The story of Wallace the lion, Sunderland's favourite big cat

Possibly the most famous exhibit in Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens is now 164 years old, but he's not a bad looking lad for his age.

There can scarcely be anyone brought up in the city who has not at some point taken a close look at Wallace the lion.

Lifeless though he is, it's not difficult to imagine encountering such a magnificent creature living and breathing, when popping round the shops in Kenya or Gujarat. What an animal.

Wallace stands these days close to the museum's current main entrance. There is no mock-Serengeti backdrop for visitors to screw up their eyes and imagine him prowling in the wild - being as he appears to be guarding a penny-farthing and a 1986 Nissan Bluebird.

In a way this is more apt. Wallace never experienced the wild. He was born in captivity in Britain in 1860, and would never leave. His life was spent in the circus.

There were objections to the practise of subordinating lions, tigers, elephants and other animals for humans' entertainment, but it was not such an issue in Victorian times. Indeed, the Wild Animals in Circuses Act was not enacted in law until 2020.

Until then it took more than being merely wholly uncivilised, barbaric and indefensible to put an end to it and it's difficult to commiserate with the jobless lion tamers of today.

In life, Wallace is most associated with the celebrated lion tamer Maccomo. Both were employed in the travelling menagerie owned by the appalling William Manders.

Maccomo was billed as “The African Wild Beast Tamer”, although he might actually have been from Liverpool and had the real name Arthur Williams. That's show biz.

It was in Liverpool in 1861 that a Bengal tigress only relinquished Maccomo's hand when a keeper pressed a hot iron bar against her teeth. In 1862 the lion tamer lost part of a finger when a lion dragged him by the hand across the floor in Norwich.

But Maccomo's most famous circus scare was in Sunderland in 1869 when Wallace, angered by the whip, threw him to the ground then mauled him badly. Maccomo punched Wallace to escape, his rings acting as a sort of knuckle-duster. Lovely.

Maccomo died in Sunderland's Palatine Hotel in 1871. He is buried in Bishopwearmouth Cemetery. Mr Manders replaced him immediately, but paid for the headstone, even if much of it is tantamount to an incredibly crass advert for the Manders Menagerie.

Wallace died in Warrington at the age of 13. Lions in today's zoos usually live to about 20 on average. The famous lion was stuffed by South Shields taxidermist William Yellowby.

Incidentally, taxidermists are easier to find, even today, than you might expect (our favourite company name is that of Get Stuffed in London).

But unlike Mr Yellowby, few British taxidermists enjoy the privilege of stuffing a lion. A badger if they're lucky.

Anyway, the now late Wallace the lion was bought by Sunderland Museum, which opened in 1879. He was loaned to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle in 2018, but has mostly been in Sunderland ever since and is an ongoing hit, particularly with children.

In 1913 curator John Charlton Deas arranged for pupils from Sunderland Council Blind School to visit the museum. He reasoned that blind people might struggle with the concept of size, unless they could actually touch and feel something.

There is a well known photograph of the delighted children with Wallace and the invitation was extended to blind adults to visit, usually on Sundays to afford them them privacy while the museum was closed to the general public.

Hopefully Wallace the lion will be around for a long after anyone reading this is not. In the meantime, even those who have seen him a thousand times still love to stare at him, one more time.