Dangerous Frolicking

Abstract

In April 1836, an unpleasant accident occurred at Wombwell’s menagerie, which was then stationed in Carlisle. The victim, a fifty-four-year-old ex-soldier named John Newbolt, had been sauntering around the exhibition for some time, ‘inspecting and patting’ all the animals, when he arrived at the cage of the tiger and ‘had the audacity to take hold of the animal’s ear’. ‘Not being accustomed to such familiarity’, the tiger seized Newbolt’s hand, mauling it with its teeth and dragging him into the cage. Wracked with pain, Newbolt screamed loudly. The majority of his fellow spectators, terrified by his cries of alarm, speedily absented themselves from the show, but ‘two or three persons having more courage than the rest’, seized hold of the wounded man and hauled him from the beast’s jaws. Newbolt was taken to hospital, where a surgeon amputated his mangled thumb and forefinger. A few days later he contracted a fever and perished in great agony, his arm and face ‘frightfully swollen’. An inquest into the accident heard that the keepers had issued ‘repeated warnings’ to Newbolt against ‘using familiarities with the animals’, but that these had been ignored. The coroner returned a verdict of ‘accidental death’.¹

The lynx that escaped the other day from a menagerie near Liverpool has not been recovered. It is still, in fact, the missing lynx. (Huddersfield Chronicle, 15 January 1870)