|
Big Mary, Murderous
Mary
Mary was a 5 ton
female Asian elephant which was hung after killing her groom
(Walter "Red" Eldrige) in Kingsport on September 12th 1916. Late
in the summer, Louis Reed, the regular elephant trainer, had to
leave the show. Paul Jacoby, who had previously been the
elephant trainer, took over the job. Eldridge had dropped into
St. Paul from a Norfolk and Western boxcar, and worked some time
as janitor at the Riverside Hotel. Eldridge was hired as
elephant groom on the 11th of September in St. Paul, Virginia,
and was killed the next day.
There are several
different accounts of what actually happened that day. Between
shows the elephants were driven to a watering hole. On the way
back to the tent, Mary went for a piece of watermelon beside the
road, and Eldridge started to punish her, but she grabbed him with
her trunk.
The crowd of onlookers became furious and Blacksmith Hench Cox
fired his 32-20 five times at Mary, and later Sheriff Gallahan
"knocked chips out of her hide a little" with his .45, according
to witness Bud Jones, but with little effect. People demanded the
elephant to be killed, and the circus was under pressure. Leaders
of several nearby towns threatened not to allow the circus to
visit if Mary was included. Charlie and Addie Sparks decided that
the elephant must be killed.
"A human's life is
something I don't want charged against me," Charlie Sparks later
claimed in a 1924 interview. "If people in the business get hurt,
that's our lookout. But with an outsider - that's different."
The circus travelled
to Erwin, and Mary and the four other elephants to Clinchfield
Rail Yard in the town or Erwin, headquarters of the Charleston,
Cincinnati and Chicago Railroad, where there was a 100 ton heavy
locomotive crane Derrick Car 1400, strong enough to lift her with
a chain. More than 2,500 people gathered to watch Mary die. The
chain from which Mary hung snapped shortly after she was raised
off the ground, and she fell down on the ground, immobilized from
the pain of a broken hip. A heavier chain was attached and this
time she was raised into the sky. It took about ten minutes before
Murderous Mary was finally dead. They left her hanging for a
half-hour, witnesses say, and then, pronounced dead by a local
physician, Dr. R.E. Stack, they dumped her in the grave they had
dug with a steam shovel 400 feet up the tracks.
Excerpts from
(click here to read
the rest of the story)
Elephant Facts and Information Database
The Death of
Sport -
courtesy of James
Taylor Shocked & Amazed
If you have a question you would like
to submit email us at the
Sideshow World.
Back
to the Blow-Off
Back to Main
|
