The Elephant Box

By Russell Working

Who are the most famous showmen of all times? The Ringling brothers and P.T. Barnum certainly remain legends long after their deaths.

But there’s another figure that you may well know, but don’t know that you know. A household name in the nineteenth century, Pablo Fanque was an acrobat, tightrope walker, equestrian and circus owner. He rose to fame and entrepreneurial success as a black man in Victorian England.

Fanque was memorialized in the Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”

For the benefit of Mr. Kite

There will be a show tonight on trampoline.

The Hendersons will all be there

Late of Pablo Fanque’s Fair—what a scene.

Over men and horses, hoops and garters

Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!

In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!

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Riots—and even gunplay—often followed circuses as their showgrounds drew drunks, toughs, and rowdy college boys. And the troupers brawled to defend the show.

Part one of two.

By Russell Working

WHEN THE O’BRIEN CIRCUS set up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, more than a century ago, performers and roustabouts alike sat down to eat in their new cook tent.

The tent walls were open, and as the troupers tucked into a dinner of meat and vegetables dished from giant kettles, they noticed they were surrounded by a throng of sullen men. The towners were miners, black-faced with coal dust and still wearing their lantern helmets from work.

The miners began lobbing rocks at the kinkers, knocking over several cook pots, lion tamer George Conklin recalls in his 1921 memoir, The Ways of the Circus. When the circus owner stepped out to calm the rowdies, a stone laid him flat, Conklin writes.

An O’Brien man screamed, “Hey, Rube,” and the troupers stormed out of the tent to meet their foe in a melee.

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