Ellis S. Joseph

From the list of elephant persons Family: Joseph

Ellis S. Joseph

Personal details
Country	United States

Locations
Title	owner 1923-1933
Location	at Ellis Stanley Joseph menagerie in United States

Title	owner 1918-1926
Location	at Highfield Hall (Ellis Stanley Joseph) in Australia

Biography details

Ellis Stanley Joseph , wildlife animal trader in United States

Born 1872 in India dead 1938-09-16 in United States .

Ellis Stanley Joseph (Ellis S. Joseph) was a collector and trader in wildlife in the early part of the 20th century.

Records about Ellis S. Joseph from William "Buckles" Woodcocks Blog at http://www.bucklesw.blogspot.com/
Animal dealer Ellis S. Joseph (born in Australia ca. 1872 – 1938) got into the business at age 18 around 1890. He is probably best known for bringing Australian animals to America, including some of the most difficult of all to maintain, notably the koala and duck billed platypus.

In 1923 Ellis Joseph made New York his headquarters and in 1927 he moved to the Bronx where, for a time, he maintained a menagerie at Conner Street and Haller Avenue. He was unmarried and retired from business in 1933.
Richard Reynolds, Buckles weblog

Ellis Joseph said that he was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), and 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.

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. 'Highfield Hall' became both a private zoo and a temporary home for animals in transit to or from other countries.

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.

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.

The experience with the law may have influenced Ellis Joseph 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.

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. The outbreak of World War I and Germany's subsequent loss of her overseas colonies, together with the death of Carl Hargenbeck Jr. in 1913, created an opportunity for Joseph, as Germany's hitherto dominant position in the trading of animals for zoos became vacant.

Joseph formed an association with three Australian zoo directors, the brothers Ernest Albert Le Souef (first director of the Perth Zoo from 1898 to 1935), Albert Sherbourne Le Souef (secretary of the Zoological Gardens at Moore Park, Sydney, up to 1916 and then first director of Taronga Park Zoo, from 1916 to 1939) and William Henry Dudley Le Souef (an ornithologist and second director of Melbourne Zoo from 1902 to 1923). Their father was Albert Alexander Cochrane Le Souef, who until his death in 1902 was—like his sons—a zoologist and was involved in the establishment of the Perth Zoo and the Melbourne Zoo, of which he was its first director.

In 1916, Joseph delivered a young African elephant to Honolulu's Kapiolani Park Zoo. Named "Miss Daisy", almost certainly the same elephant as "African Daisy" who was used for fundraising in Sydney in 1915—she was at the zoo until March 1933, when she went on a rampage. She killed her keeper George Conradt, got loose, and was then shot dead.

In September 1924, Ellis Joseph imported several elephants on board the SS American Trader, which were unloaded at Hoboken.

In the 1920s, he was trading live animals in the United States. Between 1925 and 1928, he sold four elephants: two to circuses and two to zoos.

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.
Wikipedia

Reference list

References

Koehl, Dan, (2024). animal trader Ellis Stanley Joseph in United States. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 22 November 2024 at https://www.elephant.se/person.php?id=462. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Stanley_Joseph

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