Let me introduce you to an old friend, a companion and comfort for many children the world over, Winnie the Pooh.
He’s not looking too fluffy these days is he the poor old bear? I have to say I’m not sure I’d want to spend time in the woods playing Pooh Sticks with this version of the famously tubby teddy. Speaking of which, he’s looking a little slimmer these days isn’t he.
Of course this isn’t the Pooh of A.A. Milne fame but it is the skull of the bear that inspired him to write those wonderful tales of Christopher Robin, Pooh and Co.
The real Winnie and the former owner of the above skull was in fact Winnipeg, a black bear who had been purchased as a cub by soldier Harry Colebourn who had then enlisted at the outset of World War One, with Winnie becoming the regimental mascot of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps.
Brought to England from Canada in 1914 Winnie was bequeathed to London zoo when Colebourn was shipped to France. She soon found herself one of the zoo’s main attractions where a young Christopher Robin often frequented.
Christopher quickly fell in love with the unusually friendly bear and was even pictured inside the enclosure feeding Winnie honey from a spoon.
The original Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear is now on display in New York
A teddy bear was purchased for young Christopher and promptly given the moniker Winnie, later being lengthened to the now famous Winnie the Pooh.
Christopher’s father began making up stories about the wonderful Winnie and by the time of the real Winnie’s death in 1934 her fictional namesake was becoming popular in the published world.
Winnie’s skull was kept by the curator of the Odontological Museum, part of the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons alongside thousands of other specimens which was the norm back then.
She has remained out of sight since appearing in a 1930s text book about the dental health of animals; Winnie had very poor teeth, probably a consequence of all those spoonfuls of honey but she has now been taken out of her box, given a bit of a spruce up and is about to grace the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum at Lincoln’s Inn Field, London.
I wonder what the fictional Winnie would think.
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There’s a lovely picture book called Finding Winnie written by the granddaughter(?) of Harry Colebourn. I read it to so many of my students last school year. It even includes a bunch of the pictures shown in this post in the back of the book. I highly recommend it!