'A Farewell ride on Jumbo'. The famous and popular African elephant kept at the London Zoological Gardens at Regents Park, London, giving a group of children a ride on his back. Jumbo was born 1861 in the Sudan, transferred from Paris to London in 1865, and sold in 1882 to P. T. Barnum, for his touring circus in North America. Jumbo died in tragic circumstances when hit by a train at a marshalling yard in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada in 1885.