Here’s the deal:
If you’re ever at the circus and hear the band play Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” drop your popcorn, grab your niece and go directly to your car. More on this later.
While the circus is a fascinating institution, being a great entertainment equalizer for young and old, rich and poor alike, there’s a dark side to the razzmatazz that’s not solely confined to Carnivàle episodes and Goosebumps books.
If you’re a student of history, you’ll know that American circuses engaged in a lot of questionable activities. These activities included exploitation of “freaks,” exhibition of native peoples as “wild men” (often alongside animal displays), and the presentation of booths containing pickled punks, a name that has nothing to do with the short-lived 1979 Hanna-Barbera cartoon, The Punk Pickles, about a group of mystery-solving cucumbers voiced by the Ramones.
What you might be unaware of is that circuses often went even farther than this, either by way of horrendous spectacle or total negligence, which brings us to the subject of circus disasters.
First off, in September of 1916, Tennessee sentenced an elephant to hanging. With automobiles a recent invention, one can only assume they wanted to claim that coveted license plate slogan: Tennessee, the Elephant-Hanging State.
What had happened was during a circus parade through a small town, a man with no experience with elephants was given responsibility over one. After prodding her with a hook near her jaw (in an area later found out to contain an infected tooth), Mary, the elephant, killed the man in a rage, then eventually calmed down. The locals didn’t much care for explanations though, so the only logical thing to do was to execute the pachyderm by hanging her by way of a giant crane. It took two attempts.
Another elephant murder came about in 1903. This elephant was named Topsy and was the property of the Forepaugh Circus. Topsy had been mistreated most of her life, so when a trainer burned her trunk with a lit cigar one day, Topsy decided to get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’ and killed the trainer.
After a few further close calls, Topsy was put on elephant death row. Where it gets really shady is that not only did Forepaugh Circus avoid arguably the most humane method of execution – a gunshot – they opted to electrocute the elephant (they had considered hanging as well) and also charge tickets to the event at Coney Island.
The electrocution idea was proposed by genius inventor and resident shitbag Thomas Edison, who, while warring with Nikola Tesla over direct vs. alternating current, hoped to smear alternating’s public perception. By electrocuting Topsy with alternating current (Tesla’s version), and telling the public, “look at how dangerous this is,” Edison believed he could win the war by hoodwinking a lot of rubes. He also filmed the event so history would never forget.
Lastly, though the final disaster wasn’t planned, it was certainly a result of gross negligence. In 1944, the Hartford circus fire took place, and became one of the worst disasters in the history of the American circus. Over 150 people died in the fire from burns and trampling, and over 700 were injured.
What had happened was that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus boasted the biggest “big top” in the country. To waterproof the tent, 1,800 pounds of paraffin wax dissolved in 6,000 gallons of either gasoline or kerosene was applied to the tent surface. While this was a common waterproofing method at the time, one only needed to take a quick trip to the library to find that gasoline, kerosene and paraffin wax are all extremely flammable. You know, they catch fire, like a lot.
The resulting tragedy became known as “the day the clowns cried” and many survivors were haunted by the experience for decades. Bringing this full circle to “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” in the circus world this piece is known as “The Disaster March.” It is only played in the event of a life-threatening emergency as a code to circus personnel so they can organize an evacuation of the crowd with as little panic as possible. The song played during the Hartford fire.
So again, if you ever hear “The Stars and Stripes Forever” at a circus, get the fuck outta Dodge.
But seriously, if it’s “The Liberty Bell” march don’t worry, that’s just Monty Python.