Topsy (elephant) facts for kids
Topsy in a June 16, 1902 St. Paul Globe illustrations for a story about the elephant killing spectator Jesse Blount. The martingale harness was intended to partially restrain the elephant.
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| Species | Asian elephant |
|---|---|
| Sex | Female |
| Born | c. 1875 |
| Died | January 4, 1903 (aged 27–28) Luna Park, Coney Island, New York City |
| Cause of death | Electrocution |
| Nation from | American |
| Occupation | Circus performer |
| Employer | Forepaugh Circus |
| Years active | 1875–1903 |
| Weight | Between 4 and 6 tons |
| Height | 7.5 ft (229 cm) |
Topsy (c. 1875 – January 4, 1903) was a female Asian elephant who was publicly put to deaths at Coney Island, New York, in January 1903.
Life
Forepaugh Circus
Topsy was born in the wild around 1875 in Southeast Asia and was captured soon after by elephant traders. Adam Forepaugh, owner of the Forepaugh Circus, had the elephant secretly smuggled into the United States with plans that he would advertise the baby as the first elephant born in the United States. At the time Forepaugh Circus was in competition with the Barnum & Bailey Circus over who had the most and largest elephants. The name "Topsy" came from a slave girl character in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Forepaugh announced to the press in February 1877 that his circus now boasted "the only baby elephant ever born on American soil". The elephant trader who sold Topsy to Forepaugh also sold elephants to P. T. Barnum and tipped Barnum off about the deception. Barnum exposed the hoax publicly and Forepaugh stopped claiming that Topsy was born in the United States, only advertising that she was the first elephant born outside a tropical zone.
At maturity, Topsy was 10 ft (3.0 m) high and 20 ft (6.1 m) long, with claims she weighed between 4 and 6 short tons (3.6 and 5.4 long tons; 3.6 and 5.4 metric tons). Over the years, Topsy gained a reputation as a "bad" elephant. In 1902, another event brought her again to prominence: the killing of spectator James Fielding Blount in Brooklyn, New York, at what was then the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus. Accounts vary as to what happened, but is commongly believed that the spectator was drunk, teasing and bothering Topsy.
Newspaper reports on Blount's death contained what seem to be exaggerated accounts of Topsy's man-killing past, with claims that she killed up to 12 men, but with more common accounts that, during the 1900 season, she had killed two Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus workers, one in Paris, Texas and one in Waco, Texas. Journalist Michael Daly, in his 2013 book on Topsy, could find no record of anyone being killed by an elephant in Waco; and a handler named Mortimer Loudett of Albany, New York attacked by Topsy in Paris, Texas suffered injuries but there is no record of him dying. The publicity generated by Topsy's man killing brought very large crowds to the circus to see the elephant. In June 1902 during the unloading of Topsy from a train in Kingston, New York, a spectator named Louis Dondero used a stick in his hand to "tickle" Topsy behind the ear. Topsy seized Dondero around the waist with her trunk, hoisted him high in the air and threw him back down before being stopped by a handler. Because of this attack, the owners of Forepaugh & Sell Circus decided to sell Topsy.
Sea Lion and Luna Park
Topsy was sold in June 1902 to Paul Boyton, owner of Coney Island's Sea Lion Park, and added to the menagerie of animals on display there. The elephant's handler from Forepaugh, William "Whitey" Alt, came along with Topsy to work at the park. A bad summer season and competition with the nearby Steeplechase Park made Boyton decide to get out of the amusement park business. At the end of the year he leased Sea Lion Park to Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy who proceeded to redevelop it into a much larger attraction and renamed it Luna Park. Topsy was used in publicity, moving timbers and even the fanciful airship Luna, part of the amusement ride A Trip to the Moon, from Steeplechase to Luna Park, characterized in the media as "penance" for her rampaging ways.
During the moving of the Luna in October 1902, handler William Alt was involved in an incident where he stabbed Topsy with a pitchfork trying to get her to pull the amusement ride. When confronted by a police officer, Alt turned Topsy loose from her work harness to run free in the streets, leading to Alt's arrest. In December 1902, Alt rode Topsy down the town streets of Coney Island and walked, or tried to ride, Topsy into the local police station. Accounts say Topsy tried to batter her way through the station door and "she set up a terrific trumpeting", leading the officers to take refuge in the cells. The handler was fired after the incident.
Death
Without th handler, Thompson and Dundy decided to get rid of Topsy but they could not sell her to anyone. Eventually, they devised a plan to advertise the opening of their new park, by killing Topsy and charging admission to see the spectacle. These cruel plan was prevented by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The event was instead limited to invited guests and press only and Thompson and Dundy agreed to use a more sure method of putting the elephant to deaths, with large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch.
On January 4, 1903, in front of a small crowd of invited reporters and guests, Topsy was killed. Among the invited press that day was a crew from Edison Studios who filmed the event. Their film was released to be viewed in coin-operated kinetoscopes. It is probably the first filmed death of an animal in history.
The story of Topsy fell into obscurity for the next 70 years but has become more prominent in popular culture, partly because the film of the event still exists. In popular culture, Topsy is often portrayed as being killed in a public demonstration organized by Thomas Edison during the war of the currents to show the dangers of alternating current.
Association with Thomas Edison
Two things that may have indelibly linked Thomas Edison with Topsy's death were the primary newspaper sources describing it as being carried out by "electricians of the Edison Company” (leading to the eventual confusing of the unrelated power company with the man), and the fact that the film of the event (like most Edison films from that period) was credited onscreen to "Thomas A. Edison", although Edison himself had no actual involvement in the production.
See also
In Spanish: Topsy para niños
- List of individual elephants
- Chunee (elephant)
- Mary (elephant)
- Tyke (elephant)
