It might explain his fixation with reproductions of the animals endlessly mooning over the creatures he loves but can never touch, like a Victorian chimneysweep looking in through the window of the fancy restaurant.
He arranged the "purchase" of Eliza Armstrong, the 13-year-old daughter of a chimneysweep, whom he then smuggled away to France in order to prove how easy it might have been to carry off a real abduction.