Arthur Jones--One of the sorriest, saddest chapters in the annuals of captive animal history

Arthur In Africa - Trip to Get Elephants

Baby Elephants In Africa - Trip to Get Elephants

Terri - On the Beach Arthur Jones fifth wife

Arthur’s father, mother, grandfather, and great grandfather were all physicians. His half sister and half brother also became doctors. “The reason I never went to medical school along with my siblings,” Arthur told Szimanski, “[was that] I was not inclined to work 24 hours a day.” As it turned out, Arthur only worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week, according to Szimanski.

“[Arthur] says he read his father’s entire medical library at least twice before he was 12 and every book in the Seminole [Oklahoma] library before he was 14,” Szimanski writes.

The Chief of Police in Seminole issued Arthur a permit to carry a concealed weapon when he was in his early teens. “I know you have a pistol,” he told Arthur. “I know you need it; in the likely event you have to use it, it will be better all around if it is legal.”

Arthur dropped out of school in the tenth grade and was penniless when he left home. He went broke “more times than he can count.” And eventually made the Forbes Fortune list of the 400 richest people.

Arthur’s Nautilus revenues, rumored by the media to be as high as $300 to $400 million, actually peaked in the mid-1980s at $50 to $70 million a year. Nautilus was a private company and the actual numbers are confidential.

Inge Topperwein is Arthur’s longest continually serving employee. He hired her in Africa while “filming elephant culling” in 1966. Asked what she did by Carol during our visit to Florida, she dutifully replied: “Whatever is necessary.” Always a stabilizing factor, according to Szimanski, Inge became Arthur’s sixth wife in 1994. She continued working for him.

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