'Washing the Lions': A Famous April Fools Hoax at the Tower of London

Lions became one of the Tower’s most popular attractions. Often named after kings, queens and other historic figures, these impressive animals were heavily associated with British identity and had been incorporated into royal arms since the reign of Richard I. They were also dangerous; in 1686, a woman named Mary Jenkinson died after trying to stroke a lion’s paw.

Nonetheless, lions were kept and even bred at the Tower for over 600 years. For some, the phrase 'going to see the lions' was synonymous with visiting London and seeing the city’s famous sights.

The Origins of a Famous 'April Fool'

Historians still debate about the origins of April Fool’s Day – a tradition continued every year on 1 April. English references to playing hoaxes – therefore making someone an ‘April fool’ – begin in the early 17th century, with antiquarian John Aubrey first attributing ‘All Fool’s Day’ to 1 April in 1686.

From the late 17th to mid-19th centuries, sending someone to watch the ‘Washing of the Lions’ was London’s favourite fool’s errand – often given to rural and international visitors on the first day of April.

Transcribed in Notes and Queries (1913), Dawk’s Newletter reported in 1698 that ‘yesterday being the first of April, several persons were sent to the Tower Ditch to see the Lions washed’. Many historians consider this to be the oldest recorded April Fool’s Day hoax.

Tales from the Tower

Stories of unwitting tourists being sent to the Tower appear in journals, newspapers, and memoirs.

Most who asked after the lions came away relatively unscathed. One Scottish visitor remembered joining his friend to ‘see the Lions washed’ only to reach the Tower and find ‘all the rascals laughing at us’.

But not all victims were so lucky. One gossipy account appears in a ‘Home News’ entry from The Lady’s Magazine, dated 1771. After asking what time the lions would be washed, two men were encouraged into a small boat on the nearby river to get a better view of the ceremony.

Once safely aboard, the pair were stripped of their oars and pushed out onto the Thames. Helpless and adrift, they were soon surrounded by other mischievous boats who ‘splashed by them for about a quarter of an hour, to the great diversion of the spectators’.

What's So Funny?

Historians still aren’t sure where this ‘washing the lions’ hoax came from, although some speculate that the prank grew from visitors tipping menagerie keepers for tours or to feed the animals.

Lions were some of the first animals kept at the Tower. However, a distinct ‘Ceremony of Washing the Lions’ seems to have been a complete fiction – maybe, as one wry commentator observed in 1873, because ‘the washing of lions is a disagreeable and dangerous process’.

The Joke Endures

The menagerie went into decline from the 1820s, with the animals gradually sold off to various collections including what later became London Zoo. The famous home of the nation’s royal beasts finally closed in 1835.

Yet the joke outlived the lions themselves. In his memoirs, Gustave Louis M Strauss confessed to handing out tickets for the ‘famous grand ceremony of washing the lions’ in around 1848. Organised by the owner and editor of the Chat, a London-based comic magazine, Strauss colourfully recalls how people ‘flocked in their shoals to see the lions washed’ and that ‘the “warders” were almost at their wits’ end’.