on hand “to receive the simian.”
At Madison Square Garden, John Daniel had a two-room “apartment” — basically, a viewing cage — where thousands came to see him. But as the Times reported on April 3, 1921, “he appears to be a little homesick for England and the days when he had a home and familiar faces around him.
“Paying no attention to the many people who try to attract his attention by calls and peanut throwing, he quietly enters his sleeping room, carefully closing the barred door behind him. Drawing the bolt, he climbs into his crib, tucks the blankets around him and goes to sleep.”
Within a mere matter of days, the distressed gorilla developed pneumonia. It was so serious that circus co-founder John Ringling North sent a cable dispatch to the animal’s former caretaker, Cunningham. “John Daniel pining and grieving for you. Can you not come at once?”
She dropped everything to be reunited with her friend, setting sail for New York. Upon her arrival on April 25, 1921, she was told the devastating news — John Daniel had died eight days earlier. Cunningham wept at the news. “I knew he would die of a broken heart if they attempted to put him in a cage,” she said. “In London, he has the run of my house like a child, and did not know what it was like to be in real captivity.”
“John Ringling said that if he could have saved his life by turning him loose in the jungle, he would have done so,” wrote The Times, “but there was no jungle near.”
Shortly after his demise, John Daniel’s body was presented to the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.
He was stuffed and put on display on October 22, 1921, an expression of both sweetness and melancholy forever preserved on his face.
Since the publication of Groom’s book, villagers in Uley want to stage their own exhibition starring John Daniel. The possibility of erecting a statue of a gorilla in the center of town is also under review.
“It would be very lovely to think of John Daniel coming home,” Nicholls said. “To have him return — even temporarily — would be a dream come true. He is a legend in our family, and I can’t wait to meet him.”
The American Museum of Natural History is sending instructions on how to formally apply for the possible loan of John Daniel.
In a statement to The Post, senior director of communications Roberto Lebron said: “When a specimen loan request is received by the Museum, great care is taken in evaluation, and requests typically come from educational and research institutions that are equipped to provide appropriate conditions to maintain and keep the items safe.”
Undeterred, councilman Lydon has vowed to bring John Daniel home.
“We know it’s a long shot, but there will be a lot of disappointed people if he doesn’t come back to Uley,” he said. “This is his rightful home, and we will do everything we can to honor him.”
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