SIX LIONS AT LARGE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 24, 26 March 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

SIX LIONS AT LARGE.

ONE KILLED BY POLICE PISTOLS

EXCITING SCENE IN NEW YORK

THEATRI

There was nil exciting sequel to the escape of the " six man-eating lions ' from the Eighty-sixth Street Theatre on Thursday afternoon, December 17. The ordinary act for which Mme. Andree's iions were hilled had just been concluded, and the audience had leaned hack in their chairs to listen to a male quartet, when shrieks were heard coming from behind the scenes, and the huge lions, which had escaped while being transferred from the big performing cage to smaller cages, were seen stealthily advancing across the stage. For a few seconds they blinked in the glare of the footlights, and the human beings and the beasts watched one another silently. Then panic asserted it self, and shrieking men, women, and children made a frantic rush for the doors.

Before they could effect an escape, however, the lions were among them, running up and down the aisles in an attempt to get out. Three policemen did their best to reassure the terrified crowd, one shouting, "These are harmless cats. Stay where you are, and you will be safe." In the meantime the lions in the darkened house silently pushed their way among the struggling, "creaming playgoers, hut made no attack. LIONESS TN TENEMENT HOUSE. One animal finally gained the street, and, after sauntering along for a block or two—having the whole thoroughfare to itself —took refuge from the cold in a fourth-story tenement house. Policemen followed, and found the beast lying in the hall gnawing a bundle of old newspapers. They were preparing to make a bloodless capture, when two women of the tenement discovered the presence of the lion, and slammed the door on it as it lay across the threshold. That indignity roused its anger, and it hounded into the crowd of policeman, who greeted the attack with a volley of revolver shots. The beast, a lioness, fought gamely, knocking the pistol from the hand of one of the officers, inflicting a slight wound, then clawing another officer's scalp. Up and down the stairs they fought in a fusillade of shots, two of which hit a policeman, inflicting severe but not fatal wounds, before the lioness was killed.

Meanwhile at the theatre the rest of the lions had heen rounded up without Woodshed, and coaxed hack to the cages, one of the assistants being a linker out of work, willing, he said, to do almost anything for bread. The only h.'irm resulting from their, escape had heen a scratching of one man's forehead, a lion having stepped on him as he lay terror/stricken in ithe aisle. The heasts, ft?) »six .years old, wero bought as' cubs from M. Hagenheck, and were valued at £2OO each. Mme. Andree, her manager, and her hooking agent vevQ arrested, for criminal negligence, hut later were discharged.