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John Aspinall
b. 11 June 1926
d. 2000,
London
 He was born in Delhi as the second son of Mary Grace
(1904–1987), daughter of Clement Samuel Horn, engineer, and wife of
Colonel Robert Stivala Aspinall (1895–1954) and schooled at Rugby, in
England, where he was eventually asked not to return. After a stint in the
Marines he went up to Oxford, where he nourished a penchant for gambling. He
missed his finals to attend the races at Ascot and he put his entire
term’s grant on the nose of a winner at short odds. After college he set
himself up in the casino business, then illegal in England. His wealthy Oxford
friends would drop fortunes at his tables playing chemin de fer. Aspinall had
no compunctions about taking their money. He said that he liked “the
corrosive effect that it has on such outdated concepts as the sanctity of money
and the dignity of labor,” adding that his luxurious trappings meant that
“gentlemen could ruin themselves as elegantly and suicidally as did their
ancestors 300 years ago.” He enjoyed being rich, and lived amid opulence.
During the early 1950s he worked in partnership with Ian Maxwell-Scott
as a bookmaker. In 1955 he began organizing games of chemin de fer in Mayfair
and Kensington, contrary to the 1845 Gaming Act. His mother, with whom he ran a
bookmaking firm called Mittens, provided game pies for these gambling parties,
where the guests were plied with drink. In 1957 she rented a flat in Hyde Park
Street, which was raided by the police on 10 January 1958: she and Aspinall
were then charged. These charges were dismissed on 19 March.
The
acquittals in this test case, together with the Macmillan government's desire
to attract foreign currency into Britain, resulted in the Gaming Act of 1960,
which permitted the establishment of casinos.
His notoriety only
increased when it was suspected that he was involved in the disappearance of
Lord Lucan, a peer who had murdered his family’s nanny with a lead pipe
blow to the head. (It was said that the real target was Lucan’s wife.) The
London tabloids suggested that Lucan had shown up at Aspinall’s zoo and
implored Aspinall to feed him to the tigers. Aspinall later let it be known
that Lucan had committed suicide at sea, but no trace was ever found.
At some point Aspinall’s mother admitted to him that he was not
the son of his surgeon “father” but of a British serviceman who had
the pleasure of her company under a tamarisk tree at a regimental ball in
India. Unperturbed, Aspinall tracked down the man in a retirement home and
supported the old soldier for the rest of his life.
In 1957, with money
won at the races, he purchased Howletts, a derelict 18th century country
mansion near Canterbury, with 39 acres of gardens and parkland that was to
become his first zoo. Funds from his own gambling and the casino business
allowed him to build up a private collection that included rhinos, bongo
antelopes, Przewalski’s horses, langurs and leopards. Here he developed
his philosophy of treating animals with respect – he said that animals
know and resent it when they are being treated as inferiors. He regaled his
retinue with diverse, fabulous diets and individual attention. He gathered
about himself a devoted team of like-minded keepers.
His methods,
however, had their problems as well as their successes. Over the years five
keepers were killed in encounters with tigers and elephants. A young boy had
his arm ripped off by a chimpanzee, and there were other injuries as well.
Aspinall frequently appeared in public with his face scratched and bruised from
overzealous romps with the animals. He was unrepentant, noting that humans were
much bigger killers than animals. “One tiger in 12 has this aberrant
streak,” he noted of Zeya, who killed two keepers. “With humans it is
one in three.”
Such a view was sadly typical of his mindset. He
thought the human race had far too many members, and he rejoiced at the news of
natural disasters and plagues that carried off thousands. He said, “I
would be very happy to see 3.5 billion humans wiped out from the face of the
earth within the next 150 or 200 years and I am quite prepared to go myself
with this majority … Let us all look forward to the day when the
catastrophe strikes us down!” He also wrote, “The sanctity of human
life is the most dangerous sophistry ever propagated by philosophy and it is
all too well rooted. Because if it means anything it means the in-sanctity of
species which are not human.” He tended toward eugenic beliefs that oddly
allied him with the English upper classes he fleeced through gambling:
“Broadly speaking, the high income groups tend to have a better genetic
inheritance.” “Reason is the worst possible guide to human
affairs,” he said a few years ago. “It is merely the undertaker that
you send in after the battle to explain the logic of the affair. Instinct and
prejudice are much better guides.” He harbored a special loathing for
wealthy women with left-wing bents.
Despite these addled views, Aspinall was clear-headed enough to
be able to earn a fortune whenever he wanted. He used his gambling and
impresario talents to support his zoos (there was soon a second) to the tune of
millions per year. At least three times he abandoned the casino business, only
to have reverses that forced him back into it. Each time he attained greater
success than he had experienced previously. “I’m like an old warrior
who can galvanize himself when he’s threatened, but I’m pretty idle
when I’ve got no threats,” he said. He only opened up his zoos to the
public in the early 70s, when his finances were at a dodgy point after a market
crash, and then only after selling paintings and jewelry to feed his animals.
During 1962 Aspinall opened the exclusive Clermont gaming club at 44
Berkeley Square (with his friend Mark Birley's nightclub Annabel's in the
basement). Chemin de fer and backgammon were its special games. Aspinall felt
no compunction about charming, shaming, intoxicating, or hectoring young men
into gambling beyond their means. As he scorned most people for their repugnant
mediocrity, he had no scruples about ruining them. Huge sums were lost: at one
chemin de fer table, on a memorable evening in 1967, Goldsmith lost
£200,000, Colonel William Stirling £150,000, Emmett Blow of Chicago
£100,000, and the earl of Lucan £15,000. The only winner was the
earl of Derby. After further legislative changes, which prevented Aspinall from
playing in his own games, he sold the Clermont Club for £500,000 in 1972
and devoted himself to Howletts.
The expenses of Aspinall's zoos drove
him back to casino life in 1978. With Jimmy Goldsmith's financial support he
opened a new club, Aspinall's, in Hans Place, Knightsbridge. In 1984 he moved
to larger premises in Curzon Street, and opened the Aspinall Curzon club, for
which he received a reported £90 million on its sale in 1987. However, he
dropped large sums while playing the stock market, and consequently opened
another Curzon Street casino, Aspinall's, in 1992. At the general election of
1997 he was parliamentary candidate for Folkestone and Hythe on behalf of
Goldsmith's Referendum Party. He died of cancer of the jaw at his home, 1 Lyall
Street, Westminster, on 29 June 2000. He was survived by his third wife, Sarah,
the son and daughter of his first marriage, and the son of his third marriage.
Nearing death at age 74 he wanted to be dispatched by one of his own
tigers, but this wish was not to be granted him. He was pleased, however, to
leave his zoos in the hands of his eldest son Damian, who had built up
excellent friendships with many of the animals. It was typical of Aspinall that
he would think of animal friendship and his own bloodlines when considering the
fate of his quirky and amazing projects. |
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