HEROIC DANCE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 260, 27 June 1932, Page 2

HEROIC DANCE

ENTERS LION'S DEN AFTER FATHER HAS BEEN MAULED. "SHOW MUST GO ON." A girl of 19 — after -seeing lier father attacked in a lion's cage, dragged round the fioor, bitten, clawed, and terribly injured — cooly entered thc cage and dancecl at a Manchester holiday fair. "The show must go on," she said, Two hundred people, mostly women and children, had stampeded in panic toward the exits of the exhibition

tent when the lion attacked the girl's father, Captain Tom Purchase, a liontamer known all over England. The performance consists of Captain Purchase entering a cage in which are two lions, Nero and Pasha, driving them round the cage and compelling them to leap over obstacles. I His daughter, Miss Rosie Purchase, then dances in the cage, while the lions are controlled by her father. Miss Purchase had completed her act on this occasion and was leaving the cage when Nero made his attaclc on her father. Nero had shown eonsiderable restlessness during this act. Captain Purchase, in spite of the handicap of an artificial leg, was covering his daughters' retreat when, before the horrified eyes of Miss Purchase and the audience, tho lion leaped upon him. 'fft was terrible," Miss Purchase said later to a Daily Express rcpresentative. "The animal got him by the leg, pulled him down, and began dragging him round the fioor of the cage, tearing his tunic and biting at him. "Luckily Pasha, the other lion remained quiet. Mr. Richard Shipperfield, the 26-year-old son of the proprietor, leaped into the cage with two pronged sticlcs "He attacked the lion and bravely drove him off, keeping him at bay while ray father was dragged from tho cage. _ "Then they found my father was bitten on the neclc and mauled about the head, leg and arms. The lion had wrenched off his ai'tificial leg and torn his clothing to ribhons." It was after the injured man had been taken to hospital that Miss Purchase showed her iron nerve. She accompanied her father to hospital, returned to fincl Nero had been driven into an adjoining cage — and asked that the show should go on. The tent filled again, Mr. Skipperfield quietly explained that there had been an accident. Miss Purchase bowed, and first allowed a python to coil round her waist and shoulders, and to put its head in her mouth. Next she entered the cage aiul danced beside Pasha while the other lion which had attacked her father raged angrily to and fro in the next cage. "^No, I was not nervous," this astonishing girl said afterwards. "We had to carry on."