In the end, only one hand was raised against closure. London Zoo had lost its magic, the governing council agreed. Families were staying away and cash was running low. To struggle on would be irresponsible unlawful, even ... and so the vote was taken to bring 166 years of history to a close.
John Edwards was furious. As a zoo historian, he did not believe his fellow council members had grasped the momentous nature of their action. As a solicitor, he did not want to talk about legal advice over the paying-off of the 200 staff and rehousing the 6,000 animals while there was still enough money in the bank. "If it's a crime to keep London Zoo open, I will go to prison for it," he said.
The sober academics and business people who run the Zoological Society of London were unmoved. Edwards drew only sighs with a demand for resignations over a failed marketing campaign. Frowns greeted his plea that Whipsnade Wild Animal Park, the society's second zoo, should be mortgaged to secure some hope of a future at London.
The balance sheets were analysed. Someone queried the appeal of wild animals in urban settings. One by one, the options for a scaled-down London Zoo were eliminated. The outcome, in a function room decorated with animal prints at Whipsnade, was inevitable.
"A decision of enormous importance for the city, the country and the world was taken between 10.30am and lunch. It was preposterous," said Edwards.
Other council members say that while the calculations were necessarily cold, the decision itself took an emotional toll on everyone concerned. The sadness showed next day on the face of Field Marshal Sir John Chapple, the society's president, when he gave the news at an 8am meeting of the staff, some of them in tears.
Chapple had to tell his keepers that the animals to which they had dedicated their lives must now be found new homes. Then he faced the press and tried to explain what had gone wrong in 15 short weeks since he had told the world that London Zoo, after teetering from one crisis to another for months, had finally been "saved".
The most turbulent year in the life and death of the world's oldest zoo began on April 7, 1991, with a front page report in The Sunday Times, the first to disclose that it would be shut down. Execution was stayed after the publicity boosted attendances. Supporters pledged ú2m and the zoo cut costs, reducing both staff and collection by a third.
By March this year, Chapple was confident enough to announce that the gates would remain open after all.
Then came disaster. The Easter and May bank holidays are critical for zoos: they tell directors whether income is likely to be be up or down for the year as a whole.
London's figures gave the clearest possible signal. In spite of good weather and heavy advertising, they were 28 per cent lower than expected. The implications were disastrous: attendances for 1992-93 looked like plummeting to 800,000, compared with more than 1.1m the year before. It would leave the zoo with a ú2m deficit that it could not sustain.
London Zoo, founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1826, had been home in its exuberant heyday to Jumbo the elephant in 1867 and to Winnie, the inspiration for AA Milne's Pooh Bear, in 1914. More recently Chi-Chi, Ching-Ching and Cha-Cha, the giant pandas, had attracted enormous crowds. Now Ming-Ming and Bao-Bao, newly installed, were playing to half-empty houses.
The speed with which queues vanished from the turnstiles has pushed into the open a debate that has been going on ever since the crisis first became public. Is the failure to draw the crowds symptomatic of a wider malaise with city zoos? Or is it all down to bad management?
Zoologists believe the answer will determine whether two rival bids to save the zoo now stand some chance of success, or whether the daunting process of rehousing 734 mammals, 579 birds, 388 reptiles and amphibians, 4,400 fish and 6,300 invertebrates will be completed after closure on September 30.
Desmond Morris, author, broadcaster and former curator of mammals at London Zoo, has not strolled round the enclosures for 20 years. That, he says, is the measure of his disillusionment.
Morris wanted to change the zoo when he worked there because he hated to see so many animals confined in a way that deprived them of natural behaviour. "Unless you can give an animal a complex environment, you're not going to produce something for the 20th century. You are still in the 19th century," he said.
He believes the collapse in attendances, following a fall from 3m in the 1950s and more than 2m as recently as 1973, could signal the demise of other urban zoos unless they display their animals in more naturalistic settings.
Experts believe that wildlife documentaries on television have reduced children's excitement at seeing large collections of animals. Individual naturalistic displays now provide the greater thrills and lasting memories. Otters plunging down their waterfall at Dudley; John Aspinall's gorillas foraging for fruit at Howletts; Chester's chimpanzees rioting across a string of islands.
Dr John Ironmonger, author of The Good Zoo Guide, has no doubt that wildlife parks with more space for the animals are doing better. "People feel guilty about going to city centre zoos. Enclosures that were seen as liberalising even 10 years ago are now regarded as small and restrictive," he said.
Whipsnade, with 600 acres compared with its big city sister's 36, is a beneficiary of this trend. In less than three years, attendances have increased from 300,000 to 550,000. Whipsnade has scored more than 20 lucrative deals with commercial sponsors that have so often eluded London. "They want to be associated more with this kind of park than with an urban zoo," said Andrew Forbes, Whipsnade's chief executive, who has turned a ú1.3m annual loss into a small operating profit.
Zoo Check, the animal welfare group founded by Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, says similar patterns have emerged elsewhere in Europe: urban zoos that have closed in the past five years include Turin and Milan, Monaco and Marseilles.
Opponents of London's management, however, point to the success of city zoos elsewhere as a sign of what might have been. Berlin says that pressure from environmentalists has forced improvements such as new ape enclosures that, in turn, have boosted attendances. It expects up to 4m visitors this year.
At New York's Bronx zoo, a walk-through rainforest increased numbers from 1.5m to 2.3m in its first year. A small zoo at Arnhem in Holland has dispensed with many large animals to concentrate on a similar covered forest complete with tropical birds, butterflies and spiders.
London has two burdens that have made redevelopment especially difficult up to now. It is, according to Chapple, the only major zoo in the world that has had to survive on its gate: all the others receive subsidies from the public purse.
Secondly, some of its buildings are no longer thought suitable for the animals they were designed to contain, but are listed because of their architectural interest. They not only require expensive maintenance but have also prevented any radical restructuring that would mean demolition.
Critics of the zoo's performance count its management in recent years as a third and more significant burden. A series of embarrassments and internal disputes have contributed to its troubles.
David Jones, a distinguished vet who had run the zoo since 1984, was appointed general director by the Zoological Society only to see the post abolished within months after a rebellion against his management style. Critics accused him of wanting to turn the zoo into a theme park - a charge he vigorously denied.
Last month, a newspaper and poster advertising campaign was halted at considerable expense after complaints of tastelessness. The zoo's star pandas were portrayed as "the perfect couple" with the copy line: "We're keeping everything crossed. Hoping they won't do likewise." In fact, the animals had fought so viciously that keepers were forced to separate them.
Then, just as attendances were plunging, the marketing director was placed on a two-day week. Arguments about the zoo's philosophy escalated inconclusively between officers of the society and a group of fellows.
Colin Tudge, a writer and leading member of the rebellious fellows, denied that in-fighting had contributed to the zoo's decline. "We are the people who have been saying the zoo must not close," he said.
The fight to remain open goes on this week in spite of the closure announcement. The reformist fellows have joined forces with the keepers to form a new London Zoo Survival Group. Its ambition: to create a zoo that puts science and conservation at the heart of everything it does.
David Bellamy, a council member who was unable to attend the fateful meeting on Tuesday, was shocked by the possible repercussions. "London Zoo is now the only chance for the survival of some of the world's most endangered species," he said.
Tudge believes the zoo could benefit commercially if it laid more emphasis on this environmental work discoveries about the reproductive cycles of rhinos, for example, which could help preserve them in the wild; the breeding and reintroduction of rare Pacific snails; and important research on enriching the behaviour of captive animals.
Ministers have repeatedly refused to top up a "once and for all" grant made in 1988. However, John Major's announcement 10 days ago of a British Darwin initiative to aid global conservation has caused some zoo supporters to hope that its work in this field might merit special consideration.
The masterminds behind an alternative, unashamedly more commercial ú61m plan to redevelop the zoo also stress its value to conservation efforts, and again will seek government co-operation, not least over the financial burden of listed buildings in disrepair.
Its main selling points, however, would be a walk-through coral reef aquarium and a pavilion featuring the rainforests of three different continents with gorillas, gibbons and spider monkeys among the trees of Africa, southeast Asia and the Amazon respectively.
The scheme, put forward by New Zoo Developments Ltd and funded by David Laing of the Laing construction family, also envisages a film theatre, a British wetland, lion terraces and a savannah for giraffes, zebras and gazelles.
There is some understandable scepticism about the possibility of salvation. The last rescue plan fizzled out when the entrepreneur behind it was shown to have left a trail of business failures and debts behind him in north America. Though the new plans come from thoroughly respectable organisations, some experts are still sceptical about both rescue bids, arguing that they demand too much money from ministers and banks with little to give, and too much indulgence from a public fed up with the sight of animals in captivity.
Sir David Attenborough, the naturalist, who has been linked with the Laing proposal, is one of those who believe that a city zoo can, should and must survive in Regent's Park, but in a different form. "It is very important that people should have access to animals and the natural world within cities," he said.
"I don't think there is any more demand to see a bundle of fur on a concrete square. I am not suggesting London Zoo is like that - but it was like that and it's having a hell of a difficult time getting away from it."
