More on John Robinson Elephants #4

The earliest listing of a Robinson program that I have is from the 1890 route book and it includes no elephant act. However, it should be remembered that the Sells Bros., the first to feature a large herd, for many years in the 1880s confined their elephant display to the menagerie and had no elephant act in the big show. Performing elephants may still have been a novelty. By 1900, the date of this photograph from that year’s route book, John Robinson featured an elephant act as “Display 12. An amusing and instructive children’s number. Ring No. 1 Wonderful performing elephants—Tillie and Tommie. Hear her say ‘papa,’ and blow the horn. Ring No. 2. The great Hagenbeck elephant quartette. Ring No. 3. Interesting exhibition of animal understudy. ‘Queen’ elephant.” Since we see a number of young punks here, I suspect Robinson may have purchased a group about this time. While they likely may have come from Hagenbeck (Sol Stephen at the Cincinnati Zoo was Hagenbeck’s American agent), they could just as well have been merely called the Hagenbeck quartette because of the German showman’s fame in the US after his big animal show at the 1893 Chicago world’s fair.