By Russell Working
The great circuses of yesteryear were eye-popping explosions of wonder, equestrians and trapeze artists and dancing bears and seal musicians and human cannonballs and ski-jumping jalopies and reenactments of medieval Crusades.
From the perspective of audiences, it was too much to take in. No wonder the term “circus”—and later “three-ring circus”—came to be a synonym for “a disturbance or uproar; a lively or noisy display” and “a scene of confusion or disorder,” per The Oxford English Dictionary.
For showmen, however, this use rankles. They know the logistics necessary to stage, pack up, transport, house, and feed a show involving thousands of humans and animals every day.
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By Russell Working
Horses circled the center ring while acrobats performed on their backs. Monkeys raced around the hippodrome atop Shetland ponies. Educated Pigs jumped hurdles, leaped through hoops of fire, tumbled barrels along, and climbed ladders.
Like every major circus, when Ringling Bros. rolled into town in 1892, it unloaded hundreds of performing animals, both wild and domesticated. Along with them came a mighty cavalry of workhorses to pull the cages and bandwagons.
These animals were wrangled by trainers and menagerie men who—at least the good ones—possessed a keen understanding of animal psychology. Some trainers could be abusive and cruel, but the best knew that gentleness and understanding were better tools for working with animals.
Such thoughts came to mind recently when I ran across an interview with American scientist and animal behaviorist Temple Grandin. Grandin, who is autistic, became famous for her ability to perceive the world as animals might. Oliver Sacks wrote a memorable profile of her in The New Yorker, and a subsequent movie brought her story to millions.
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By Russell Working
Recently a very smart communications expert reminded me of the great elephant Jumbo’s connection with Tufts University in Massachusetts.
When the famed showman P.T. Barnum imported Jumbo from London to the United States in 1882, no one had ever seen an African elephant in North America, Canada’s CBC reports. He was an animal superstar. An estimated 20 million people visited the prodigious pachyderm during his times in zoos, parades, and circuses.
Barnum knew how to get his great elephant into the news. Encyclopedia Britannica reports: “In May 1884 Barnum engineered a bounty of publicity for the circus by parading Jumbo, 20 other elephants, and 17 camels across the recently constructed Brooklyn Bridge to prove its structural integrity.”
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“People have died.”
While driving from Chicagoland to Oklahoma, we discovered the charmingly named Uranus Sideshow Museum near St. Robert, Missouri. Meet Katya Kadavera, Missouri’s foremost leopard-tattooed lady sword swallower. She’s among the last of a daredevil breed of sideshow performers.
For more about my novel manuscript, The Elephant Box, click here. Why a circus blog? Learn more here.
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Melees involving towners and circuses could break out anywhere. But in the years following the Civil War, Southern stands could be especially risky.
Part 2 of a series. Click here for part 1.
By Russell Working
THE NOTORIOUS “HEY, RUBE” BRAWLS, matching towners against circus showmen, could happen anywhere from Montreal to the Gulf of Mexico.
But amid the bitterness that followed the Civil War, Southern stands could be especially dangerous for Northern troupers.
Following the war, Southerners were inclined to see the circuses, usually headquartered in the North, as Yankee intruders, lion tamer George Conklin recalled in his 1921 memoir, The Ways of the Circus.
“In spite of the fact that the show, as a show, was popular and well patronized by the people,” Conklin writes, “nevertheless they looked on us as ‘damned Yankees’ and treated us accordingly as much as they were able and dared.”
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The Elephant Box 