CELEBRATED LION TRAINER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 184, 21 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

CELEBRATED LION TRAINER

ADVENTURE WITH A ,LIOX. KINDXESS THE ONLY METHOD. Frank Bostock, the well-known menagerie proprietor and lion-tamer, has died at his home in Kensington, at the age of 45, after a short illness, from influenza.

He came of a family of showmen, but it was originally intended that he should take holy orders. He might have done so but for finding during a school vacation that his father's lion-tamer was cruel. One night, as a result of his cruelty, the tamer almost lost his life. The boy asked permission to take the man's place, but the father peremptorily refused. But next dav the father found Frank (he was only 15) in the lion's cage. He threatened him ■with a thrashing if he got out of the cage alive. But instead of the thrashing young Bostock was congratulated on his success and promoted to the trainer's place. Thereafter he was closely identified with the fortunes of the "jungle" which first bore his father's name and afterwards his own.

Of the many desperate adventures with the wild beasts he sought to tame the one that came the nearest to costing him his life was in 1905, at a charity performance at the Paris Hippodrome. He attempted the subjugation of Wallace, a lion which had resisted every effort to tame it, and which during its lifetime killed and injured several people. Immediately Air. Bostock entered the cage Wallace pinned him against the bars, bit him severely through the left hand and shoulder, and lashed him with his claws. Wallace also bit him in the back, actually grazing his spinal column with his teeth. Air. Bostock eventually drove the beast into the arena. Then he was taken to the hospital, where he remained for many weeks.

On another occasion a lion, after gripping him through the thigh, picked him up in his mouth and carried him to the lady trainer who was also in the cage, then dropped him and walked away. A few years ago Mr. Bos took retired from the arena and devoted himself entirely to the business side of his various undertakings, which had grown to huge proportions, with headquarters in London, and branches in Manchester, f!ltisgow, Birmingham, Sheffield and Nottingham, as well as in Paris, Berlin and other Continental cities, and the United States. For. the last two years his principal show, "The Jungle," has been located at the Shepherd's Bush Exhibition during I the summer and autumn months, and last summer he .also had a big menagerie at the Crystal Palace. He was interested in many other popular amusement enterprises. The late Mr. Bostoek always held tuat kindness was the best policy in training wild animals, and claimed that no cruelty entered into his methods. Discussing his unruly pupils, he once said: "In the case, of an attack the lire hose is a good expedient for quelling an infuriated animal. Blank cartridges, too, are very effective. Ido not allow redhot irons, as I consider they are cruel and often ineffectual. "A man who contemplates being a trainer must primarily be a lover of animals; he must possess the patience of Job, and the Alpha and Omega of his whole creed must be kindness." Mr. Bostoek was well-known to musichall audiences as the introducer of the famons performing monkey, "Consul." to London. "Lady Little," a remarkable dwarf, in an act known as "The Lion, the Horse and the Lady," recently seen at the Hippodrome, were also brought before the public by him.