Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-Tailed Elephant, P. T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison

by Michael Daly

  “Old Adam shall privately advise, consult, aid in buying horses or in any manner that might benefit the company, but shall not travel with it.”

  Barnum was doing his best to sell his partner on the idea, saying they would have “a complete monopoly which nobody would ever dare to assail.” He suggested, “Then the new company could gradually establish museums and do anything else to give it strength & profit for generations.”

  That word “generations” suggested Barnum’s ultimate goal. Forepaugh had crowed that he had a son to carry on his show, but that son had grown into a vain, profligate, and notoriously unreliable dandy who could not be entrusted with anybody’s legacy. Barnum indeed had no son, but he did have a company bearing his name, a company that he envisioned still thriving when the great-grandchildren of the present audience filled the stands.

  The problem was that Bailey still wanted nothing to do with Forepaugh. Barnum warned that others were certain to seize the opportunity if they did not.

  “I don’t like Forepaugh any better than you do,” Barnum wrote, “but he is a stubborn old chap with considerable horse sense, and his show is a continual annoyance and injury to us—and also a menace, for in his anxiety to stop traveling personally he is almost sure to get showmen of capital to buy a share of his show.”

  There remained the question of young Forepaugh.

  “His son, Adam, Jr., of course has his faults, but if he is managed by us he can be useful as a trainer of animals & a performer. Old Adam is determined to keep his son in the business, so if we can keep his claws cut and have him interested in making the show attractive and successful, we thus ‘chain’ the young tiger.”

  Here would be a showman’s ultimate revenge: to control Forepaugh’s son as if he were one of the beasts.

  Bailey remained unconvinced, though as far as Forepaugh apparently knew the idea had not yet been formally presented to him. Forepaugh’s hopes for a positive outcome could only have grown as he ended the 1888 season reporting record profits.

  Forepaugh did encounter several setbacks, such as when the show suffered yet another major train wreck and when some pranksters fed apples stuffed with tobacco and cayenne pepper to Tip as he was being unloaded for a show. Tip had the predictable reaction in the confined space of the railroad car, crushing to death a new elephant trainer who had been hired to “assist” young Forepaugh.

  More elephant trouble came as the show was arriving at its winter quarters in Philadelphia. The other animals were all off the train and caged when the younger Forepaugh gave the order to unload the two biggest elephants, Chief and Bolivar. Chief had been in an “ugly mood” of late, and had been riding chained to Bolivar to reduce both his ability to act up and his chances of escaping. Chief’s disposition was not improved when his minders opened the railroad car door and sought to begin the unloading with what a reporter for the Evening Press called “a touch of the hook.”

  “Chief’s eyes shot forth glares of fire and a roaring noise could be heard squares away,” the reporter noted.

  The minders sent for as many men as could be summoned as back-up. Chief swung his trunk and tugged at his double-linked chains as the minders sought to subdue him in a traditional way.

  “The spear was applied without effect,” the reporter observed.

  The men waited for half an hour until Chief quieted. They began leading Bolivar and therefore Chief down a ramp that went directly into the main building. They resumed their traditional approach to encouragement, “sticking hooks in Chief’s body through the car openings,” the reporter noted.

  Chief grew only wilder on reaching solid ground, managing to loosen the chain on his right foreleg.

  “He seemed determined to escape, being aided by Bolivar, who turned troublesome,” the reporter wrote.

  Chief used his free leg to keep away men who sought to chain him to posts in the ground. Young Forepaugh continued with his usual approach.

  “Mr. Forepaugh tried to bring Chief to bay by prodding him, but it all proved useless.”

  Employees who had gathered to watch began to flee even as crowds of civilians were drawn to the scene from blocks away by the trumpeting. The doors to the building were barricaded. Chief continued tugging at his fetters until he was free of Bolivar. Nobody had been injured but a good many people had been terrorized, including a squad of policemen who immediately volunteered to assist when young Forepaugh announced that the time had come to put an immediate end to it. They were joined by a number of cowboys from the show. Ten marksmen in all were armed with breech-loading rifles, likely the same ones used in the reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand, only with live rounds. The building no doubt filled with gun smoke as the bullets smacked into Chief.

  “At first they had no more effect than if paper balls were fired at him. Instead of quieting the beast they only enraged him the more and he tore up everything in his path.”

  The gunfire and Chief’s bellowing incited the lions, tigers, and other animals into a roaring, screeching frenzy.

  “For a time it was thought a genuine panic could not be averted.”

  The rifles kept firing and finally Chief went down, blood streaming from at least twenty-five bullet wounds. The men hurried to chain him to the ground.

  “Nearly every part of his huge frame was punctured. . . . It was believed that he could not survive his wounds.”

  Yet survive he did and soon he was back on his feet. The elder Forepaugh certainly did not want any trouble to complicate his chances of achieving the merger and he had even more elephants on his hands, a total of thirty-six, after the Robbins show went bust and returned the six leased ones to him. These included the well-behaved but personally maddening Topsy as well as two persistently troublesome males, Gold Dust and Charley.

  And the elder Forepaugh was weary enough of the circus life without the prospect of more aggravation from Chief during what should have been a respite.

  “Owing to his growing viciousness, it was determined to kill him,” the Hartford Weekly Times reported.

  Forepaugh declared that Chief would be dispatched by a method that was being touted in the press as the most modern and humane, be it for man or beast.

  “It was then decided that Chief should be killed by an electric shock.”

  Edison made clear that he welcomed the chance to provide via a five-ton elephant the ultimate demonstration of what he and Brown termed “the executioner’s current.” But the famously “ugly” Chief could not just be walked into the lab and wired up like some stray dog. Arrangements to do the deed at Forepaugh’s winter quarters promised to take a fortnight and Chief was already growing so restless in his chains that his tenders became alarmed and alerted Addie Forepaugh.

  “Word was sent to young Forepaugh who, taking in the situation at a glance, determined that Chief was set upon mischief,” the Hartford Weekly Times reported.

  Young Forepaugh declared that there was no time to wait for Edison, that Chief had to be dispatched immediately, before the beast could cause any more trouble. Basil and Bismarck were brought over from among the other elephants and positioned on either side of the condemned. Chief was not such a real and imminent threat that Adam hesitated to climb atop him and loop a fifteen-foot length of what was variously reported as either inch- or half-inch-thick rope around his neck.

  “In the soft flesh behind the ears,” the newspaper noted.

  Even with such little notice, there was “a good-sized but quiet crowd,” interestingly more subdued than at the typical execution of one of their own species. The ends of the rope were tied to chains, which then were affixed to Basil and Bismarck, who had been harnessed as if they were going to pull a wagon. Adam called out the command and Basil and Bismarck were prodded in opposite directions with elephant hooks. What was called “the death line” went taut.

  “As the noose tight
ened, Chief’s mouth flew open, his trunk shot out straight as yardstick and then, without the proverbial thud as of sheriff’s gallows, the great elephant dropped in a heap,” the newspaper reported.

  There were no reports as to the effect on Basil and Bismarck. Elephants in the wild will surround a fallen member of the herd and stroke the body with the ends of their trunks, sometimes casting leaves and twigs in what appears to be a kind of burial ritual. They are known to return to the spot even years later, touching the bones as they sometimes touch each other in life.

  In what was becoming a pattern for “ugly” elephants, newspaper reports greatly exaggerated Chief’s “crimes,” calling him variously “the murderer of seven men” and “killer of eleven men” and “the most vicious elephant in America,” when he likely killed not even one. His demise was correctly described as “a death unlike any of its species had ever suffered,” but it was still not the one that a good number of people had hoped to witness and Edison had hoped to administer.

  “Many who saw or heard of the experiments made with alternating electrical light currents at the Edison laboratory, to find a substitute for hanging, will regret that the big elephant Chief, of Forepaugh’s circus, sentenced to death for his viciousness, could not have been experimented with, as was promised,” Scientific American said. “Just where the electrodes should have been placed would have been an interesting study. . . . Would the 3,000 volts current, which, we are told, will surely kill a man—they have been killed with far less than this—be enough to dull the consciousness of an elephant and then kill? It seems the circus people could not wait for the elaborate preparations necessary.”

  The Electrical World sighed, “Quite a little disappointment was caused to those who had expected to witness the killing of Forepaugh’s vicious elephant ‘Chief’ by electricity.”

  Nobody could have been more disappointed than Edison, but it was reported in the British Veterinary Journal that “another large and vicious elephant,” a “fierce brute of the Robinson’s circus,” was soon “to be made to serve the ends of science, by being made the test for the new system of death by electricity.” The journal noted that Edison and Gerry of the capital punishment commission and the SPCA “have been experimenting this week at Edison’s laboratory, to discover what amount of electric current is necessary to cause instant death.”

  Edison was again disappointed when the relatively small circus called the John Robinson Show changed its plans and simply donated its “fierce brute,” who also happened to be named Chief, to the Cincinnati Zoo. The show, which had once punished the elephant by lowering it into a bonfire with block and tackle, now not only saved itself the bother of killing the elephant and disposing of the mountainous remains, but garnered bounteous good publicity for its supposed generosity. The move did nothing to improve this other Chief’s temperament and the zoo did end up shooting the elephant to death, but that was not Robinson’s problem and nobody seemed to blame the show.

  The elder Forepaugh decided to follow the Robinson Show’s example in ridding himself of other elephants who were periodically difficult to control, perpetually expensive to maintain, and, by his overall estimation, far more trouble than they were worth.

  On December 25, 1888, Forepaugh made a Christmas present of the great Bolivar to the Philadelphia Zoo. The elephant who had shown such an unusual attachment to Topsy may have made a monumental fuss if he had known he was being led away from her for good. Bolivar arrived at his new home in a procession headed by young Forepaugh in a carriage.

  “Bolivar traveled to his new home in a great state,” the local press announced.

  Bolivar was exalted as a magnificent addition to the city. The public reaction and the attendant publicity were so positive that Forepaugh announced he would be marking the New Year by further demonstrating his magnanimity.

  Having presented the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, (my native city) with Bolivar, the largest living elephant as a Christmas gift, and feeling that I should like to present the Department of Public Parks of New York City with an elephant as a New Year’s gift, I now take great pleasure in offering you Tip, the second largest of the celebrated Forepaugh herd of elephants, and one of the finest in captivity. Trusting my offer will meet with your approval and awaiting your reply, I am your obedient servant.

  Adam Forepaugh

  Proprietor

  Forepaugh Show

  The city accepted enthusiastically and on New Year’s morning, 1889, young Forepaugh arrived at the Pavonia Ferry in Jersey City with Tip chained to the much smaller Jennie, who was described by one reporter as an “anchor,” but who in fact led the way as the senior female. The ferryman was not at all sure what to charge for two elephants, but settled for ten dollars.

  Three carriage loads of VIPs and a crowd of more than a thousand were waiting to welcome the elephant at the foot of East Twenty-third Street in Manhattan. The procession started up Tenth Avenue, Tip wearing a red blanket that announced in outsized letters, “ADAM FOREPAUGH’S GIFT TO NEW YORK CITY.”

  An ever-growing number of people followed, becoming what the Times described as “such a crowd as only the west side tenement districts could furnish.” The count at East Thirty-ninth Street was three thousand, “2,000 of whom were shouting, running, and more or less dirty and ragged small boys.”

  The elephants set a brisk pace as they were led across town to tony Fifth Avenue.

  “Then a scene occurred which will live long in the minds of the residents of that fashionable thoroughfare. . . . The advent of the two elephants and the horde of west side followers created considerable consternation. The masses have no respect for the classes and, as in this case, the masses were all moving in one direction.”

  The well-to-do had a choice few of them savored.

  “Dignified matrons held up their hands in horror at the intrusion upon their favorite drive; promenading belles looked appealingly to their swell escorts, who looked back bewildered, but all had to make way by either turning down the side streets or going with the crowd. Probably Fifth Avenue never had such a shaking up.”

  Another crowd was waiting by the East Sixty-fifth Street entrance to Central Park. A captive American eagle screeched with what one reporter deemed to be envy as the elephants were photographed in the courtyard outside the zoo’s executive office.

  Young Forepaugh formally presented Tip to the city, pointing out the elephant’s “fine points,” including the two four-foot tusks, surprising intelligence, and a kind and docile nature so long as only one person sought to command him.

  “He said that an elephant would obey but one master,” the Times reported.

  The head of the city parks commission, J. Hampden Robb, thanked the Forepaugh son and the absent father profusely on behalf of the city and pledged that Tip would always receive the very best of care.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Chair

  That same New Year’s Day, the New York State Electrical Execution Act took effect. Harold Brown met with state prison officials and secured a contract to build three electric chairs and provide the necessary generators. He sought to bill the state $1,000 for the animal experiments, but the officials refused. The new mode of capital punishment was itself still so experimental that the contract allowed no payment at all until the equipment had been installed and then only half. The rest would be paid “upon the satisfactory and successful operation of said apparatus, at the execution of a person sentenced to death.”

  Brown was left short of the necessary funds to build even one chair and secure the required equipment. He went to the Edison Company for $5,000 only to be told that he would have to make his request directly to the great man himself. Brown apparently took this to mean that Edison needed convincing, when it was more likely an early sign of dissension between Edison and some of those who ran the business end of his company about the wisdo
m of this War of Currents. Brown wrote to Edison seeking the funds, suggesting that such a dramatic demonstration of the deadliness of alternating current was sure to inspire state authorities to outlaw its use beyond the prison walls.

  “Do you not think it worth doing, as it will enable me, through the Board of Health, to shut off the alternating current circuits in the State?” Brown wrote.

  Edison probably needed no convincing. He provided the $5,000, reminding Brown that only a Westinghouse dynamo should be employed in any executions. The Westinghouse forces were actively seeking to prevent Brown from obtaining one, but he was finally successful with covert assistance from Charles Coffin, a former shoe manufacturer who now ran the number-three electric firm, Thomson-Houston.

  Coffin’s company was an unlikely ally, as it also pegged its future largely on alternating current. By one account, Brown essentially resorted to extortion, threatening to use Thomson-Houston generators unless Coffin helped Brown acquire several from Westinghouse. Another account holds that Coffin had given up hope of prevailing over Westinghouse. Coffin was said to have at one point suggested to Westinghouse a financial scheme whereby they would both personally make money no matter how their companies fared. Westinghouse rebuffed him, saying he was “not in the habit of robbing my stockholders.” Westinghouse was also said to have rebuffed Coffin’s proposal that their companies merge.

  “Coffin will make a man about ten different propositions in ten minutes,” Westinghouse was quoted saying.

  Whether as shakedown victim or as conniver or perhaps as both, Coffin now entered into a deal with Brown and managed to obtain a Westinghouse dynamo. An Edison engineer named Arthur Kennelly joined Brown in designing a wooden chair equipped with restraining straps, a metal skullcap for one electrode, and a slot in the back for a second. The criminal justice system provided a condemned man in the person of William Kemmler, who was convicted that May of killing his common-law wife with a hatchet.