ENGLISH MENAGERIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1956, 20 August 1891, Page 35

ENGLISH MENAGERIES.

At the old country fair, alongside the great theatrical booth, there was pretty surely to be found a wild beast show of some pretension. Wombwell's was then a name to conjure by, and his travelling menageries made a fair of themselves wherever they stopped, and were deservedly popular among all classes. But there were mighty masters of wild beasts before Wombwell.

Ballard's menagerie held the ground in the early days of the century. In 1810 Ballard's caravans were on their way to Bartholomew Fair from the West, when, in Piccadilly, a horse took fright, a caravan was overturned, and two monkeys and a leopard made their escape. What became of the monkeys is not recorded, but the leopard caused a considerable scare in the neighbourhood, and was only recaptured after a long chase, after frightening the passengers by early coaches, and terrifying belated roysterers into sudden sobriety, but doing no further damage. Of Ballard's, too, was the famous lioness which attacked the Exeter mail in 1817. Ballard's caravans were on their way to Salisbury Fair, when the lioness escaped and came upon the coacb, which had just changed horses at the inn called the Winterslaw Hut, seven miles from Salisbury. The lioness sprang upon the leader and fastened her claws in its neck and shoulders. The passengers evacuated the coach in horror and dismay ; but the coachman stuck to his 'box, tbe guard to his mails, and a mastiff, belonging to the inn, boldly attacked the huge beast, which turning upon the dog, killed him with a blow of the paw. Then she made off into the fields, pursued at a respectful distance, by a posse of grooms and stableboys, headed by the mail guard in his tarnished red coat with his formidable blunderbuss. The lioness took refuge under a granary, and her growls could be heard half a mile off ; but the intrepid guard was about to fire upon her, when Ballard and the keepers appeared upon the scene and succeeded in pacifying the animal and leading it back to its cage.

As for Wombwell — who is said to have begun life as a cobbler, in Monmouth street, St, Giles' — his show first came into notoriety from a sensational, but cruel affair at Warwick, in 1825, where he put up Nero and Wallace, two of his lions, to be baited by dogs — a sport that proved fatal to most of the dogs. But a terrible incident "in the history of the show was the fate of Helen Blight, the lion queen, worried to death by her performing animals in the sight of hundreds of spectators. ''■*■ More fortunate was another lion queen, Miss Chapman, who married Mr George Sauger, and whom many 'will remember as representing Britannia with, a noble lion coucbant at her feet, in a gorgeous open car, at Sanger's triumphant entries into country towns. Many years have elapsed since the writer saw Sanger's great procession passing down Gabriel's Hill, in Maidstone. The hill was steep, the roads were bad ; there is, or was, a short turn at the bottom. Britannia's car gave a fearful lurch ; but it was admirable to see the dignity and self-possession with which the lady and the lion readjusted their respective positions and resumed their stately pose.

Famous, too, was Crockett, orignally ganger's lion king, who went to America with Howe and Cushing, and died before all the spectators, in the ring at Chicago, but of heart disease, and not by the lion's paw.

But the most picturesque figure of all was Makomo, a splendid African, with great golden rings in ears and nose, whose performance with Mander's lions and tigers were the admiration of all beholders. Makomo died quietly in his bed in 1870 ; but his successor, Macarthy, was killed at Bolton while going through his' performances. — All the Year Round.