Dixie pride sparked ‘hey, Rube’ circus brawls

Melees involving towners and circuses could break out anywhere. But in the years following the Civil War, Southern stands could be especially risky.

Part 2 of a series. Click here for part 1.

By Russell Working

THE NOTORIOUS “HEY, RUBE” BRAWLS, matching towners against circus showmen, could happen anywhere from Montreal to the Gulf of Mexico.

But amid the bitterness that followed the Civil War, Southern stands could be especially dangerous for Northern troupers.

Following the war, Southerners were inclined to see the circuses, usually headquartered in the North, as Yankee intruders, lion tamer George Conklin recalled in his 1921 memoir, The Ways of the Circus.

“In spite of the fact that the show, as a show, was popular and well patronized by the people,” Conklin writes, “nevertheless they looked on us as ‘damned Yankees’ and treated us accordingly as much as they were able and dared.”

W.C. Coup, manager of the O’Brien circus, recalled a mob of country boys in Mississippi who cut down trees across the road to prevent the circus from escaping, and “vowed to kill us all.” The circus fought them off and escaped, he told the Boston Daily Globe in May 1883.

In Richmond, Virginia, an attacking mob came marching up a hill toward Conklin’s circus singing, “Hurrah! hurrah! for Southern rights, hurrah! Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.”

The circus men were ready with clubs, sticks, stones, chunks of coal—anything they could lay their hands on. The veteran brawlers quickly drove away the Richmond rowdies.

‘A volley of buckshot and blows’

In his 1925 memoir Old Wagon Show Days, Gil Robinson recalls a particularly wild stand in Jacksonville, Texas, in 1873. Thirty or forty toughs gathered around the ticket wagon, firing their guns in the air. The sheriff refused to intervene but helpfully informed the showmen that couple of years back, the boys had busted into a circus dressing tent and “killed two of the’ circus fellers, an’ sence that time they’ve been jest natchally looking for gore,” Robinson writes.

The rowdies were persuaded to buy tickets. The circusmen, ready for trouble, stashed loaded rifles and shotguns around the cages. When the show started a towner named Jeff sat on the ring bank with his feet in the performance area. He pulled a knife on a showman who tried to move him. The circusman disarmed Jeff and flung him into the seats with his buddies, but a riot broke out.

Suddenly there was a cry of “Hey Rube.” Jeff and his fellow desperadoes, joined by the sheriff, had massed themselves between the tents and the railroad, and as the crowd thinned out, advanced for an attack on the show. Out came guns and tent stakes, and the gang was received with a volley of buckshot and blows that halted them, and presently sent them scurrying for shelter. The ground was covered with the injured. Those who escaped barricaded themselves in stores and barns, from which they were dragged by the infuriated circus men and severely beaten. The battle finally ceased for lack of enemies.

The showmen quickly loaded the train and escaped Texas altogether. Towners attempted to saw down a bridge, but were not quick enough to trap the circus. The circus returned to Ohio, but the governor refused to extradite any of its employees to face vengeful courts in Texas.

Circuses were overflowing with bombastic patriotism, but they quickly learned that the Yankee flag could inflame Southern passions.

“I have often seen what appeared to be first-class gentlemen and substantial citizens aiding the roughs in trying to start a scrap with us,” Conklin writes. “This feeling was especially strong in the small towns. At first we tried to fly the Stars and Stripes from the top of the tent, but it was the cause of so much trouble that we gave it up.”

Sometimes the rubes would ask the circus to take down the American flag. If the owner of the show refused, the locals would gang up and take to take the flag down by force. Often they would make a rush for the flag without any warning, Conklin says.

In the days before circuses traveled by rail, the old wagon shows, wending along country roads, were especially vulnerable.

‘Man to man and hand to hand’

Shortly after the Civil War, employees of a circus from an unstated town south of the Ohio River considered itself a Southern institution couldn’t imagine it would get in trouble down in Dixie, the Chicago Tribune reported in 1891. But in an Arkansas town where every man seemed to be packing—muskets, carbines, horse pistols, navies, old flintlock rifles—a clown strutted about in a red, white, and blue suit with a bald eagle on his breast. The Southerners considered that sufficient provocation for a riot.

“It was man to man and hand to hand,” an anonymous showman told the paper. “It was the kind of assault that meant great bodily injury or even death. Knives flashed, pistols popped, and the din was punctuated by the dull thud of a heavy stake as it descended on the hapless pate of some ‘jay,’ guided there by the sinewy arm of a canvas man.”

The “hey, Rubes” died out over the years as circuses swelled in size from 100 employees to 400, Coup said. Eventually the big shows boasted more than 1,500 troupers. Few drunken troublemakers could assemble an army that size. Rail travel, too, probably played a part, as “mud shows” no longer had to slog their way along remote country roads.

But during the era of the “hey, Rube,” the circus men got regular practice fighting. They toughened up fighting in town after town, season after season. “The town gang was always the loser,” Conklin writes. “If it had not been, the circus could not have stayed on the road long.”

Ringling Bros.’ Route Books—published diaries of each days’ events—reported on several such battles. An entry from Hannibal, Missouri, in August 1896 shrugs, “A small ‘Hey Rube’ at night, with the usual result.”

In other words, Ringling won.

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