Harrods’ Wild Animal Kingdom: Exotic Spectacle and Edwardian Excess in 1920s London
In the years following the First World War, London was a city of contradictions. Grief and gaiety coexisted. Modernity crept in beside tradition. And nowhere was this tension more vividly on display than inside Harrods of Knightsbridge, where one could purchase silk stockings, turtle soup, mourning crepe—and, astonishingly, a live lion cub.
Yes, really.
During the 1920s, Harrods was not merely a department store. It was a destination, a social theatre, and, most bewilderingly to modern sensibilities, a dealer in exotic animals, known informally as its Wild Animal Kingdom.
I only learned about this unique period of time when researching plot lines for Murder at Kensington Gardens. I was in need of an exotic animal and a way to obtain it, and Harrods' Wild Animal Kingdom provided a believable means for both!
A Department Store Like No Other
Harrods had already earned its reputation for excess well before the war. Its motto was Omnia Omnibus Ubique (“All things for all people, everywhere”) and by the 1910s and 1920s, the store sold everything from fine jewelry to coffins. Live animals were simply another category.
On the lower floors and in discreet back areas, Harrods housed menageries of the exotic and the domestic: parrots, monkeys, pythons, crocodiles, foxes, raccoons, and even young big cats. Customers could browse cages much as they browsed hats, guided by well-spoken attendants who treated the animals as luxury goods.
The Exotic as Status Symbol
To understand why Harrods’ animal department thrived, one must understand interwar British attitudes toward empire and status.
Britain’s empire still spanned the globe, and the possession of something rare—especially something imported from colonial territories—signaled wealth, worldliness, and authority. Exotic animals were living proof of reach and privilege.
A wealthy Londoner might purchase:
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A monkey for a fashionable drawing room
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A parrot as a conversation piece
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A baby leopard or lion cub for a country estate
Harrods even provided feeding advice, cages, and transport arrangements, delivering animals to private homes or country manors with the same discretion afforded to diamonds.
Animals for Aristocrats—and the Merely Curious
While the true buyers were aristocrats, diplomats, and eccentric millionaires, the public was encouraged to look. Families strolled past cages. Children pressed their noses to glass. Society ladies lingered, fascinated and faintly thrilled.
For many Londoners, this was the only place they would ever see such creatures outside the Zoo. Unlike Regent’s Park, Harrods offered intimacy. The animals were close, contained and purchasable.
There was something intoxicating, and unsettling, about that proximity.
Famous and Infamous Sales
Records and anecdotes from the period tell of some remarkable transactions:
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A lion cub sold to a Russian grand duke
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Monkeys purchased as pets for debutantes
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Exotic birds shipped to country houses for private aviaries
One oft-repeated story claims that a crocodile was once sold to a customer who had not fully considered the practicalities of housing it, an error discovered too late.
Such stories were shared with amusement, not horror. The ethics of animal welfare were rarely questioned publicly, and when they were, they were dismissed as sentimentality.
Care, Cruelty, and Blind Spots
From a modern perspective, Harrods’ animal trade feels shocking. Conditions were cramped. Veterinary knowledge was limited. Many animals did not live long lives in captivity.
Yet in the 1920s, animal welfare occupied a strange middle ground. The RSPCA existed and campaigned against overt cruelty, but keeping wild animals as pets, especially by the wealthy, was not widely condemned. Empire itself rested on the belief that humans were entitled to dominate and collect the natural world.
A Changing World
By the late 1920s and into the 1930s, attitudes began to shift. The empire was no longer unquestioned. Scientific understanding of animal behavior improved. Public discomfort grew.
Harrods quietly scaled back its exotic animal offerings. By mid-century, the Wild Animal Kingdom was gone, remembered only in anecdotes and incredulous newspaper clippings.
What the Animal Kingdom Reveals About the 1920s
It reflected:
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Imperial confidence, still intact after the war
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Class division, where the wealthy lived by different rules
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A hunger for spectacle, in a society trying to forget trauma
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Blind spots, especially regarding ethics and responsibility
In a decade obsessed with progress, speed, and novelty, the idea that one might buy a leopard along with one’s gloves felt not grotesque, but glamorous.
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