Larder for elephants

By Russell Working

HOWEVER BAD YOUR MONDAY may be, at least an elephant (presumably) didn’t smash through your kitchen wall and snitch from your larder.

In a video posted June 21, an elephant prowls around in a kitchen in Thailand. Apparently this sort of elephantine rascality happens from time to time where elephants share habitat with humans.

‘Hey, Rube’: the battle cry of the circus

Riots—and even gunplay—often followed circuses as their showgrounds drew drunks, toughs, and rowdy college boys. And the troupers brawled to defend the show.

Part one of two.

By Russell Working

WHEN THE O’BRIEN CIRCUS set up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, more than a century ago, performers and roustabouts alike sat down to eat in their new cook tent.

The tent walls were open, and as the troupers tucked into a dinner of meat and vegetables dished from giant kettles, they noticed they were surrounded by a throng of sullen men. The towners were miners, black-faced with coal dust and still wearing their lantern helmets from work.

The miners began lobbing rocks at the kinkers, knocking over several cook pots, lion tamer George Conklin recalls in his 1921 memoir, The Ways of the Circus. When the circus owner stepped out to calm the rowdies, a stone laid him flat, Conklin writes.

An O’Brien man screamed, “Hey, Rube,” and the troupers stormed out of the tent to meet their foe in a melee.

The Elephant Box

Burying the great tuskers at sea

In 1903 a behemoth elephant named Jingo was buried at sea. Over the centuries of transporting the great pachyderms, many others have been committed to the deep.

This is the first post of my relaunched blog, focusing on circuses. Why have I renamed these pages The Elephant Box? Read on to find out.

By Russell Working

IN MARCH 1903, newspapers across America trumpeted a tragedy at on the high seas. Jingo, an elephant taller than the famed Jumbo, died on his way from the London zoo to Coney Island.

An American entrepreneur had purchased Jingo, and the titanic tusker was transported in a 14½-feet-tall, lidless crate on a ship called the Georgic. Jingo was too tall for the hold where he was kept. He and his box protruded through an open hatch above, exposing him to wind, rain, and cresting waves.

His mahouts recklessly fed him (and evidently poisoned him with) whiskey and stale bread rolls. The pachyderm, pining for his herd, died on the way to New York. The newspapers parroted the sailors’ narrative about a death by homesickness. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed: