Thursday, January 26, 2006

To KC


This is "Samson" of whom you spoke, when he was with the W.W. Cole Circus and at left is his handler George Conklin.
James A. Bailey withdrew from the Barnum Show after the death of "Jumbo" and Cole closed his show and then joined Hutchinson and Cooper to run the Barnum & London Show in Bailey's absence. He brought along Conklin and this big elephant which was then left in Bridgeport for obvious reasons and he perished there in the November fire you mention.
As you say, four elephants were lost "Samson", "Alice", "Grace" and "Toug-Toulog (White Elephant)" however the name "Jess" is new to me. Bowser didn't mention one in his lists prior to the fire but a "Jess" does appear afterward and remained until being sold to the Hagenbeck Zoo from Ringling-Barnum in 1921.
Of course all this is moot since the "Jess" Parkhurst received along with "Queen" was a 4-Paw elephant. As my dad used to say "What I present is not the Law as handed down by God unto Moses" but it makes for interesting chit-chat.
The only thing I would take issue with is the claim that Barnum & London had 34 elephants. I believe the average herd was around 18. Adam Forepaugh was the guy with lots of elephants.

Posted by Buckles at 1/26/2006 05:42:00 PM

5 comments:

Bob Cline said...

I had a friend go see the RBBB Red a couple nights ago and said he wasn't real impressed. He had also heard the Blue unit is now dubbed Ringless Bros, and Boring & Barely Circus.

27 January, 2006 16:26
Anonymous said...

There is a a photogrph in the book
IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT by George Kunz published in 1916,of Jumbo's mounted skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History.
Next to Jumbo's skeleton is the mounted skeleton of "Big Sampson'.
Big Sampson is shorter but his bones are huge and robust.
His skull has tiny tushes.
Prior to this photo(the first I have ever seen of Samson.
I always imagined he would have looked in life like "Packy" over at the Portland zoo who is the largest Asian elephant in America.
Over 40 years old and around ten feet at the shoulder.

28 January, 2006 15:36
Anonymous said...

Just a couple of more comments.
In the book ,From Rome to Ringling
by Earl Chapin May published in 1932.It claims that the Samson of the W.W Cole Circus eventually ended up with the Lemen Bros. Show
and was then named"Rajah' and later executed around 1901 at the Lemen Bros. winter quarters
in Argentine Kansas.
I have read elswhere that elephant had really been "Tom" with the W.W Cole show.
This just proves how tangled some of the career histories of even some famous elephants are.

28 January, 2006 16:00
Anonymous said...

Reportly when the Barnum&London
winter quarters were constructed in 1880,its elephant house was 100 feet sqare in space and that it held 30 to 40 elephants.
It was kept at a certain temperture that was just right for elephants.
The hippo and sea lion building had a pond that was heated by steam pipes,which they let the elephants bathe in.

28 January, 2006 18:34
Buckles said...

That being the case, I stand corrected.

29 January, 2006 10:59

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