Saturday, October 15, 2005

John Robinson Circus parade #4


This picture taken around the turn of the Century and shows "Tillie" who had been with the Robinson's since the 1870's. I have several more pictures of her in parade always carrying this (Turkish?) ensemble. 1911 was the last season the show went out owned by the Robinson family dispite the title being in use for many more years.
They retained the elephants that appeared in Vaudeville as the Robinson Military Elephants. "Tillie" remained in this act thru 1925 and was then retired to the Cincinnati Zoo where she died in 1932.
If you look closely you can see the incredibly large ivory on the third elephant "Tommy" tho only half grown his tusks almost touched the ground.

To those unaware, you can click twice on these pictures and they will enlarge a bit.

Posted by Buckles at 10/15/2005 07:05:00 AM

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

When did the parades stop? I know Kelly Miller had them in 61. Insurance to costly? Too much auto traffic? It is a shame they are a thing of the past. Maybe it was the 60s that Kelly Miller had the parades. I remember I had to ride in the Chevy Nova that came out that year and they always overheated because of the air cooled engine. I loved it when I got to ride the elephants.

15 October, 2005 11:04
Buckles said...

The last show I can recall that paraded every day was King Bros. Circus in the mid 1950's.
Mr. King had a band wagon, steam calliope, horse and pony drawn cages, a large den with a hippo, etc.
It was quite impressive.
The Kelly-Miller stuff was not really a parade, the elephants would go to the Chevy dealership, the polar bear den to the Philco place and the Red Goose pony float went to wherever red geese go.

15 October, 2005 11:19
Anonymous said...

Buckles, Kelly Miller did not have a polar bear or the goose float. and the Hippo never left the lot. I may have my year wrong. I road at the head of the parade in the convertable, another car. or two, a flat bed truck with performers, then the elephants. Not much of a parade by the old standers. The elephants wore blankets. There was a clown or two also. Sometimes the school band was along.

15 October, 2005 13:51
Buckles said...

You are right, I am talking about when I was on the show in the 50's ten years earlier.

15 October, 2005 14:02
Anonymous said...

I remember that the band was Africian American also. The two girls used to fasanate(sic) me by the way they ironed their hair. They did a side show thing that we were not allowed to watch. Sandra made that quite clear to me.

15 October, 2005 15:29
Bob Cline said...

Hello Buckles,
I remember seeing the King Bros. Circus parade in Sandusky, Ohio ( My Hometown ) in the 60's. I still have the newspaper photo and caption. Of Course it wasn't Floyd King's show anymore. The only thing I remember for sure was the rather large cages used and the elephants and a few horse mounted show girls. I can't tell you anything else about it. I believe this was a daily occurance but that's better said by someone that was there every time.
Bob

15 October, 2005 15:46
Buckles said...

We showed Upper Sandusky on the 4th of July and D.R. mentioned to my dad that if a show hadn't made enough money by that time for next winter's expenses, they were in trouble.
From then on, my dad always referred to budgeting money as the "Upper Sandusky Principle".

15 October, 2005 16:20
Anonymous said...

Who trained the Robinson Military elephants?
Is it possible they may have been part of Eph Thompson's trained herd?I think I read somewhere were he had to sell his herd off in 1908
when he developed tuberculosis,then went overseas on a sea voyage and either died or was killed in Alexandria Egypt. .

15 October, 2005 17:11
Anonymous said...

BTW be sure to click again,
to click on the sign in the lower right corner of some of these photo's to make them even larger.

15 October, 2005 17:13
Buckles said...

The Robinson Show bought four punks from the Hagenbeck Zoo "Tommy", "Tony", "Clara" and "Petite" (Pitt).
They were trained by Tim Buckley.
After the show was sold the last three were retained along with old "Tillie".

15 October, 2005 17:46
Anonymous said...

Tim Buckley,wasnt he famous for his trained elephant'Barber Shop act?
Would you know who he was a apprentice under?

15 October, 2005 17:52
Buckles said...

TIM BUCKLEY

1878-82 Sells Bros. Circus
1883-86 Barnum & London
(menagerie hand)
1900 Gollmar Bros. Circus
1901-06 John Robinson Circus
1908 Van Amburg Show
(Mugivan & Bowers)
1910-11 Al G. Barnes Circus
1920-21 Palmer Bros. Circus
(Backman & Tinsch)
1925-26 Al G. Barnes Circus
(Listed in the route book
among the performers)

15 October, 2005 18:13
Anonymous said...

Was Tillie supposed be the orginal John Robinson elephant Mary aka Empress?Mary was boss elephant in 1880 so that probably meant she was a mature female then.
Although when Tillie died in 1932 reportly she was over 100 years old.
Reportly,they had to saw off her legs when they buried her in a old cistern
in Terrace Park Ohio.
There is a number of phot's of her including her grave stone in the book
ELEPHANT TALES by Essie O'Brien.

15 October, 2005 18:43
Anonymous said...

I wish that I better understood the economics of parades. For wagon shows they made all the sense in the world, since the show was traveling in the same rigs they ran down Main Street. Once the large railshows dominated the business it seems like the parade was as much about bragging rights as anything else. Certainly by the 1920's as shows carried fewer and fewer baggage horses, I've got to think that the shows that still paraded did it because the boss loved parades. I've been led to believe that a combination of traffic, and permit requirements were the final nails in the coffin. I do wish I was old enough to have seen the King Bros parade.

It's ironic, these days as it gets harder and harder to excite the video game game generation with circuses parades might actually work again at selling circus as something different than a trip to the cineplex. Half the time my eleven year old strikes out when he tries to give away passes to kids in his class.

15 October, 2005 20:11
Anonymous said...

Saw the King Bros. parade in Scranton, PA around 53 or 54. I was 8 or 8 then I believe. For my dad who had seen the big ones grown up it was just a truck show and not like the old wagons and horses. But there were lots of trucks with cages on them and I was impressed. Quite a crowd too! Have a couple of old balck and white photos we took that day on a Kodak Brownie camera. Saw them once recently, must look for them again as in those days they always put the date, at least the year, on the pictures when they developed them.
Carl

17 October, 2005 19:47
Dea Tacita said...

Do you know the "real" name of the elephant called "The Boy?" That is the only name I can find in any of the newspapers. He was one of the John Robinson Circus elephants in 1880 and with Mary rounded up Chief after he crushed John King and skedaddled down the road.

18 December, 2008 23:45

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