Elephant Execution in The 19th And 20th Centuries

Performing elephants were very common in circuses during the 19th and 20th centuries. Circus owners would often treat these animals with cruelty and subject them to great physical and mental stress. Under the strain of captivity and regular performance, elephants turned increasingly violent and turned upon their trainers, and at times, upon the spectators. If the elephant, because of its temperament, was deemed unsuitable to continue performing in the shows, it was put to death, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Poster of the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers circus. Photo: trialsanderrors/Wikimedia Topsy was a female Asian elephant who was captured in the jungles in Southeast Asia in 1875 and sold to Adam Forepaugh, owner of the Forepaugh Circus. Forepaugh secretly smuggled the elephant into the United States and began to claim that it was “the only baby elephant ever born on American soil.” But the elephant trader who sold Topsy to Forepaugh spilled the beans to P. T. Barnum and Barnum exposed the hoax publicly. Topsy grew up into a tall elephant—10 feet high and 20 feet long, and weighed between 3.6 to 5.4 metric tons. She was known for her foul mood. In 1902, a drunk spectator named James Fielding Blount wandered into the menagerie tent of the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus in Brooklyn and began teasing Topsy, throwing sand at her face and then burning the tip of her trunk with a lit cigar. Topsy grabbed Blount by her trunk and threw him to the ground and then crushed him with her head and foot. The killing of Blount created a sensation in Brooklyn and newspapers tried to malign Topsy’s reputation as a man-killer, claiming that she had killed up to 12 men. Some accounts suggested that she killed two circus workers, previously. In June 1902, another spectator tried to tickle Topsy behind the ear with a stick. Topsy seized the man around the waist with her trunk, hoisted him high in the air and threw him back down.