Menagerie animals provided a backdrop to groups of indigenous peoples who were transported in increasing numbers from colonial regions for exhibition in Britain, Europe and the USA. This chapter introduces a range of shows from the 1880s to the 1900s that presented indigenous warriors and fighting scenarios together with animal displays that implicitly suggested the violence of colonialism perpetuated on humans and animals. The entertainment genre of performances depicting battles was expanded with demonstrations of fighting by the cultures resisting the British army and rule, and eventually these formed part of one huge spectacle in which all existing types of militarised animal acts and travelling museums and menagerie displays converged.

A military outfit on a male presenter had become standard in lion and tiger acts by 1900; the stereotype was a large man in a Hussar uniform carrying a pitchfork and a whip. Although costumed orientalism persisted, especially in elephant acts, most big cat presenters demonstrating the new science of animal training wore imitative uniforms as they proclaimed gentler treatment in ironic contradiction of a soldier’s attire. Trained big cat and elephant groups would be fully integrated into the circus ring program by 1900 with human performance identities spanning military conquest and faux native origins.

Ethnographic warrior shows

The exhibiting of humans and animals was a well-established practice before the 1870s, when the exhibition of human groups began to increase greatly in scale and geographical scope. Janet Davis notes that PT Barnum popularised the term ‘human menagerie’, and entrepreneurial exhibits of both exotic humans and animals intensified following the advent of social Darwinism in the 1860s.1 At the time, processes for the acquisition and transportation of menagerie animals and indigenous people converged.

The species trade of Hagenbeck’s encompassed both humans and animals by the 1870s, and its zoological exhibition continued to contain ethnographic displays. Initially the presence of indigenous attendants was intended to enhance Hagenbeck’s animal exhibition. A Hagenbeck show in 1877 presented a ‘Nubian Caravan’ that included dromedaries, rhinoceroses, giraffes and four ‘playful’ elephants; it toured to Paris and London with 14 ‘native attendants’ from different tribes who did ‘sham fights’ as hunters and hung hunting trophies on their dwellings.2 Carl Hagenbeck had to agree to send the hunters home within a set time. The animals were the main exhibit and the hunters contributed to the atmosphere, but this balance began to shift in shows during the 1880s.

William Coup writes revealingly of American circuses with menageries that also exhibited human groups in an exotic village setting. As he explains: ‘But it is not always animals that make the success of a circus. An unfamiliar type of the human species will occasionally make the fortune of a showman.’3 Indigenous Australian groups were toured in 1883 in Europe, and a group of nine were taken on tour in 1884 to the USA.4 In 1885 Forepaugh’s circus presented its assembly of nations in the ring, including ‘Australia’s Real Native Boomerang Throwers’, and combined this with the viewing of ‘Kangaroos, Emus, Birds, Reptiles in the Menagerie’. In turn, a diverse range of menagerie animals could enhance human distinctiveness. Such ethnographic and animal shows culminated in the staging by Barnum and Bailey Circus The Greatest Show on Earth (BB) of the ‘Great Ethnological Congress’ of humans and animals.

John MacKenzie summarises two developments in the later decades of the 19th century in England that delineated an expansion of human exhibiting within a convergence of reality and entertainment spectacles:

Animals were an integral component of the larger type of ethnographic enactment since they provided an atmospheric effect, although the menagerie was increasingly relegated to the position of subservient attraction in such shows.

One aspect of the presentation of a ‘native’ way of life proved particularly politically sensitive. The British government did not approve when Farini (William Hunt) organised a performance of Zulu war methods in London in June 1879 during the middle of the ‘Zulu wars’ (1879 onwards) in southern Africa.6 Farini had hired Net Behrens, who had previously worked for Barnum, to go to Durban to bring back a group of young Zulu men. Before the arrival of the Zulu men with Behrens, Farini staged a song-and-dance show with a ‘Zulu Kaffir Boy’, and two women billed as ‘“Wild Women” from the “Dark Continent”’.7 The first show was well attended, but there was public doubt in regards to the authenticity of the background claimed for the two female performers, who were probably not the daughters of a Zulu chief. Therefore when the larger group of Zulus arrived in London with Behrens, Farini obtained signed statements, including one from a police sergeant, that the performers were unquestionably Zulu. Despite Farini’s assertion that this group was friendly to the British government, the latter’s disapproval meant that the group did not perform at the Royal Aquarium, a major venue, as planned. For the first month the group performed at St James’ Hall, known for its American black-face minstrel shows, but once the show had proved highly popular, it transferred back to the Royal Aquarium. The initial publicity focused on the war arts and claimed that the Zulu fighters were demonstrating their customs: ‘The manner in which they illustrate the method of killing their war victims is in itself enough to strike terror into the stoutest heart.’8 A highly skilled show entrepreneur, Farini made the most of topical public interest in warlike displays.

The surgeon and naturalist Frank Buckland met with six Zulu travellers and described their physical features. He also observed their politeness and ‘goodnature’, although their ‘“dances were emblematic of fighting, and victory to the death”, and he specified that the Zulu men had “amazing quickness of hearing and sight”’.9 Their assegai weapon of pliable wood was about five feet (1.5 m) in length and the Zulu thrower made it quiver before it was thrown with the speed and power to penetrate a human body fatally. Though, when the Zulu visitors were taken to London’s Zoological Gardens they were apparently fearful of the elephants.

The expanded performance, complete with dances and spear-throwing, attracted large audiences. Behind the scenes, Farini’s management was challenged by the Zulu performers demanding more pay and their independence, but he seemed to somehow resolve those problems.

Coup appreciated that members of the public were interested in seeing the warriors who proved a military match for British soldiers and he claimed that the show provided recognition of Zulu bravery. He outlines that:

Another circus enterprise quickly copied the show and was explicit about the Zulus’ defence of their freedom. JS Bratton writes that the Zulu show combined an ‘interplay of triumphalism, an intellectual quasi-scientific discourse concerned with constructing a hierarchical ethnology, and the perennial attractions of pseudo-educational spectacle’.11 She continues that, importantly, the selling point was a theatrical claim of ‘authenticity, the unmediated presentation of reality’. The authenticity of the warlike display by warriors proved a successful business strategy.

It seemed that some of the Zulu warriors reaching Europe did come directly from active engagement in war. Coup’s account of how those Zulu warriors reached London and then New York certainly acknowledges that Behrens went to Africa but omits mention of Barnum’s business rival, Farini, and his initiative. There was probably more than one trip. Behrens went directly to the British army headquarters in Durban and presented letters of introduction and then, with his own supplies, joined an army column moving inland. The army encountered a large group under the leadership of Oham, reportedly rebelling against his brother, King Cetewayo, who had already been imprisoned by the British. The Zulu warriors who assisted the British army and were selected to go to England with Behrens proved very reluctant. Since they were ‘at the mercy of their captors’, ‘persuasion’ was used to induce them to ‘yield’, although the means by which this was achieved was not made explicit.12 A traveller, Ernst Wache, and Matthias Walter, who worked for Hagenbeck’s, were sent to assist. Coup specified that this group arrived in London with three princesses, a baby, the leader, Incomo, and 23 warriors.

The Zulu performers presented three times a day for nearly two-and-a-half years at the Royal Aquarium. Their acts consisted of songs and dances about ‘marriage, death, hunting, joy and sorrow, changes of the moon, rain, sunshine, and war’ as well as assegai-throwing displays, the making of fire, methods of fighting, sports, and marriage arrangements in which a bride was negotiated for six to ten cows. In 1881 Farini took several of the Zulu performers and Zazel’s human cannonball act, which he had patented, to New York to join BB.13 In spite of the political controversy, warriors who were representative of an enemy force fighting against British rule also proved a popular entertainment troupe in the USA.

A display of indigenous fighting skills stirred social admiration while government scrutiny encapsulated an underlying unease. The prolongation of white settler rule was achieved with the enforcement of visible markers of racial difference, and a sustained belief in the superiority of the British family for the organisation of society and in the British Empire.14 Even so, reports in England of the ‘hard-drinking licentiousness of frontier living, careless of the niceties of proper relations’ also generated disquiet about colonial life.15 There were perceptions of disorder in accounts of the colonial world, and these were brought to the fore in Britain by the reports of social disturbance and outbreaks of fighting. Exhibited war arts showed indigenous cultures resisting what would, over time, come to be considered the physical, emotional and political violence wrought by colonial rule.

As indicated in Chapter 3, a hunting-style motif and action became a well-established part of staged menagerie cage acts from the mid-19th century. The addition of an African identity, assumed or not, compounded an impression of geographical authenticity in the performance and it underwent a revival in London following the success of the Zulu shows.

Menagerie proprietor Edward Bostock had started out on his own in 1883 with the Grand Star menagerie, one among three large and six small touring menageries at that time in England.16 He recounted how an African-American, William Dellah, performed in a menagerie cage lion act under the stage name Sargano (I). A replacement had to be found, and a West Indian who went by the stage name Alicamousa (John Holloway Bright), became Sargano (II). Despite a mauling, Sargano (II) worked for Edward Bostock until 1891 when he left to start his own travelling menagerie. This was short-lived and he returned to Edward Bostock’s employ with a lion-wrestling act in a cage on London’s Oxford Music Hall stage. The handling act’s conception may have been influenced by the Greek myth of Hercules wrestling a lion. Sargano (II) twice got the lion up on his back legs and put his arms around the lion in a pretend wrestling match before pushing him away, even throwing him. The lion had to appear to win the first round. The act played for eight weeks before transferring with William Crockett to the USA to tour under Frank Bostock’s management.17 The performance of an African identity continued to revitalise the conventional animal-handling act, although a wrestling stunt was unreliable and not sustainable. The geographical performance, however, was now more likely to be shaped by human performance identity.

Savage economics

When the Mahdi people in the Sudan rose up against colonial rule (1882 to 1898), the trade in animals (and, most likely, people) transported northwards out of Africa to Europe was halted.18 Carl Hagenbeck looked for other options by searching maps of the world. A process of procurement and transportation of ‘Laplanders’, the first Arctic peoples to reach Germany, had started earlier, in 1875. It proved popular, and they had been presented to Emperor Wilhelm I. Hagenbeck’s subsequent ethnographic shows involved ‘Eskimos’ and ‘Somalis’, ‘Indians’, ‘Ceylonese’ (Sinhalese) and other ethnic groups, including Indigenous Australian people. The exhibition of humans in village life associated with animal exhibiting compounded ideas of physical difference in nature in the later decades of the 19th century. Native Americans from the Bella Coola River region were brought from Canada and Kalmyk people from the Russian Volga. Years later, in 1956, Lorenz Hagenbeck remembers: ‘The reason for all this was that in Europe an interest in colonial expansion had suddenly been awakened, and exhibitions of exotic living races drew enormous crowds.’19 He claims that in Berlin 93,000 people turned out to see the ‘Folk Exhibition of Kalmyks and Singhalese’ and this was followed by the ‘Grand Ceylon Show’, the latter including 25 elephants and their keepers. The size of the crowd may have been confronting for the elephants.

Lorenz Hagenbeck travelled in India in 1902 to transport elephants to Europe; he later remembers, interestingly, that ‘newly caught elephants cannot stand the smell of Europeans . . . But everywhere the drivers are the same, whether we know them as mahouts, oozies or kornaks.’20 The animals might have been an indistinguishable species to Lorenz, but here he seems to attribute a common identity to the indigenous riders. Yet he observes that the training methods for elephants in agricultural or tree-logging work in North India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Sumatra, Assam and Burma (Myanmar) did vary, as did the commands.

An ex-soldier with experience in a colonial region and even of a colonial war seemed to have the credentials to manage the transportation of animals and humans from a colony.21 Joseph Menges had been part of the Khartoum Sudan campaign (and the siege of 1884 and 1885) fought by General Gordon, and he was contracted by Carl Hagenbeck to travel to India to obtain animals. In 1893 Menges was put in charge of the Hagenbeck animal park in Neuer Pferdemarkt, Hamburg, and two years later he organised for a group of Somali people and their leader, Hersy Egeh, to travel to Hamburg from Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and to London for the Somaliland show. This was a career transition from safari hunting and military service to zoo and ethnographic management and logistics. The Hamburg animal park was shifted to Stellingen in 1896 with a Hagenbeck patent for the provision of a specially created artificial environment with fake nature for the viewing of the animals. The plan to build a utopian sanctuary from what Nigel Rothfels calls ‘a violent world’, however, and its struggle for survival with an illusion of freedom was not properly realised. Rothfels writes that ‘however much Hagenbeck and his followers wanted to put a positive spin on the company, it remained difficult to represent an enterprise that thrived on the capture, trade, and exhibition of animals and people as some kind of conservation organization.’22 The combination of human and animal exhibiting had popular appeal, but also met public resistance.

Scientific interests, political events and social curiosity in the 19th century supported the proliferation of ethnographic and zoological spectacles. In particular, the success of Farini’s Zulu shows inspired imitations through the years, including in the British colonies. In 1893 Fillis’ circus in Melbourne presented an enactment of the Zulu wars to capacity houses.23 When Wirth’s circus reached southern Africa from Australia that year with the Wild West segment in their show, the additional Zulu war re-enactment was stopped. Wirth’s then hired a group of Zulu warriors to leave southern Africa with the circus and to continue to South America with the tour. George Wirth explains: ‘We had on board with us as novelties a number of fine, big upstanding Zulus, a couple of Cape boys, a Hottentot, and a Bushman.’24 But the appearance of the Zulu warriors in Wirth’s show were thwarted. The company reached South America, whereupon a theatre manager, telephoning long distance from Buenos Aires, told George that he had heard about ‘a troupe of black people’ walking around ‘nearly naked’, and warned him that they needed to be fully dressed or there would be trouble with the authorities. George explained that the group were wearing their preferred ‘native’ dress and objected to wearing trousers and boots. No doubt this had the advantage of sensationally advertising the show. The Zulus, however, suddenly disappeared from the entourage before they appeared in the show, and George suspected that they may have been enticed or abducted to become cattle ranch workers.

Shows opportunistically presenting topical colonial themes increased in scale as they brought together practices in traded commodities, fighting demonstrations, and animal exhibition. Fillis later toured ‘Savage South Africa’ to London for the Greater Britain Exhibition of products from the colonies, organised by Imre Kiralfy in 1899 and 1900, following the great success of one-and-a-half million people attending his ‘India’ production and exhibition from 1895–96 with Indian and British officials.25 At the venue in Earls Court, Fillis’ spectacle in the evening included a re-enactment of the Matabele (Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) wars of 1893 and 1896 for English audiences. The huge outdoor exhibition included 200 indigenous Africans in 35 ‘kraal’ (village) huts against a painted veldt, as well as Boer families, and lions, tigers, leopards and baboons; elephants could be seen in an artificial dam, and three of the lions had the names of political figures: Cecil Rhodes, Oom Paul and Lobengula.26 Fillis’ show was very successful. The program’s racially demeaning commentary explains that this was ‘a sight never previously presented in Europe, a horde of savages direct from their kraals’.27 Ben Shephard proposes that the sheer size of the show partly explains its success.

The inclusion of African recruits in the show had been opposed in southern Africa, and the campaign continued as the troupe reached England. A representative of the British government explained it could not force Fillis’ troupe members to return home. While there was public criticism of ‘the action of the organizers in bringing over a large number of natives to be stared at’, there was praise for the realism of the dances and ‘methods of warfare’.28

Before leaving southern Africa, Fillis had advertised for participants, listing humans and animals together, requesting ‘horned animals, baboons, zebras, giraffe, koodo, springbucks, hartebeests’, and ‘Afrikander girls’ who needed to be light-skinned and ‘good-looking’.29 Shephard notes that an ‘expensive replica of the “Kaffir Kraal”’ that presented a view of the ‘savages’ at home for sixpence was only one part of the entertainment, and the full spectacle included circus war re-enactments. Alongside the horseriding and firing of rifles was the inclusion of a Maxim gun that allowed British spectators to recognise its ‘deadly’ effectiveness in colonial wars, although the spectators would not have appreciated the process of guerrilla warfare from this display. While the circus enactment of the 1893 First Matabele War involved the warriors preparing for war, it had Fillis playing the role of the military leader on horseback, and in the 1896 enactment there was an attack on a stagecoach and a white farmhouse by warriors – supposedly of Ndebele identity – which ended with the colonial farmer’s daughter committing suicide to avoid capture. The 19th-century ethnographic war act had acquired a narrative with close parallels to an American Wild West ‘cowboys and Indians’ war show, and the blend of genres did not escape contemporary observers. But the Times includes an interesting digression about the audience reactions to an episode in which ‘a native prisoner, who refuses to tell which way his chief had fled’ is shot by soldiers. The scene aroused loud sustained cheers of support for his bravery and the plot was changed because ‘our race has never been slow to recognize and respect courage in its foes’.30 (Note that even this episode needed to be framed as an indication of racial superiority.) In another show, however, when the ‘native dancers’ proved reluctant to end their performance, a galloping horseman was sent on to hasten the act’s finish.

A diverse range of African animals provided a picturesque, although not necessarily a realistic, addition to a display of human village life inclusive of methods of fighting. The menagerie animals in Fillis’ ‘Savage South Africa’ were background exhibits. They might have been exhibited in larger numbers than ever before, but such accompanying exhibitions were having less impact. The considerable success of the live show meant that an early film was made of it, which was shown widely throughout the colonies.31

Fillis’ spectacle with war re-enactments in London represented an enlarged and blended version of the menagerie and circus entertainment forms that had originally been exported out of England. It coincided with political revisions in the melodrama presented in spoken-word theatres about the English colonies. Penny Summerfield argues that dramas about the liberation of colonial regions, centring on a populist figure, that were staged in the music hall in the 1870s, were superseded in the mid-1890s by melodrama with a class bias to the victory – a change reinforced by an increasing disappearance of music hall venues.32 For example, ‘Cheer Boys Cheer’, written in 1895, depicted a group of upper-class English women warning British soldier heroes of the Matabele war preparations. Even colonial battle defeats had to appear triumphant on the stage, but by the 1890s the villains might also be other Europeans. Those later dramas depicted the victors as having social rank in England and being capable of defeating resistant colonial native peoples in ‘military spectacle and patriotic expression’; while these performances depicted indigenous inhabitants as the enemy, other characters from rival European nations could also not be trusted.33 It had become evident during the Sudan War (1882–98) that a simplistic narrative of the British or Europeans arriving to liberate colonial peoples could not accommodate sustained wars of resistance or territorial disputes among European nations, even after the 1885 Berlin division of colonial geography. The popularity of shows with Zulu warriors in Britain interestingly preceded the later spoken-word theatre emphasising military rank and overt class values.

John Springhall writes of campaigns against ‘Zulus, Ashanti, Afghans, Boers, Burmese and Sudanese’ as being initially ‘small-scale military campaigns’ leading to ‘the recurrent forcible and bloody suppression’ of local resistance.34 The war correspondents for newspapers included artists illustrating events. Artists in studios also created artworks that were reproduced cheaply, and Springhall argues that increased availability of such images was likely to romanticise such wars. Springhall continues that, while it is difficult to claim ‘cause and effect in the popular culture of imperialism . . . it is quite possible to speculate that popular art was just as important as war reporting or popular fiction’ in garnering support for government policies.

The large, all-encompassing 1899 to 1900 show presented by Fillis may or may not have encouraged popular support for British military ventures in Africa. To some extent its narrative undermined a message about the validity of courageous indigenous people engaging in warfare, which may have been more straightforward with Farini’s earlier show. But events surrounding Fillis’ show did bring to the fore issues of race and violence in the colonies that revealed a range of responses to the indigenous inhabitants. The complications of an interracial marriage by one of the Zulu performers working with Fillis revealed a social division between racist attitudes and racial tolerance towards the end of the 19th century. Fillis’ show included Peter Lobengula, billed as the son of the Matabele king, who had been taken prisoner during the Matabele War. While the show was successful, newspaper coverage increased noticeably once it emerged that the well-mannered and English-educated Lobengula, who may or may not have been from a royal family, was to marry an English woman, Kitty Jewell, whom he had met in southern Africa.35 Recognition of the nobility and bravery of indigenous warriors resisting British rule might have become acceptable by the 1890s, but the issue of interracial marriage with a warrior proved controversial and divisive, and made Lobengula and Jewell celebrities – and no doubt gave Fillis a publicity bonus. There was an impression that Lobengula achieved a quasi-hero status among female spectators in particular, suggesting that social attitudes to race in England were complicated – and possibly made more so by the popularity of theatrical depictions. Fillis went on to create a far bigger war spectacle with the ‘Anglo–Boer War’ re-enactment show in St Louis in the USA in 1904 (see later in this chapter). Colonial wars might have taken place in remote geographical regions, but involvement permeated most aspects of social life in the colonising nations. Certainly the figure of the fighter had become ubiquitous in animal acts.

Training aesthetics

In 1900 when Hagenbeck’s trainer, Julius Seeth, appeared with 21 lions at the long-awaited opening of the London Hippodrome, he was costumed in quasi-military dress.36 Hagenbeck trainers rose to prominence wearing evening dress, so even their acts had succumbed to the prevailing aesthetic of army dress by 1900. They were well known in London for a succession of complex multiple-species animal acts that demonstrated precision and reliable obedience by exotic wild animals. With the advent of well-trained animal acts during the 1890s, largely from Hagenbeck’s and Frank Bostock’s menagerie businesses, a big cat act in particular manifested both direct and indirect associations with the military. The costume conveyed dual, but paradoxical, impressions of implicit force to achieve submission and well-regulated discipline to maintain it.

While Seeth’s act was completely different to earlier menagerie cage acts, it could be aligned with a topical allusion to current events in several ways. There is a review of Seeth’s act in the Times, which also contained news about the Boer War and African colonies where European nations had deployed their forces. It was difficult to overlook how territorial acquisitions by Germany and Britain in east Africa encompassed areas with large numbers of wild animal species such as those in Seeth’s act. The reviewer praises the whole program for excellence, but Seeth’s ‘forest-bred lions’ are said to be ‘the sensation of the evening’, and received very enthusiastically.37 The review continues that he brings on 21 lions ‘and with a quiet confidence which compels admiration, which though the situation excites some trepidation, makes the great beasts do his bidding with perfect docility’. The lions are compared to dogs answering to their names. ‘If occasionally one snarls or claws at his trainer, Herr Seeth smiles and pats his nozzle, or if kindness is wasted, chases it round the ring with the whip.’ The trained animal act was so well controlled that antagonism from African lions received kindly gestures of understanding; the movement sequence and the use of the whip would have been part of the rehearsed show.

While the costume was indicative of broader wardrobe trends in the circus, the image of the soldier also underpinned the newer trained animal acts by 1900. The thick material of the uniforms usefully provided the trainer/presenter’s skin with some protection from incidental scratches. But perhaps this militarisation of human identity in big cat acts was also a covert response to political events, if not also implicitly responding to the popularity of war shows, including those featuring indigenous people. Certainly it reiterated the social esteem of the 19th-century soldier and firm beliefs about the social value of militarisation, as well as the century’s legacy of war dramas on theatre stages and war re-enactments with animals.

In reflecting on the advancements of the 19th century, and its successes and failures, social thinker Alfred Russel Wallace vividly criticises what he terms ‘militarization’ as a curse that held his society back, and although duelling wars between individuals were abolished in Britain and disappeared once these were officially forbidden to military men in the first half of the century, ‘the vampire of war’ among nations did not.38 The ‘war-spirit’ prevailed and escalated in the second half of the century. He described Europe as a vast military camp with greater numbers of military personnel than ever before.

Performance aesthetics reflected this militarised society. Towards the end of the 19th century the potential for some species of large exotic animals to be reliably trained for performance like horses had been achieved, and with comparable rhetoric about gentleness in training, although the animals were put through regimes of conditioning that seemed like quasi-military training.39 This was a transition from taming to training; from a generalised hit-and-miss and physical handling and pushing to the strictly regulated, complex routines of obedience with minimal handling that would become central to big cat and other acts from the 1890s. Importantly, the principles of training removed any physical shoving of the animals during the best of these acts; the trainer carried sticks, poles and other props for visual effect and to cue animals, but only made contact when absolutely necessary. Trained animals responded to verbal and visual cues and to the body position of the presenter and the other animals.

Older menagerie cage acts with a willing but inexpert handler who often had to provoke a relaxed group of lions to react were replaced by shows in which animal groups predictably moved on a cue that was often not seen by the spectators. The animals seemed to willingly take their seats on pedestals in a graduated pyramid formation at the beginning of an act. A small number of the trained animals coached to sit on pedestals proved capable of executing a sequence of complicated movements to deliver impressive physical feats on cue. Animals were reasonably cooperative and their movement was guided by a standard set of cues that could be learnt and given by different presenters. The animal performers learnt the routine so that it was often delivered by them with minimal instruction, and they might take their cues from other animals. While the dominant businesses by 1900 were exemplified by Hagenbeck’s and Frank Bostock’s shows in Europe and the USA,40 it was the Hagenbeck trading business, directly connected to an entertainment business and to Carl in particular, that eventually became synonymous with milder methods of conditioning the movement of exotic animals with rewards and coaxing; a training breakthrough possibly happened after Hagenbeck’s employed an ex-Bostock employee.41 The point here is that those trained gentler acts were created within a small interconnected network of trainers and it is likely that specialised knowledge was passed on. This was not so apparent for the earlier tamer acts.

In the Hagenbeck business, Carl and Wilhelm began developing circus acts after 1887 with male presenters wearing formal attire. The Hagenbecks would become highly successful by selling or hiring out to other circuses the complete finished act during the next 50 years. Initially Carl was able to select a small number of animals who proved especially cooperative and suitable for training to achieve what were understood as gentler and caring methods. Other trainers had less choice and had to work with the available animals, although there was far greater knowledge about big cat species, which made it easier to avoid the use of forceful methods in the initial training.

Because trainers passed on knowledge to each other, rumours abounded regarding how training was achieved. The rumours included notions that a trainer had to enter the cage for the first time naked in order to be smelt, or that the lions were drugged or hypnotised.42 But the ‘secrets’ to animal training were positive reinforcement with food and improved methods of animal care due to closer observation and greater understanding of a species’ physical attributes and of animal personalities. The successful menageries had the financial resources to support training and improved care. Nonetheless, in training after the 1880s, a lion was often restrained in an iron collar and chain while he or she became accustomed to having a human presence in the cage. A chain was needed as lions could bite through rope, and Conklin even put gloves on a lion’s paws and used a muzzle. While whip cracking could be discarded, Courtney Ryley Cooper notes that big cats were given a strong tap on their sensitive noses with a light stick or buggy whip if they misbehaved; he used a broom.43 It was trainers who also mentioned some of the subterfuge used in older menagerie acts, such as employing the smell of ammonia to rouse lions.44 Trainers responded to public scrutiny and changing social expectations by advocating training with rewards, but they generally avoided mention of punishments and the initial use of bodily restraints.45

Trained animal acts increased in number once training techniques were standardised. For example, Willy Peters worked for Frank Bostock’s during the 1890s and trained 36 tigers and 100 lions.46 Peters presented them running around and, for the act’s finale, the big cats jumped over him and blocked each other’s passage. Bostock’s training protocol first let animals play around the trainer. Next Peters had them ‘begin to run around the ring at top speed, but at his word of command they pulled up suddenly on their haunches, turned around and set off running in the opposite direction’. The chasing of a hunting act in a small cage was replaced by such controlled fast movement in a larger cage, and it was repetitively rehearsed. Peters trained a tiger to shake his hand, a second tiger to embrace him and a third to roar and snarl. He trained some to perform as if fighting him or as if obediently submissive and this dual division in trained styles continued. Trained fighting acts, however, were often perceived as a continuation of menagerie cage acts. Fighting acts with trained animals in the circus after the 1890s were, in most instances, highly orchestrated routines.

Within the program in the circus ring there was an increasing number of other trained animal acts from the menagerie by the early 1890s. For example, there were white doves that landed on an apparatus held by an elegant female trainer in evening dress, and instrument-playing shiny seals balancing objects on their noses. Seals and sea lions were first trained by Captain Joseph Woodward in the 1880s and the acts were further developed by the Judge brothers.47 John Tiebor coached a sea lion for two years before exhibiting it, and Albert Rix from Hagenbeck’s took three years to teach a seal to stand on one flipper.48 Big cats were not necessarily the most dangerous animal performers to train. Bears were considered extremely difficult to work with, although street acts with brown bears long preceded the invention of the early modern menagerie and circus. Polar bears were introduced into acts, and Wilhelm Hagenbeck may have been the first to develop this act as a speciality. The popularity of novel animal acts created demand, but highly trained animals were expensive to acquire because training was time-consuming and only some animals had the personalities to cooperate in the presentation of complex feats.49

A range of costumed identities in the act did continue, in keeping with the diverse aesthetics of the circus. The precedent set by 19th-century pantomimes and processions with large menagerie animals meant that some leading presenters perpetuated orientalist fancies by wearing more theatricalised costumes of baggy trousers, glitter and turbans. A fantasy persona evoked an imaginary world and an exoticism shared with the animals. Fantasy identities perpetuated the earlier 19th-century belief that the presenters had special abilities that made wild animals obey them.

Richard Sawade was a leading trainer with Hagenbeck’s, performing until 1919 in a signature fanciful costume of an Indian rajah, suggesting mysterious powers, as he cued tigers to leap from pedestal to pedestal and to pose in tiered groupings.50 Trainers heightened the excitement of the act through their delivery, and Sawade reportedly became such a celebrity in Russia that, after a performance, a crowd even pulled his sleigh, and he received numerous presents from the tsar and aristocratic spectators.51 Born in the Prussian town of Drossen, Sawade toured internationally and extensively promoted Hagenbeck’s ‘gentling’ method of training. Sawade’s act, although not his costumed persona, went without him to the USA with his student Rudolf Matthies, who instead wore a military-style costume.52 Sawade retired to become the general manager of a travelling circus. He was accorded honorary membership of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Britain, and Matthies was the first animal trainer to be awarded the German Animal Protection Medal.53 Thus, Hagenbeck’s reputation for a gentler approach was legitimised.

Official recognition that the newer training approaches were encouraging humane methods in animal care was indicative of a major shift in social responses against the way 19th-century animal acts in the menagerie were staged and interpreted. Big cats could now be viewed by the public away from small cages. The animal acts that left behind the menagerie precincts gave a distinct impression that they had moved beyond the harsher treatment of captive animals during previous decades.

Regardless of whether a presenter adopted a softer exotic costume or a uniform, by the early 20th century animals were trained in similar ways to be either quietly obedient or noisily confrontational. The aesthetic of a military costume heightened the impact of the animal act and gave it a particular slant, with trainers often adapting the military dress worn in warmer climates and by safari hunters. Since some trainers were ex-soldiers, the costumes had the added effect of eliding the distinction between animal training for performance and military training for battle. The presumption of violent action was displaced by the display of preparatory discipline.

Hero of the military

Admired for his control of a record number of 27 lions, Captain Jack Bonavita wore a military-style costume in a comparatively quiet act by 1900. He was called a ‘hero’ by the American vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt, at the Pan-American Exhibition in 1901 and was praised for his ‘pluck’.54 The exhibition included a display of buildings lit by electricity as well as the sideshow entertainments, which included the Frank Bostock lion act and exhibited elephants. Working for Frank Bostock, ex-acrobat John Gentner, who took on the stage name Captain Bonavita, had the largest group of lions in one act by the turn of the 20th century. He was photographed c. 1903 completely surrounded by lions, with only his head and shoulders visible. General Miles, impressed by the act, wrote to Frank Bostock commending Bonavita’s control over the lions as ‘truly remarkable’. Bostock agreed, commenting that Bonavita gave the impression of ‘a refined and courteous gentleman’, one ‘peculiarly reserved’.55 Bonavita’s stoic demeanour and military costume meant that he appeared to manage the lions with minimal effort, and his dress and manner were assumed to be the indicators of manly virtue.56 The trainer’s stoicism might have suggested that the act’s big cats were docile, and the assumption was that Bonavita had induced this placid behaviour. He began his performance by getting the lions to assume their positions on their pedestals, and he walked among them; apparently verbal commands were minimal. It is likely that the trained lion performers followed the visual cues provided by Bonavita’s bodily position and gestures. A male trainer calmly confronting potentially aggressive animal performers was clearly socially esteemed.

In a 1911 account, Bonavita describes training animals through a very slow, gradual process of familiarisation with him, the equipment and other animals, including other species, as he worked each day for months to get them ready to be included in an act. He started by reaching into the cage, snapping a collar around the lion’s neck and using an attached rope to pull the lion over to drinking water so the lion understood that there was a reason for the treatment. He carefully observed the temperament and behaviour of an individual animal, and created a pattern of movement to suit. For example, action on the ground for a lion that would not climb steps or get onto a pedestal with food inducements, or sitting action if one would not lie down. An animal was gradually coaxed into position, one paw at a time, until he or she accepted an action such as balancing. He writes: ‘they realize they must go through the routine of their tricks before they can eat’.57 Bonavita discloses that after training a lion to ride an elephant, he earned US$500 a week, which reveals how human trainers were motivated by the considerable financial rewards.

In one photograph, Bonavita appears carrying a large lion across his shoulders in awkward prominence, as if a lion could be a pet or an object. The live animal worn like a fur piece demonstrated supreme obedience to a human master. Bonavita became well known in the USA after appearing there, and he had at least 50 accidents in the ring, eventually losing an arm in an attack by the lion Baltimore, who nonetheless remained in the act.58 Bonavita died in 1917 when he was attacked by a polar bear while working in films for Selig’s menagerie in Los Angeles.

The animal trainer had acquired a status akin to that of a military hero by 1900. The dominance of large animals was underscored by a presenter’s military identity, including a title.59 In a studio photograph, Bonavita posed in jackboots and thick leather gloves to the elbows, the uniform of a calvaryman or a lion tamer. Similarly the Hagenbeck trainer Julius Seeth’s appearance in an act with obedient wild animals made him seem to be ‘the hero of it, whose frame is certainly cast in the heroic mould’, and he ‘was recalled again and again’ at the end.60 Even though this was performance, ideas of heroism were manifest in the control of live wild animals, providing a presenter could look the part of a hero. Donald Mrozek explains that the outward appearance and style of a military man was crucial, since ‘Victory was central but so was the manner of its attainment. Gentlemen officers did not “fake it”, nor did those few who were promoted to the ranks of heroes’.61 Trained acts benefited from such expectations irrespective of fake identities in performance.

A trained act was a display of self-control by the animals. But it was understood as a display of control over the animals. An extended description of Bonavita’s management of the lion performers outlines how his ‘self-possessed’ calm and mastery overcame their hostile behaviour.62 The spectators, too, were responding to a visual impression of a soldier as if a truly ‘manly’ hero simply communicated self-discipline to the animals who followed his example.

Training animals did align with regimes of military training to develop and maintain the habitualised patterns of movement for performance, while the costumes helped confirm their control for audiences. Particular businesses used the skills of individual trainers who disseminated processes of training. For example, Hungarian-born Louis Roth made his debut as an adolescent animal presenter with Frank Bostock’s in the USA, dressed as a French army general, and after working with Hagenbeck-trained animals went on to become a seminal influence on animal training in the USA through his training of leading acts and presenters at the Al G Barnes circus.63 The animal act depended on orchestrated routines combined with animal care, but it built on shared specialist knowledge developed over time that was attuned to basic requirements for the good health and survival of increasingly expensive animals. The human performance identity reassured the public about animal control and care.

As specialised trained big cat acts flourished and the more ad hoc 19th-century menagerie cage entertainments gradually disappeared, the trainer’s costume, which might be a horseriding outfit with knee-high boots, or a soldier safari hunting suit, was a central visual sign of control over animals. The big cat act became enmeshed in a type of hyper-masculine display that upheld social ideals of obedience. At the same time, away from small cages, assumptions of gentlemanly self-restraint also allayed fears about how the animals were treated and implicitly confirmed a socially admirable behaviour extended to horses and to wild animals. Regardless of twists in faked national identity, the standard costuming affiliated these acts with the social esteem accorded national armies and the cavalrymen, while it also indirectly continued to prefigure the conquest of colonial regions and the ensuing displacement of the inhabitants, including the animals. Imitative uniforms continued to be part of trained animal acts until the mid-20th century.

In complete contrast to the quiet, ‘manly’ militarism of Bonavita and Seeth were the trained acts that staged confrontational fight scenarios. Courtney Ryley Cooper provides a detailed, if emotionally embellished, account of an anonymous trained lion routinely performing in a fighting act.

The lion was trained to play the role of an attacking animal, completely rehearsed to appear ferocious on cue – the trained action was different to menagerie acts. The acts were typically expected to show a contrast between a ferocious effect and graceful movement and trainer triumph. The quieter act conveyed a more subtle ideal of military manliness that competed with brazen fighting acts, but both aligned with longstanding cultural ideas of human triumph over nature.

Elephant drills for Wonderland

Elephants were a particularly popular part of the larger spectacles by the late 19th century, and because they were caught up in a penchant for military-like movement in animal acts. But there was an insidious underlying violence behind trained elephant acts. RW Thompson writes that ‘the fashion in animals was always changing’, and in the ‘nineties elephants were the popular fancy’.65 The consequence of this popularity was that increasing numbers of elephants were acquired from the wild and brought to submission. The process of elephant submission remained physical and often harsh, and elephants who did not submit were deemed unreliable for performance. If retained, they remained in the menagerie with a wide variety of other species.

Early in his working life George Conklin taught four elephants to do a military-like drill as a group. The drill involved marching movements before they stopped and turned together on command. Elephants were expected to contribute to acts for an admiring or comic response. Conklin eventually became the head trainer with BB and toured throughout the USA and to London’s Olympia Hall and grounds in 1896 and 1897. He had more than 30 years’ experience working with and teaching tricks to elephants by the time BB opened in London with a grand parade and three separate herds of elephants. These ‘wonderfully educated’ elephants included Conklin’s ‘herd of large elephants in new and novel dances, feats and tricks of all kinds’, William Newman with baby elephants performing tricks, and George M Bates presenting elephants in ‘difficult and intricate feats’.66 Later in the program, the circus promoted ‘cleverly trained animals’ as a ‘children’s number’, and one act with ‘Comicalities and Humorous Feats’ with Juno, the baby elephant. Whether it was overtly signalled in the act or not, all feats involved a type of drill to achieve co-ordinated elephant movement.

Conklin learnt a basic approach to managing elephants by observing Stuart Craven at work for more than two years c. 1868, when Craven visited O’Brien’s circus to assist with the elephants (see also Chapter 5). The first elephant Conklin worked with was Queen Annie, who was 35 at that time and weighed 4.5 tons (4.6 tonnes). For the performance, Conklin wore a black velvet suit with vertical gold stripes down the trousers as he trotted and walked Queen Annie around the ring. He instructed her, with a whip, to lift each of her legs high and to move to the beat of the stick in a Spanish trot, and to the tune of ‘Coming Through the Rye’.67 Since the circus music was played live, it could be adjusted to suit the elephant’s movements.68 Conklin taught Queen Annie to walk as if she had a lame foot, to vary the limping foot, and to untie a handkerchief from her leg. The act’s climax involved Conklin lying down on a carpet, and Queen Annie stepping over him and then slowly kneeling down sideways over his body. Conklin taught her these tricks using an elephant hook; her movements were learnt to avoid the hook, and she would react quickly to the hook in her skin. During the final kneeling feat, Conklin held the hook or a nail as protection.

When Conklin was starting out, he found that a trick elephant had been advertised by WW Cole’s circus in San Francisco, although the circus did not have an elephant who could do tricks. Cole instructed Conklin to simply walk Tom Thumb and unusually small, 35-year-old, three-ton Indian elephant around the ring. But Conklin encouraged an unsuspecting co-performer to lie down in the ring, and he walked Tom Thumb over him several times. Conklin also taught another elephant to walk across a ‘tightrope’. It took months to achieve this feat, in which the elephant learnt to walk across a low plank carrying a balance pole in his trunk. The height of the plank was gradually raised and the elephant walked up a ramp at either end. The plank was eventually exchanged for timber embedded in rope, so it looked to the audience as though the elephant was walking a tightrope. Conklin also coached an elephant to walk on a row of wooden bottles and the elephant learnt to turn the key to his stable, and to throw objects. Conklin worked with the aforementioned Lallah Rookh as well (see Chapter 3).

In the elephant group that learnt the military drill at Cole’s circus, there was an elephant who was taught to sit on a chair at a table opposite Conklin. The elephant held a fan and rang a bell insistently until a clown waiter returned with a water bottle containing water sweetened with molasses. Conklin, wearing a top hat and tails, would stand up and leave his hat on the chair, and the elephant would then sit on Conklin’s chair, squashing his hat, which invariably received loud laughter from the audience. An elephant was taught to sit by fastening his or her back legs and being forced into the chair, and by having an elephant hook put into his or her skin folds.

Elephants were initially prepared for performance with forceful equipment and with extreme force to achieve a head stand. Through his experiences of teaching individuals, Conklin became effective at training groups. He used an elephant’s aversion to the elephant hook to make him or her move as required. A rope sling through a pulley lifted the hind quarters in order to get an elephant into a head stand against a brick wall until the elephant could do the trick on a verbal command without the equipment or the wall. There was a reward of a carrot at the end of that extremely brutal initial conditioning. Similarly an elephant was taught to lie down by being pulled down on command. Conklin devised or at least adapted most of the harnesses, hobbles and tackles used with elephants in late 19th-century American circus.

Elephants and other animals were divided between those who could be trained for the circus ring and those who were untrained and remained in the menagerie exhibition. By the early 1900s, in complete denial of the force used behind the scenes, the BB menagerie was called ‘Wonderland of Mystery and Delight’, presenting a space of imaginative fantasy that included the ‘grand vestibule’ in which ‘Animal Land’ required an hour to view.69 This was where ‘wild beasts of every clime are exhibited in a condition as near to nature as the exigencies of travel will permit’. Two pages of the BB program in 1903 and 1904 present an educational format with an informative diagram that has a wide range of animal species drawn within two circles, and additionally grouped in bands across the circles according to their geographic and climatic zones, from the Arctic to southern temperate regions. The BB menagerie claims to be comprehensive. ‘It may also be remarked that, with a very few exceptions, the [BB] exhibit comprises every beast, bird or reptile mentioned in Natural History’.70 The exceptions were probably those that could not survive in the menagerie. Descriptive entries summarising animal species and their behaviour were still in programs in 1915 along with narrative embellishments.71

On tour across the USA in 1903, models of American warships were promoted in conjunction with the BB menagerie, which proclaimed itself a menagerie of ‘superexcellence’ with the largest and best animals, in a strange juxtaposition of military tribute and circus animal advertising. By 1905 the menagerie had become ‘a congress of wild beasts’, but the 1905 program also directly instructs the reader about what the menagerie meant to viewers and how animals were captured.

The 1905 program reinforces how a visit to the BB menagerie provided educational stimulus, whether the spectator was an adult seeking to broaden his or her general knowledge or a child familiar with nursery rhymes. But the program description also outlines the violence in hunting as though it is considered part of the educational information and explains in detail how giraffes were hunted and caught. Once a group was found, long fences coming to a point at one end were erected and ‘[s]everal thousand natives were then sent to form a semicircle around the copse where the giraffes were browsing, while the white men of the expedition got behind the animals and drove them in toward the corral’.72 It describes how the so-named ‘natives’ prevented giraffes from escaping sideways by ‘wildly yelling’ and ‘waving their spears’. Eventually, four so-called ‘specimens’ for the BB menagerie were driven into the point of the corral while another two were killed. The commentary explains that the four giraffes in the BB menagerie had recovered from their homesickness and had even adapted to ‘American’ food such as hay and vegetables, so it was no longer necessary to import African foliage.

Larger-bodied animals were promoted as very good-looking specimens of their species. The black African male rhinoceros displayed by BB in 1905 was called a particularly good-looking representative of the species – presumably he was deemed ugly in comparison with other animals. When he was in a bad mood, a keeper entering the cage would be unlikely to escape alive. The hippopotamus was still identified as the Bible’s ‘blood-sweating Behemouth [sic]’, although he or she did not sweat blood but a protective fluid.73 But no animal was more majestic than a male lion such as Prince, a ‘perfect specimen’, captured from the African jungle, rather than born in captivity. It was also possible to see Nelly, a well-behaved lioness who had raised 40 cubs in captivity, two herds of elephants that would perform feats, the finest specimens of tigers, claimed as the equal of any seen in the wild, and numerous other animals.

While the BB program contained extensive information about menagerie animals, its zoological department also appears to have contained human ethnographic displays. Yet the BB menagerie was presented as being indicative of the American democratic ethos according to which the human spectators in the crowd – if not the exhibited indigenous people – were all equal . The 1905 program explains that the ‘laborer [could be] glad that in this representative American crowd each man is as good as his fellow’, with the same capacity for enjoyment.74 The BB 1905 program describes the crowd waiting for the menagerie to open:

The crowd visiting BB’s Wonderland, however, had to be regimented. The program informed the spectators how to behave and what to do once the whistle signalled that the menagerie was open. In a revealing description in 1905, there was a hint that the size of the crowd could intimidate, as ‘the ocean-like roar of the throng’ suggested an experience that was potentially bewildering and overwhelming. Reassuring descriptions of the social types to be found in the crowd were offered, possibly to offset the poor reputation of travelling shows. As long as a spectator focused on the exhibited animals, his or her visit could not go amiss. It was the guidance of the ‘polite attendants’ that would facilitate movement in one direction, ‘instead of being tossed from side to side like a boat adrift in the sea’.75 It is interesting that the program provided reassurance about distress caused by the pressure of the crowd. It suggests this was a problem, and that clearly a visit to Wonderland was not quite as magical as the name implied. By 1905 the BB audience was organised to follow a structured and managed circuit, and spectators had limited freedom to wander as they once did around menageries in the mid-19th century. The path through the menagerie ended at the seats for the circus ring, and the music of the Carl Clair Military Band encouraged spectators to hurry and take their seats for the circus spectacle. Even circus music evoked the regulated order of a military parade ground.

‘War elephants’

An imposing African or Indian elephant became an indispensable part of the circus spectacle and, costumed for a fantasy act, they created a grandiose impression of indomitable strength. The BB circus developed ‘The Durbar of Delhi’ procession as a feature of the circus show after 1904.76 The 1905 BB program describes the crowd’s progression through the menagerie to a seat at the circus in order to see the preliminary spectacle of magnificent ‘war elephants capped with mammoth howdahs, bearing the viceroy and vicereine of India’, the representatives of the royal family in this ‘land of mystery’.77 There were also performers in the costumes of British officers on horseback in Horse Guards uniforms and maharajahs on elephants in the ‘costliest of silks and satins and cloth of gold’, and ‘a troop of native soldiers’ riding camels followed by ‘mystic priests’. The procession included the re-enactment of Indian princes and a Siamese prince making a ceremonial tribute to the viceroy and vicereine, who represented ‘Imperial power’.

The entertainment was based on events in India in January 1903, when Edward VII of England had become Emperor of India. The British expanded on the longstanding practice of creating durbars in India by developing a special durbar ceremony for the occasion, and invited all the regional rulers within British India and the extended empire to attend and to recognise the king as emperor. King Edward VII was represented by his viceroy, Lord Curzon, who was accompanied by his wife, Mary.

The Delhi Durbar re-enactment was ideal for a turn-of-the-century circus animal show. Additionally this re-enactment suited American audiences because Mary was American. The political event fully justified a spectacle combining military and orientalist fantasy costumes and costumed elephants and horses together. An illustration accompanying the 1905 BB magazine article depicts a performer as Lady Curzon in a long dress and wide-brimmed hat, climbing onto a seated elephant to take her place between an Indian mahout driver and a servant holding a large sun umbrella. Her status was raised in the American circus version of the Delhi Durbar ceremony to a starring role.

In exploring the negotiation of American identity in the context of the British Raj, Nicola Thomas outlines how Mary was deemed an ‘American Queen in India’ in 1899, possibly to the annoyance of her husband. The Curzons arrived in India in 1898 and left in 1905, and from the outset Mary received widespread newspaper coverage that identified her as the most important woman in colonial Indian society. Thomas explains that ‘Mary was positioned at the pinnacle of society within the Raj, a culture that was obsessed with precedent, ceremony and hierarchy’.78 As the wife of the viceroy she was constantly involved in official duties and hosting formal social events. These duties included entertaining military leaders and accepting the views of her husband that Britain needed to maintain a military presence throughout the empire. Mary acted as a ‘conduit for ideas’, including that Indian and other troops from the British colonies should be sent to fight in the Boer War in South Africa.

The BB re-enactment of the Delhi Durbar procession and ceremony lasted more than 15 minutes, with the stand-in for Mary and other historical figures sitting on elephants, although it obscured the political purpose of the occasion. It expanded the longstanding 19th-century circus practices of depicting historical figures, romantic couples and a victory parade, and followed BB’s depiction of ‘Oriental India’ in 1896. The latter claimed to show Ceylonese and Indian life, but Janet Davis calls this an ‘immutable cultural landscape’.79 The circus spectacle might have reduced the Delhi Durbar event to a fantasy of rich dress fabric and exotic animals, but it did implicitly validate royal power and authority in colonial contexts. This type of pageant with elephants conveyed an impression that the USA could be aligned with Britain and the rest of Europe in their control of other regions of the world.

Deadly punishments

The glorious orientalist spectacle with a large number of elephants was achieved at considerable physical cost to the animals in captivity. The inclusion of an increasing number of elephants in all levels of circus show belied how their management was fraught with difficulty. Brutal punishments continued to be practised throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century towards elephants, some of whom fought back, resisted captivity or became violent. There seemed to be an assumption in the later decades of the 19th century that once an elephant reached a mature age it might need to be killed. Elephants were expensive for circuses, so the animals were punished by methods that seem like torture, and an elephant was only killed as a last resort. Paul Chambers details how elephants, including Jumbo, were physically punished for misbehaviour at London’s zoo.80 At the time of Jumbo’s exhibition in the USA in 1883 and 1884, WW Cole’s circus presented an even larger elephant, Sampson, used for children’s rides with up to 20 on his back at one time. Sampson went on a rampage in the menagerie, throwing cages of animals around the tent until George Conklin shot the elephant in the trunk.81 Sampson started to chase Conklin, who was, at the time, in his lion tamer costume and riding a horse with a Mexican saddle. On Cole’s instruction Sampson was tied up and severely beaten with tent stakes as punishment, although he survived. Sampson died in a menagerie fire at Bridgeport in 1887.

Elephants that became unmanageable were often shot. Conklin, however, devised an alternative process by which he choked an elephant to death in about 10 minutes as ‘the easiest and most humane way’. When Don the elephant escaped BB’s in 1889 in England, James Bailey, the owner of BB, ordered him killed. Conklin explains that he had three stakes driven into the ground around Don:

Conklin believed that this caused less suffering than other methods such as poisoning and shooting, in which an elephant took longer to die or was maimed but did not die. Conklin’s method, however, involved using an unsuspecting second elephant in the process of the killing.

Fritz was another elephant whom Conklin strangled in this way. While onstage for BB in New York at Madison Square Garden, Conklin perceived that Fritz was about to attack him with his tusks, and so he ran quickly through Fritz’s legs and offstage without bowing. Conklin had taught Fritz to sit up, hold up his front legs and trunk, and then let Conklin climb onto his back and head and hold up his trunk. The finale of the act involved the elephant group standing in a row and putting their front legs on the hips of the elephant in front, while Fritz at the front of the row lowered his head for Conklin to step onto his tusks. While the other elephants exited, Fritz took a bow with Conklin by lowering and raising his head. After the performance in which Fritz had seemed ready to instigate an attack, Conklin tied Fritz up and gave him ‘a good punishing’, to which the elephant submitted. In France several years later Fritz bolted and had to be chained. Bailey ordered that Fritz be killed, although this was against Conklin’s wishes. The body of Fritz was skinned and stuffed, and placed in the local museum at Tours for scientific study.

Also at BB, when the elephant Mandarin killed a keeper who was cleaning up, Bailey instructed that Mandarin’s crate be duly dropped into the ocean. Some elephants retaliated against their treatment, but their capacity to fight back was restricted. In another incident an elephant threw off a human rider and tore his body in half. If an elephant reacted out of fright, startled by unexpected elements in their environment, their head or trunk might accidentally crush a human to death.

Elephant death usually took place away from public view. In an exception at Coney Island on 4 January 1905, Topsy was electrocuted in a publicised event that was also filmed by Thomas Edison.83 She was accused of killing three keepers, one of whom had, earlier in her life, burnt her with a lit cigar. It is difficult to know if the keeper’s deaths were accidents or whether Topsy was taking revenge for an earlier offence. Circus annals record a number of situations that provoked extreme reactions and accidents between elephants and humans, resulting in a fatality.84 The domination of elephants in order for humans to achieve close proximity to them continued to require brutal physical methods of control and punishment.

‘Elephant etiquette’ and war veterans

In the early 20th century Hagenbeck’s sent its largest contingent of elephants and animals to date to the USA, only to have its new animal show with innovative painted backdrops outdone by a war re-enactment mounted by Frank Fillis. In 1904 Reuben Castang supervised and presented the 20 elephants in an act for Carl Hagenbeck’s trained animal show performing at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St Louis World’s Fair. By then the world leaders in trained animal shows were reported to demonstrate humane animal acts as the result of gentle training that led to well-behaved and cooperative animals. In 1904, however, the trained animal act was completely overshadowed by Fillis’ realistic full-scale Boer War re-enactment with hundreds of animals and thousands of specimens. Even Hagenbeck’s penultimate show could not equal the interest generated by the immense scale of Fillis’ war spectacle, which attracted up to 25,000 spectators per performance. The staged event not only demonstrated the global spread of the war re-enactment genre, but also revealed how increasingly larger war re-enactments had become inseparable from other types of animal entertainment.

Castang travelled with Lorenz Hagenbeck and the Hagenbeck elephants as part of Hagenbeck’s shipment of 150 animals and 30 trainers sent from Hamburg to New York in 1904.85 This was the largest group of exotic animals transported that year across the Atlantic, and Carl gave the responsibility for the safe sea transportation of the animals to his son, Lorenz, instructing him not to lose a single elephant.86 The shipment included 36 elephants, some of whom went to Ringling Bros Circus, some to the menagerie at Coney Island’s Luna Park, and the rest to the St Louis show. Luna Park at Coney Island had the world’s largest fixed-venue menagerie at that time. Once landed, the elephants were transported from the dock in wooden boxes on top of carts, which had to be cut down to get under rail bridges, so the elephants who stuck out of the top of each box had to bend down. The arrivals attracted considerable newspaper publicity and crowds lined the streets to see the elephants pass by. The elephants destined for the St Louis show then travelled by train with Castang accompanying them.

While elephant performances pandered to misconceptions of ease in human–animal relations, behind the scenes even the most experienced keeper approached a familiar elephant with caution, first calling out the elephant’s name. Castang, who conditioned the elephants sold by Hagenbeck’s to circuses, explains that ‘elephant etiquette’ was premised on coming close to an elephant and standing quietly still, while the elephant inspected the person with his or her trunk and then permitted stroking.87

Castang’s first act with six trained elephants debuted in Vienna. He later toured with Hagenbeck’s circus in Europe, where he gained a reputation as an elephant trainer and all-round ‘animal man’. Castang’s father and grandfather were London animal dealers, and the family, of German-Swiss origin, seems to have had a menagerie shop in London from the mid-18th century. Family members definitely assisted when Chuny, the elephant who was later killed by firing squad in the Exeter Exchange building, apparently developed toothache in London. In 1893 Carl Hagenbeck took the then 13-year-old Castang back with him to the Hamburg zoo theme park to undertake his adolescent apprenticeship. RW Thompson reports that Castang found elephants graceful and ‘not only beautiful but sad’.88 He nursed a sick female elephant, Bedelia, and began learning elephant care under Julius Wagner. Castang learnt the verbal instructions derived from Hindi for Indian elephants, such as ‘come here’, ‘kneel’ and ‘move quickly’, as well as the elephant’s physical ways of communicating hunger, happiness and anger. He described learning how to be the first human to sit on an elephant brought from the wild, and through a range of emergency situations he learnt how to avert disaster and to stop a stampede.

The 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, opened remotely by Theodore Roosevelt through the telegraph system, had pavilions showing geographical features and people from around the globe in a travel extravaganza that included an exhibit derived from Jules Verne’s novel, Around the world in eighty days.89 The lions and tigers in the Hagenbeck’s menagerie entertainment proved especially popular, with an exhibition space designed for spectators to look down on them from above. A joint American–Hagenbeck business venture, the Pavilion was a complex with a circus arena and fenced-off viewing areas called ‘jungle, primeval forest, fjord and pack ice landscapes’, created with painted backdrops developed by Hagenbeck’s. The ‘Arctic Ocean Panorama’ appeared on the cover of Scientific American.90 The painted backdrops of scenes that had long been used in theatres to depict major events, such as battles or disasters, had also been developed for other venues, including menageries and museums. In St Louis, painted panoramas and live animals staged ideas of the geographical diversity and encapsulated landscapes in remote places.

Castang led the elephants up to a platform, where he sent them down a chute into a tank of water.91 The Hagenbeck’s show was positioned next to the Japanese village and in front of a Wild West Hotel that had riding displays by ‘Apaches, Sioux, Winnebagos and Senecas’, which Lorenz describes as the most genuine shows he had seen.92 Other attractions included buffalo dancing by Native Americans, mail-coach hold-ups and shooting displays. Forewarned about a fire threat by a letter ‘from an animal-loving gangster’ fond of elephants, Lorenz moved some animals and had others ready to move, managing to save them when fire did break out towards the close of the fair, although the newspapers mistakenly reported the destruction of the animal show by fire.

Hagenbeck’s St Louis animal show went on tour and Lorenz and Castang became part of the ‘Giant Circus and Wild Animal Show’. Castang would later appear at the New York Hippodrome with a troupe of elephants in the autumn of 1907. The act with 12 elephants was the first time such a large herd had appeared on a stage, although they worked on a 120-foot (36 m) section in front of it. Castang, in top hat and tails with lavender gloves, rode the lead elephant at the end of the act. He added gimmicks such as two elephants seeming to waltz, and painted one animal, Patsy, green for St Patrick’s Day.93

Perceptions that elephants have a greater individuality compared with other animals from the wild, and claims that elephants were human-like in their responses, were reinforced with human-like action and framing in such elephant acts. While trained elephants had become entrenched in modernist entertainment and dominated animal shows in the USA, strong competition came from escalated fighting displays and war re-enactments.

Frank Fillis had been approached to stage an event with war veterans led by Captain Arthur Waldo Lewis from St Louis, who had fought in the Boer War and wanted veterans to enact aspects of the war for audiences at the 1904 Fair.94 The shareholder company that financed and organised the show for US$195,000 on 10 acres (4 ha) in St Louis approached Fillis to re-create the Anglo–Boer War. Fillis obtained a large amount of artillery, three machine-guns and 600 horses and recruited 50 indigenous people from Africa, reportedly with Sotho identity. He was urged to represent the war victories of both sides.

The outdoor re-enactment space was large and allowed the horses and riders to move around as if on a battlefield. In a substantial stunt, Fillis taught 50 horses to lie down and lie still as if shot dead, to simulate battlefield carnage, and this became a celebrated feature of the St Louis show (Plate 7).95 The circus trick of teaching one horse to limp or play dead dating from Philip Astley’s original feats had been greatly magnified in the early 20th century with the coaching of such a large number. The visual effect was a realistic battlefield to scale, with ‘dead horses’.

The record-breaking size of this spectacle was unparalleled. The amphitheatre for 25,000 spectators contained a Boer encampment, a British military camp, a kraal for an indigenous leader, Chief Umkalali, and representatives of 60 different African nations as well as an enormous exhibition of artefacts. The live equestrian battle re-enactment happened in conjunction with a display of dead animal specimens that included 47 lion skins, 100 leopard skins, 400 kaross skins, buffalo horns and ivory. The specimen exhibition alone almost seemed like a major museum collection. By the turn of the 20th century, the museum, menagerie, circus and war re-enactment had converged into one huge spectacle, and a version subsequently went on tour in the USA.

The main show, the re-enactment of the Boer War, was described in the bulletin of the World’s Fair as a hit.96 Turning away 10,000 spectators at the opening on 17 June 1904, the war re-enactment proved highly successful with two shows daily; the season ran until 2 December 1904. The program opened with British war veterans, followed by Boer veterans and the artillery display; part one concluded with horse races in which the Australian Boer war veteran contingent from the New South Wales Lancers did a sword demonstration. Part two involved the enactment of the Battle of Colenso – a key battle between British and Boer soldiers in 1899 – with gunfire and cannons. The horses falling down dead as casualties of war and laying motionless were particularly praised, and one even limped off.

Floris van der Merwe notes one interesting deviation in mid-August from the main program. In a revealing cultural convergence of hunting and war re-enactment, the British contingent staged a fox hunt with 50 dogs (probably under Frank Fillis’ direction). There was also a regular circus program presented during November.

The bulletin of the World’s Fair describes the main show of the Boer War re-enactment as the largest spectacle staged in the USA,  ‘ahead of all predecessors’, ‘a triumph of genius, its setting a work of tragic art’, and a ‘fascinating and captivating entertainment’.97 Those attending the whole St Louis World’s Fair could move from colonial battlefield, war re-enactment and indigenous village displays to seeing lion, tiger and elephant acts and other animals in circus and menagerie collections. The struggle to achieve animal exhibition converged with the violence that displaced people and led to war. Any distinctions between event and venue, circus and menagerie, war re-enactment and ethnographic show, live and dead specimen were obviated as all known elements of entertainment with animals had been brought together, side by side, in the one mammoth exposition.

Popular spectacles of this type, if not of similar scale, were also evident in Britain and Europe. The regular use of entertainment spaces that could accommodate larger numbers of people delivered an insidious slippage between military parades and other spectacles held at the same venues. At London’s Agricultural Hall, with its history of fairground entertainments, and later at the Olympia, it was possible to see the reproduction of a military tournament one day and, on another, to see a menagerie and circus. Venues that spanned the menagerie to the military potentially also reached the same audiences, but it is difficult to evaluate whether attendance at those shows indicated regular habits, tacit support for imperialist ventures, or simply a publicised event that everyone wanted to see.

In the convergence of popular entertainments, colonial exhibits became embedded in the wider context of fighting shows. For example, the shows produced by the English performer, manager and show entrepreneur Charles Cochran, marketed to a wide audience, ranged from conventional theatre and musical theatre to circus and menagerie, from wrestling matches to boxing contests.98 As well, Cochran and Frank Bostock co-leased a moving-picture theatre, pointing to the strong connection between show animals and film production from the outset. When Cochran first presented his circus at Olympia with fair booths and a menagerie, he contracted Biddall’s menagerie to present the animals.99 In 1913 Cochran organised a tour of the Hagenbeck menagerie zoo and circus to London with ethnographic shows. Hagenbeck’s created acts for ‘The Wonder Zoo’ and ‘Big Circus’ at London’s Olympia, which Cochran calls a ‘stupendous event’.100 The Wonder Zoo’s hits were 500 Barbary apes presented with a trench between them and the spectators, and lions who moved against backdrops of mountains. By comparison, the 5000-seat circus presented only a handful of select animals in trained acts, and included BB’s leading star, the Australian equestrian May Wirth, as well as Richard Sawade with tigers and Rueben Castang, who had been Carl Hagenbeck’s apprentice, with the chimpanzees Max and Moritz. Cochran writes that Castang ‘carried out a theory of [Carl] Hagenbeck’s, that anthropoid apes might, by a systematic education from earliest youth, become accustomed to live like human beings.’101 Their performance involved standard tricks as well as comic ones, such as bicycle riding, and Cochran recounted that Castang rewarded Max but chastised and punished Moritz for responding to audience laughter and applause, and for doing the same tricks repeatedly for more applause.

By the early 1900s, the trade and exhibition of humans and animals had become inseparably linked to military identity, formalised fights and large-scale shows about war. The majority of the thousands of exotic wild animals who were acquired from the colonies were by then consigned to an anonymous large group, with only the exceptional few becoming star performers and being treated as such. The extensive displacement of the original inhabitants of colonial lands included animals, who had no means of returning to their countries of origin. But most animals became displaced further within the much larger entertainments developed towards the end of the 19th century, relegated to the background to create an authentic atmosphere. The presentation of species diversity had been replaced by displays of hundreds of anonymous animals of the same species. Spectators might have been generally better behaved, but capacity audiences gave tacit approval to the brutal process of shipping thousands of animals, dead or alive, across the world for gigantic entertainment spectacles.