Mr Gee's Llamas

The forgotten true story of Mr Gee's Llamas. Part local history, part global history. In 1858 Mr Benjamin Whitehead Gee travelled from England to New York, where he attended an auction, apparently by chance, and bought a flock of llamas. The llamas had already been smuggled out of Peru, but their journey had only just begun. Hoping to cash in on the nineteenth century acclimatisation craze, Mr Gee took his examples of the exotic species on a tour of two more cities, before arriving at his modest family home, a woollen mill at The Steyne, in Acton, West London. The adventure was not over yet. In London, the llamas became front-page news. Who would buy the llamas, and would any of the flock make it to Australia? The quirkiness of the tale is matched by the unusual histories of the Gee family - involving sibling rivalry, contested wills, divorce, and even bigamy. Using old newspapers and various obscure sources, the author has diligently tracked Mr Gee's llamas through the archives.