Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Russell Bros. Circus #1 (From Dave Price)


RuTop1, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

I know nothing about an orang on the Russell show but here is a picture of Topsy.

Elsie Kitzman had a lot of stories about her. When she and Francis took over the advance over there in the early 1930s, Topsy was a major attraction of the little show. Elsie claimed that once Topsy was ill and Pauline Webb took her to hospital (this was long before animal hospitals came into being) and demanded and got a private room for her. I know this sounds like a stretch but Elsie swore by it.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

That earlier photo of the ape in uniform is definitely an orang - -not a chimp. Tospy is most certainly a chimp. Interesting that no one so far seems to recall the uniformed orang.