ENGLISH MENAGERIES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3064, 5 March 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

ENGLISH MENAGERIES.

At the old couutry fair, alongside the great theatrical booth, there was pretty surely to be found a wild beast show of some pretension. Womb well'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 WombweH.

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 onravan was overturned, and two monkeys and a leopard nade 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 paitsengers by early cuaohes, and terrifying belated royeterere into sudden sobriety, but doing no further damage. Of Ballard's too, was the famous lioness whioh attacked the Exeter mail in 1817. Ballad's caravane were on their way to Salisbury Fair, when the lioness escaped and cime upon the coaoh, which had j.ist changed horses at the inn called the Winterslow Hut, seven miles from Salisbury. The lioness sprang upon the leader and fastened her clawe in its neck and shoulders. Tho passengers evacuated the coach in horror and dismay; but the coachmou stuck to hie box, the guard to his mails, nnd a mastiff, belonging to the inn, boldly attacked the hujje beast, which turning upon the dot;, killed him with a blow of the paw. Then she made off into the fields, pursued at a respectful distance, by a pna<e uf grooms and stableboys, headed by the mail guard in his tarnished red coat with his formidable blunderbuss. Tho 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 first show came into notoriety from a sensational, but cruel affair at Warwick, in 1825, where he put up Nero and Wallace, two of hie lions, to be baited by dogrs—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 Sanger, and whom many will remember as representing Britannia, with a noble lion couchant at her feet, in a gorgeous open car, at Sangers triumphant entries into coantry towne. Many years s 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. Britannii's car pave a fearful lurch; but it was I admirable to see the dignity and self-

possession with which the lady and the lion readjusted their rsspective positions and renamed their stately pose. Famous, too, was Crockett, orignally Sanger's lion king, who went to America with Howe and Cashing, and died bofore 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 aplendiy African, with great golden rings in ears and noae, whose performance with Mander's lion* and tigers were the admirntion of all beholders. Makomo died quitely in his bed in 1870 ; bat his sucessor, Macarthy, was killed at Bolton while goiug through his performances.—All the Year Round.