Carnival of the animals
WHAT sort of response would town centre shoppers give to the sight of a full-sized brown bear, muzzled and chained, being led down the High Street today?
Disbelief, fear, outrage at the exploitation of a wild animal?
Such a thing couldn’t happen now, of course, but a century ago the itinerant showman with his dancing bear was an occasional curiosity, as the photograph snapped in Tewkesbury’s Barton Street recalls.
A Forest of Dean story tells how in days gone by an Italian roamer arrived in Ruardean leading a bear.
When a crowd gathered around the curious couple, the man began to play a violin, which prompted his tethered companion to stand upright and shuffle a laborious jig.
Local people were no doubt engaged by the spectacle.
Entertainment of any kind was a rarity and soon coins of appreciation clinked into the violinist’s hat providing enough money for the pair to put up at the local inn.
Next morning a grisly sight met the two village boys who sneaked into the pub stables where the bear had been penned for the night.
In the straw was the body of a local girl, mauled and gored. Once the alarm had been raised, the villagers bayed for revenge. A group armed with cudgels burst in on the bear and beat the creature to death.
They then turned their attentions to the Italian owner, who fled for his life.
Some months later it emerged that the girl had fallen victim not to the bear, but to a village man who had assaulted and murdered her before dumping the body in the bear’s pen to place the blame on the unfortunate Bruno.
More cheerful is the account of Van Amburgh’s circus, which visited Tewkesbury in July 1841 and set up its big top in Swilgate Meadow.
Like all good circuses of the time, Van Amburgh’s featured a performing elephant.
Being the star of the show, Jumbo was taken to reserved accommodation in outbuildings behind the Plough Inn, which then stood in the High Street.
But he wasn’t securely tethered and during the night a breeze got up, wafting whiffs from a nearby brewery into his sleeping compartment and our floppy eared hero finding the aroma much to his liking went walkabout.
The elephant was first discovered some time later in Smith’s Lane snacking on a tree he’d uprooted.
Then proceeding in the direction of the brewery, he waded through a row of back gardens knocking down fences and attracting a group of followers who’d come from their beds to see what was causing the commotion.
At last our elephant arrived at the brewery, which had a narrow entrance. In this he stuck fast. The local constabulary was called and with great resourcefulness. plus buckets of soapy water managed to extricate the elephant and march him back to his quarters.
Elephants have wandered the streets of Cheltenham too.
In days gone by when the circus came to town its larger performers usually arrived by train and processed trunk-to-tail to the big top. What finer publicity could there be?
In March 1934 such a line of jumbos was padding along Albion Street when one of their number sniffed the heady aroma coming from Bloodworth’s, the agricultural merchants. The rich mixture of hay, seed corn, molasses and who knows what else provided a temptation too great for the strolling creature to ignore.
Breaking free from its fellows, the elephant strolled urposefully into the shop and ate a whole sack of seed potatoes.
This event, by the way, is recorded in a mural on the wall of the passage that runs off the Strand pedestrian precinct.
On another occasion in the 1930s when elephants were en route for the circus site at Oakley (close to where GCHQ now stands), a similar incident happened – once again in Albion Street. This time it was the smell of cakes and bread from Leopold’s bakery that attracted the attention of a sweet toothed elephant.
Fortunately the animal sensed that its girth was too great for the doorway, so Jumbo stood outside the shop and reaching in with its trunk enjoyed a good feed of drippers, doughnuts and Chelsea buns.
For years afterwards the logo on Leopold’s paper bags and stationery featured an elephant.
An elephant themed publicity stunt was staged by Bertram Mill’s Circus on a visit to Cheltenham in May 1940.
Half a dozen young jumbos were marched along to the Town Hall where a female attendant brought out jugs of spa water for them to guzzle.
The photograph you see here first appeared in the Cheltenham Chronicle and Graphic, but it’s difficult to tell from the expression on their faces if the salty waters were to the elephants’ taste.
Elephants and other exotic creatures arrived by train in Gloucester when Billy Smart’s Circus set up its big top on the Oxleaze in 1965.
The procession of 15 pachyderms trundled tail to trunk along Eastgate Street, over the Cross and down Westgate.