when placing themselves in much peril, the so-called pleasure is
enhanced when women are the possible victims. As it is in _trapèze_ and
acrobatic performances, so is it in those connected with the exhibition
of wild or semi-wild animals. It is among the gossip of the theatres
that one visitor attended night after night, in order that he might not
be absent when Van Amburgh's head was bitten off (as many expected it
would be) by a lion; and so the idea that something fatal might happen
to one of the gentler sex lends an additionally unhealthy interest to
the scenes we are now considering. As soon as lion-king exhibitions
were found to be profitable, the proprietor of Hilton's Menagerie
bethought him of bringing forward his niece as a lion-queen; he paid
her well, the public paid him well, and thus an impetus was given to
a new kind of speculation. A rival soon appeared at another circus
or place of exhibition, and two lion-queens were starring before the
public at one time. A third aspirant tried the enterprise once too
often. Miss Blight, daughter of a member of Wombwell's band, was one
evening in 1850 managing a performance of trained animals at a fair.
One of the tigers was sullen and wayward; she incautiously struck him
with a whip; the animal sprang at her, seized her by the throat, and
put an end to her hapless existence before effective aid could arrive.
The authorities prohibited such exhibitions after this melancholy
catastrophe. Yet such is the contagion of ambition and love of a good
salary, that other women were willing to offer their services as
successor to the poor girl. A very tame lion was at another menagerie
taken out of his cage and taught to crouch at the feet of a lady who
personated Britannia.
Some of the animals thus exhibited are rather valuable. When a
menagerie was sold by auction at Edinburgh in 1872, the lions brought
individually eighty pounds, ninety pounds, one hundred pounds, one
hundred and forty pounds, two hundred pounds, and one as much as two
hundred and seventy pounds. One of these had performed with Lorenzo
in the spectacle of Androcles. The highest-priced lion was purchased
for the Bristol Zoological Gardens; he was regarded as the largest and
finest at that time in England. A magnificent tigress was an object of
eager competition; and an unusually fine elephant--very much renowned
as a 'performing' elephant--brought six hundred pounds. Another
menagerie was sold by auction in London more recently; the chief
interest centred around two lion-cubs born in the menagerie eighteen
months previously; they brought one hundred and fifty pounds.
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