Elephant Attacks Lion Trying to Get Her Baby

Elephant electrocuted in 1903

Topsy

Topsy in a June xvi, 1902 St. Paul Earth illustrations for a story about the elephant killing spectator Jesse Blount. The martingale harness was intended to partially restrain the elephant.
Species	Asian elephant
Sex	Female person
Born	1875
Died	January 4, 1903(1903-01-04) (aged 27–28) Luna Park, Coney Isle, New York Urban center
Crusade of expiry	electrocution
Nation from	United States
Occupation	Circus performer
Employer	Forepaugh Circus
Years active	1875–1903
Weight	Between 4 and 6 tons
Summit	7.5 ft (229 cm)

Topsy (circa 1875 – January 4, 1903) was a female Asian elephant who was electrocuted at Coney Isle, New York, in January 1903. Built-in in Southeast Asia around 1875, Topsy was secretly brought into the U.s. soon thereafter and added to the herd of performing elephants at the Forepaugh Circus, who fraudulently advertised her as the first elephant born in America. During her 25 years at Forepaugh, Topsy gained a reputation as a "bad" elephant and, subsequently killing a spectator in 1902, was sold to Coney Island's Ocean Lion Park. When Sea Lion was leased out at the end of the 1902 season and replaced by Luna Park, Topsy was involved in several well-publicized incidents, attributed to the actions of either her drunken handler or the park's new publicity-hungry owners, Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy.

Their end-of-the-year plans to hang Topsy at the park in a public spectacle and charge admission were prevented by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The effect was instead limited to invited guests and press only and Thompson and Dundy agreed to utilize a more than certain method of strangling the elephant with large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch with both poison and electrocution planned for skillful measure, a measure supported past the ASPCA. On January iv, 1903, in front of a small-scale crowd of invited reporters and guests, Topsy was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide, electrocuted and strangled, the electrocution being the final cause of death. Among the invited press that twenty-four hours was a crew from the Edison Manufacturing moving picture company who filmed the event. Their film of the electrocution part was released to be viewed in coin-operated kinetoscopes nether the championship Electrocuting an Elephant. It is probably the showtime filmed death of an fauna in history.^[ane]

The story of Topsy fell into obscurity for the next 70 years only has get more prominent in popular culture, partly due to the fact that the film of the outcome nonetheless exists. In popular culture Thompson and Dundy's killing of Topsy has switched attribution, with claims it was an anti-alternating current demonstration organized by Thomas A. Edison during the state of war of the currents. Edison was never at Luna Park and the electrocution of Topsy took place x years subsequently the war of currents.^[two]

Life [edit]

Forepaugh Circus [edit]

1899 poster for the combined Forepaugh & Sells Brothers Circus featuring acrobats' "Terrific flights over ponderous elephants"

Topsy was born in the wild around 1875 in Southeast Asia and was captured presently after past elephant traders. Adam Forepaugh, owner of the Forepaugh Circus, had the elephant secretly smuggled into the Us with plans that he would advertise the infant as the first elephant built-in in America. At the time Forepaugh Circus was in competition with the Barnum & Bailey Circus over who had the most and largest elephants. The name "Topsy" came from a slave girl character in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Forepaugh announced to the press in February 1877 that his circus at present boasted "the only babe elephant e'er born on American soil". The elephant trader who sold Topsy to Forepaugh too sold elephants to P. T. Barnum and tipped Barnum off about the deception. Barnum exposed the hoax publicly and Forepaugh stopped claiming that Topsy was born in America, merely advertising that she was the first elephant built-in outside a tropical zone.

At maturity, Topsy was ten ft (iii.0 m) high and xx ft (6.1 m) long, with claims she weighed between four and vi short tons (three.6 and 5.4 long tons; 3.six and 5.four metric tons). Over the years, Topsy gained a reputation as a "bad" elephant. In 1902, another event brought her again to prominence: the killing of spectator James Fielding Blount^[3] in Brooklyn, New York, at what was then the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus. Accounts vary as to what happened but the common story is that on the morn of May 27, 1902, a peradventure drunk Blount wandered into the menagerie tent where all the elephants were tied in a line and began teasing them in turn, offer them a bottle of whiskey. He reportedly threw sand in Topsy'southward face and and so burnt the extremely sensitive tip of her trunk with a lit cigar.^[4] Topsy threw Blount to the footing with her trunk and and so crushed him with her head, knees, or pes. Paper reports on Blount'due south death contained what seem to be exaggerated accounts of Topsy'south homo-killing past, with claims that she killed upwards to 12 men, but with more common accounts that, during the 1900 flavor, she had killed two Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus workers, 1 in Paris, Texas and one in Waco, Texas. Journalist Michael Daly, in his 2013 book on Topsy, could find no record of anyone existence killed by an elephant in Waco; and a handler named Mortimer Loudett of Albany, NY attacked by Topsy in Paris, TX suffered injuries but at that place is no tape of him dying.^[ane] The publicity generated by Topsy'south human being killing brought very big crowds to the circus to see the elephant. In June 1902 during the unloading of Topsy from a train in Kingston, New York, a spectator named Louis Dondero used a stick in his manus to "tickle" Topsy behind the ear. Topsy seized Dondero around the waist with her trunk, hoisted him loftier in the air and threw him back down before being stopped by a handler.^[1] Because of this attack, the owners of Forepaugh & Sell Circus decided to sell Topsy.^[5]

Ocean Lion and Luna Park [edit]

Topsy was sold in June 1902 to Paul Boyton, owner of Coney Island's Bounding main Lion Park, and added to the menagerie of animals on display there. The elephant'due south handler from Forepaugh, William "Whitey" Alt,^[6] came along with Topsy to work at the park. A bad summer season and competition with the nearby Steeplechase Park fabricated Boyton decide to go out of the amusement park business concern. At the end of the yr he leased Ocean Panthera leo Park to Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy who proceeded to redevelop information technology into a much larger attraction and renamed it Luna Park.^[5] Topsy was used in publicity, moving timbers and even the fanciful airship Luna, part of the amusement ride A Trip to the Moon, from Steeplechase to Luna Park, characterized in the media as "penance" for her rampaging ways.^[five]

During the moving of the Luna in October 1902, handler William Alt was involved in an incident where he stabbed Topsy with a pitchfork trying to become her to pull the amusement ride. When confronted by a police officer, Alt turned Topsy loose from her work harness to run complimentary in the streets, leading to Alt's arrest. The occurrence was attributed to the handler'due south drinking. In December 1902, a drunk Alt rode Topsy down the town streets of Coney Isle and walked, or tried to ride, Topsy into the local police station. Accounts say Topsy tried to batter her way through the station door and "she set a terrific trumpeting", leading the officers to take refuge in the cells. The handler was fired afterwards the incident.

Death [edit]

Topsy, continuing in the centre of press photographers and on-lookers, refusing to cantankerous the bridge over the lagoon to the spot where she was supposed to be killed. She eventually had to be wired upwardly where she stood.

Without Alt to handle Topsy, the owners of Luna Park, Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, claimed they could no longer handle the elephant and tried to get rid of her, but they could non even give her away and no other circus or zoo would take her. On December thirteen, 1902, Luna Park press agent Charles Murray released a statement to the newspapers that Topsy would be put to death within a few days past electrocution. At least one local paper noted that the steady drone of events and reports regarding Topsy from the park had the hallmarks of a publicity campaign designed to get the new park continually mentioned in the papers.^{[1] [7]} On January 1, 1903, Thompson and Dundy announced plans to conduct a public hanging of the elephant,^[8] set for January three or 4, and collect a twenty-v cents a head admission to see the spectacle.^[9] The site they chose was an island in the middle of the lagoon for the former Shoot the Chute ride where they were building the centerpiece of their new park, the 200-foot Electric Tower (the construction had reached a acme of 75 anxiety at the time of the killing). Press amanuensis Murray arranged media coverage and posted banners around the park and on all four sides of the makeshift gallows advertising, "OPENING MAY 2nd 1903 LUNA PARK $1,000,000 EXPOSITION, THE Center OF CONEY Island".

On hearing Thompson and Dundy's plans, the President of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, John Peter Haines, stepped in and forbade hanging every bit a "needlessly cruel means of killing [Topsy]" and too told Thompson and Dundy they could not acquit a public spectacle and charge admission. Thompson and Dundy discussed alternatives with Haines, going over methods used in previous attempts to euthanize elephants including poisoning, but that, equally well equally a 1901 attempt to electrocute an elephant named Jumbo II 2 years before in Buffalo, New York, were botched.^[10] After much negotiation, which included Thompson and Dundy trying to give the elephant to the ASPCA, a method of strangling the elephant with large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch was agreed upon. They also agreed they would employ poisoning and electricity likewise.^[ix]

The appointment of Topsy'southward demise was finally set for Dominicus, Jan iv, 1903. The press attention the event had received brought out an estimated 1500 spectators and 100 press photographers as well equally agents from the ASPCA to audit the proceedings. Thompson and Dundy allowed 100 spectators into the park although more climbed through the park contend. Many more were on the balconies and roofs of nearby buildings, which were charging admission to see the event.^[9] The Electric Tower had been re-rigged with big ropes prepare to strangle the elephant, which were inspected past the ASPCA agents to make sure they conformed to what had been agreed. The details of the electrocution part of the execution were handled by workers from the local ability company, Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn, nether the supervision of chief electrician P. D. Sharkey.^[11] They spent the night before^[eleven] stringing power lines from the Coney Island electric substation nine blocks to the park to acquit alternating current they planned to redirect from a much larger found in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. At Bay Ridge the staff was told to "get an engine ready and clear a feeder and bus to Coney Island Station".^[12]

A press photograph of the electrocution of Topsy with the unfinished "Electric Tower" in the background.

Topsy was led out of her pen into the unfinished Luna Park past Carl Goliath, an practiced on elephants who formerly worked for creature showman Carl Hagenbeck. Newspaper accounts of the events noted that Topsy refused to cross the bridge over the lagoon, ignoring prodding by Goliath and even bribes of carrots and apples.^[thirteen] The owners of Luna Park then tried to get William Alt, who would non lookout man the killing, to atomic number 82 Topsy across the bridge, but he declined an offer of $25 to coax her to her death^[1] saying he would "not for $one thousand".^[i] They finally gave upwardly trying to get Topsy across the span and decided to "bring death to her".^[xiii] The steam engine, ropes, and the electrical lines were re-rigged to the spot where Topsy stood. The electricians fastened copper-lined sandals connected to AC lines to Topsy's right fore foot and left hind foot so the charge would flow through the elephant's trunk.^[xiv] With primary electrician Sharkey making certain anybody was clear, Topsy was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide by printing agent Charles Murray who and then backed abroad. At 2:45pm Sharkey gave a signal and an electrician on a telephone told the superintendent at Coney Island station nine blocks away to close a switch and Luna Park main electrician Hugh Thomas closed another one at the park, sending 6,600 volts from Bay Ridge across Topsy'due south torso for 10 seconds, toppling her to the ground. According to at least one gimmicky account, she died "without a trumpet or a groan".^[xv] After Topsy fell, the steam-powered winch tightened two nooses placed around her neck for x minutes. At 2:47, Topsy was pronounced dead.^[16] An ASPCA official and two veterinarians employed by Thompson and Dundy determined that the electric daze had killed Topsy. During the killing the superintendent of the Coney Isle station, Joseph Johansen, became "mixed upwardly in the apparatus" when he threw the switch sending ability to the park and was nearly electrocuted. He was knocked out and left with modest burns from the power traveling from his right arm to his left leg.^[17]

Film of the execution [edit]

Electrocuting an Elephant, a 1903 film of the electrocution of Topsy shot past the Edison Manufacturing Co.

Amidst the press the day Topsy was killed was a moving-picture show crew from the Edison film visitor, possibly directed by Edwin South. Porter or Jacob Blair Smith.^[18] The crew shot a 74-second motion picture of Topsy's electrocution. Inside a few weeks, it was added to the films viewable in Edison kinetoscopes nether the title Electrocuting an Elephant.^[14] This was i of many short "actuality" films shot by the Edison Manufacturing Company from 1897 at Coney Island, depicting rides, bathing scenes, diving horses, and elephants.^[19] The Edison company submitted the moving picture to the Library of Congress equally a "newspaper print" (a photographic record of each frame of the picture) for copyright purposes.^[20] The submission may have saved the film for posterity, since most films and negatives of this period rust-covered or were destroyed over time.^[21]

Media and civilization [edit]

Electrocuting an Elephant does not seem to have been as popular as other Edison films, and could not be viewed at Luna Park because the attraction did not have the necessary money-operated kinetoscopes.^[1] The film and Topsy's story fell into relative obscurity in the intervening years, and appeared as an out-of-context clip in the 1979 film Mr. Mike'southward Mondo Video.^[22] In 1991, documentary maker Ric Burns made the picture Coney Island, which included a segment recounting the decease of Topsy, including clips from the moving picture Electrocuting an Elephant.

In 1999 Topsy was commemorated in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in a parade float by artist Gavin Heck. In 2003 Heck and a local arts grouping held a competition to select a memorial arts slice to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Topsy's death. The chosen slice, created past New Orleans artist Lee Deigaard and exhibited at the Coney Island Us museum, allowed the public to view Electrocuting an Elephant on a hand-cranked mutoscope while surrounded by hanging chains and standing on a copper plate.^[23]

In later years, portions of Electrocuting an Elephant have appeared in movies, music videos, Television shows, and video games. The theme of Topsy'south electrocution also appears in songs, in the plot-line of several novels, and in poems such equally U.S. poet laureate W. S. Merwin's "The Chain to Her Leg".^[24]

Association with Thomas Edison [edit]

Thomas Alva Edison, often misassociated with the death of Topsy, pictured in around 1903

In popular civilisation, Topsy is often portrayed as beingness electrocuted in a public demonstration organized by Thomas Edison during the war of the currents to bear witness the dangers of alternating current.

Examples of this view include a 2008 Wired magazine article titled "Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His Betoken"^[25] and a 2013 episode of the blithe one-act series Bob's Burgers titled "Topsy". The events surrounding Topsy took place ten years later the end of the "War".^{[1] [2]} At the time of Topsy's death, Edison was no longer involved in the electrical lighting business. He had been forced out of control of his company by its 1892 merger into General Electric and sold all his stock in GE during the 1890s to finance an iron ore refining venture.^[26] The Brooklyn visitor that nevertheless diameter his proper noun mentioned in newspaper reports was a privately owned ability visitor no longer associated with his earlier Edison Illuminating Company.^{[1] [2]} Edison himself was not present at Luna Park, and it is unclear equally to the input he had in Topsy's death or even its filming since the Edison Manufacturing film visitor fabricated 1200 short films during that period with little guidance from Edison as to what they filmed.^[two] Journalist Michael Daly, in his 2013 book on Topsy, surmises that Edison would have been pleased by the proper positioning of the copper plates and that the elephant was killed by the large Westinghouse Air conditioning generators at Bay Ridge, merely he shows no actual contact or communication between the owners of Luna Park and Edison over Topsy.^[1]

Two things that may accept indelibly linked Thomas Edison with Topsy's death were the chief newspaper sources describing information technology as beingness carried out by "electricians of the Edison Company" (leading to an eventual confusing of the unrelated power company with the homo), and the fact that the film of the event (like many Edison films from that menstruum) was credited on screen to "Thomas A. Edison".^{[1] [2]}

See also [edit]

• List of individual elephants
• Chunee (elephant)
• Mary (elephant)
• Tyke (elephant)

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d due east f g h i j k} Daly, Michael (2013). Topsy: The Startling Story of the Kleptomaniacal-tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison . New York: Atlantic Monthly Printing. ISBN978-0802119049. ^{[ dead link ]}
2. ^ ^{a b c d due east} "Did Edison really assassinate Topsy the Elephant". The Edison Papers. October 28, 2016 – via Rutgers University.
3. ^ originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana and described as a circus follower, peradventure trying to become employment at Forepaugh
4. ^ Corbett, Christopher (Baronial 2, 2013). "Book Review - Topsy". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved September 15, 2013.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Hawley, Samuel. "Topsy the Circus Elephant". samuelhawley.com.
6. ^ Various accounts from the period name him equally "Frederic Ault", "William Alt", "William Alf" (per:Michael Daly and Samuel Hawley)
7. ^ "TOPS and the Press Agent". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. December thirteen, 1902. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
8. ^ "Bad Elephant TOPS Killed by Electricity". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. January 5, 1903. p. viii – via Newspapers.com.
9. ^ ^{a b c} "BAD ELEPHANT DIES Past SHOCK, Electricity Kills Topsy at Coney Island". New York Press. Jan v, 1903. p. i
   Commodity continued on second page – via Fultonhistory.com.
10. ^ The poisonings either left the animals in agony or showed little effect and the electricity seemed to show no effect.
11. ^ ^{a b} "Topsy, an Elephant, Executed at Coney Isle" (PDF). New York Herald. Jan 5, 1903. p. 6 – via Fultonhistory.com.
12. ^ Brooklyn Bulletin - Volumes 9-10 - National Electrical Low-cal Association. Brooklyn Company Department - 1916, folio 18
13. ^ ^{a b} "Topsy, The Rogue Elephant, was Electrocuted, Poisoned and Hanged". St. Louis Republic. Jan 11, 1903. p. 12 – via Library of Congress.
14. ^ ^{a b} McNichol, Tom (2006). Ac/DC: The Savage Tale of the Kickoff Standards War. Us: Jossey-Bass. ISBN0-7879-8267-ix.
15. ^ "BAD ELEPHANT KILLED. Topsy Meets Quick and Painless Death at Coney Island". Commercial Advertiser. January 5, 1903. Archived from the original on September 23, 2006. Retrieved Oct 27, 2006 – via RailwayBridge.co.uk.
16. ^ "Coney Elephant Killed". The New York Times. January five, 1903. p. one – via Fultonhistory.com. At ii:45 the signal was given, and Sharkey turned on the current. ... In two minutes from the fourth dimension of turning on the current Dr. Brotheridge pronounced Topsy dead.
17. ^ "6,600 Volts Killed Topsy" (PDF). The Sun (New York Urban center). January v, 1903. p. 1 – via Fultonhistory.com.
18. ^ "Silent Era : Progressive Silent Film List". www.silentera.com.
19. ^ "Coney Island - Movie Shot at Coney Island List". www.westland.net.
20. ^ "Actualities". world wide web.celluloidskyline.com.
21. ^ Kehr, Dave (October 14, 2010). "Picture Riches, Cleaned Upwardly for Posterity". New York Times. Archived from the original on Nov 13, 2013.
22. ^ "Topsy the Elephant, Brooklyn, New York". RoadsideAmerica.
23. ^ Vanderbilt, Tom (July thirteen, 2003). "CITY LORE; They Didn't Forget". New York Times. Archived from the original on August 1, 2014.
24. ^ "Due west.S. Merwin, Poet Laureate Gives Poem "The Chain To her Leg" | Global Animal". September 6, 2011.
25. ^ Long, Tony (January 4, 2008). "Jan. 4, 1903: Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His Signal". Wired.
26. ^ Gelb, Michael; Caldicott, Sarah Miller (2007). Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor. Penguin Books. p. 29. ISBN9780452289826.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)

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