“For £25 down and the balance on delivery he can have a full-fledged rhinoceros capable of demolishing a fairly sized jerry-built villa.”

Private zoos of more than a century ago existed in both the U.S. and in Europe, though the ones on the other side of the Atlantic seem to have been wilder. A report about these unregulated menageries from the London Daily Mail, which was republished in the November 17, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.