LIONS IN THEATRE

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 134, 9 February 1915, Page 2

LIONS IN THEATRE

SIX ESCAPE FROM CAGE.

NEW YORK PEOPLE THROWN INTO PANIC,. Brief reference was made .in the cablegrams published in the “Times” towards the end of last month to the escape on the stage of a New "i ork vaudeville theatre The animals hounded into the body of the theatre, mingling with the audience, among which they caused a great panic. Further details were received by the American mail yesterday.

One lioness, Alice, the largest of the pack, escaped into a crowded street. Policemen pursued her into the hallway of a nearby apartment house, and in shooting at her probably fatally wounded a companion. Sergeant Daniel Glenn. Two other officers were slightly wounded by the claws cf the beast in a battle at close range. At sight cf (he lions, hundreds c ! f persons in the theatre fled,screaming, to the exits. Mothers/, -delayed jty gathering - up their children, crowded into corners and places of supposed safety. Scores fainted, and many, numbed by the sight of the animals among them, sat transfixed in their seats. FEW SPECTATORS SCRATCHED. With the exception of Alice none of (he. beasts displayed great ferocity. A few persons who got in their paths were scratched, but none of them was seriously injured. Five of the animals still were roaming about the theatre when the last of the audience escaped. In their rush to safety, spectators left behind all kinds of wearing apparel and personal belonging's.

Meantime the beasts roamed over the house from gallery to basement. But when an hour after the last spectator left, they were rounded up in the lobby and driven into their shipping box, none of them were injured;. Three arrests were made on charges of manslaughter in the second degree, pending the outcome of the injuries of the wounded prsons. Those in enscf the wounded persons. Those in distrainer; C. A. Turnquist, their keeper, and George H. Hamilton, manager of the attraction. The liens were owned by Francis Perarl, a showman, who had been exhibiting them at carnivals during the summer. SINGERS ARE SCARED.

The animals act had been completed and a song and dance quartet held the stage in front of the first drop when the lions escaped as they were about to be transferred from the steel exhibition cage to their shipping box. An dree screamed, Turnquist grabbed a whip, cracked it loudly and shouted at the lions, while frightened actors, actresses and 'theatre attaches began climbing stairways. Suddenly one of the liens walked into the wings and peered at the quartet. The singing ceased abruptly. As the singers started to retreat into the wings Detective Peter Cahill, who was in the audience, saw the lien and shouted to the entertainers to go on. One singer returned and began a sclo. Suddenly a lion came

into full view and all control of the audience was lost.

The orchestra, nevertheless, cattinned to play. The first lion ambled upon the stage, then a second, and in a minute more were clambering into stage boxes and out into the audience. Still the orchestra kept playing until several lions were right down into the pit. Then the'musicians fled under the stage. Almost everybody in the audience later had a different version of what the animals did after they got among the crowd, but nearly ail accounts agree that they did not live up to the dangerous name of the “king of beasts.” One of the beasts caught up with Mark McDermott, while he was hurrying down an aisle, so he lay down. The animate clawed him on the head, a.nd his wound appeared to be the most dangerous that any of the beasts inflicted. He was taken to a hospital. The last of the audience to leave the theatre were several women, found cooped up in a second-floor (ircssin.gr.com. They signalled firemen from a near-by engine-house, who carried them down ladders to safety. ALICE ENTERS A HOUSE.

A throng had gathered outside the theatre, when Alice emerged and trotted slowly across the street. Reaching the corner of Eighty-sixth street and Third Avenue, she calmly sat down. A crowd began to shout, and ten policemen, with revolvers drawn, came rushing across the street from the theatre toward her. She turned and fled into an apartment house. Abraham Glaser, a photographer, was working on the first floor of the building, when he heard a peculiar nclse in the hall. He opened the door to investigate, and stared into the face of the lioness. Slamming the door quickly, he shouted for help.

The beast turned to a stairway and bounded up a flight. There two women peered from a doorway, saw the animal, shrieked, and slammed the doer. Again Alice fled, this time to the third floor. When the police arrived she was at the tep of the stairway seeking egress to the roof. FIERCE BATTLE IN HALLWAY. For more than ten minutes thereafter there waged in the narrow hall way a fierce battle between man and boast. Shot after shot, thirty in all, were fired into the new raging ani mal. Up and down the stairway she raced, growling and snarling, clawing, striking and biting at her assailants. Several times she leaped over the bannister that protected the stairway and hurtled through the air, only to land with a thud on the next landing. The end came with one of her spectacular leaps. Bounding over a balustrade, she passed between the legs of Alfred Winter, a policeman who steed with one foot on the railing and another against a wall, firing at her. The force of the fall and the leaden hail that rained into her body ended the battle.