Barnum and Bailey cause a stir in the town …
28 October 2021
‘I’ve discovered a report in the Leicester Chronicle of Saturday 28th October 1899 about a request to the Board of Guardians – at a meeting that took place on Tuesday the 24th of October 1899 – from the inmates of Loughborough workhouse asking to be allowed to see the procession of Barnum and Bailey’s circus through the town. The request stated, ‘We promise to keep sober and return home again in a peaceful and orderly manner.’ The Guardians granted the request on condition that the inmates were taken in the charge of an official.’
‘That particular meeting of the Board of Guardians was chaired by its vice chairman, Thomas Mayo, who was many times mayor of Loughborough, and the request was just a small part of the Board’s fortnightly meeting. The main issue under discussion was about alterations at the workhouse for an isolation ward. The new infectious diseases hospital which had been built along Beacon Road was originally intended to be for typhoid cases only, so other cases from the workhouse could not be sent there.’
‘Curiously I can’t find any reports in the Leicester Chronicle of the actual Barnum and Bailey procession through the town, though it is clear that they were in Loughborough about the end of October to the beginning of November 1899.’
‘The Leicester Chronicle of the 25th of November 1899 carried a report of the prosecution of a man named Fred Johnson, labourer, at the Autumn Assizes for attempting to pick another man’s pocket outside the box office at Barnum and Baileys show in Loughborough. The incident occurred on the 2nd of November 1899 when a farmer named Edward Hive’s went to see the show and was at the box office to get tickets when, he said, he felt a hand in his pocket.’
‘Hives turned round and saw the accused,, who ran away without stealing anything. Hives chased him to cries of ‘Stop, thief!’ but couldn’t catch Johnson, who was later apprehended and a policeman named Potter brought him to Hives for identification. At the time Hives had £3 15s in his pocket. Johnson said he was wrongly accused and that the gentleman had made a mistake, but he was found guilty and sentenced to three months imprisonment. Deputy Chief Constable Smith said that little was known about the prisoner. He apparently had no fixed home but travelled about the country selling books.’
Graham Hulme, with information sourced from the British Newspaper Archives website.
With thanks to Graham and to the Remember Loughborough Facebook Group for allowing us to reproduce his post here.
On this day in 1899: Barnum & Bailey’s Circus visit Loughborough
26 October 2021
Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth!
James A. Bailey, Proprietor
Reported in the Loughborough Echo on Thursday 2nd November 1899
Even on the busiest day of the November Fair, the streets of Loughborough have not been as thronged as they were on Thursday last (Thursday 26th October 1899) when the visit of Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show brought crowds flocking into the town from the countryside around.
It was practically a holiday as very little business was done.
There were busy times at the new Great Central Station at Loughborough in the early hours of Thursday morning. The sidings had been cleared in readiness and the first of four trains arrived from Chesterfield about five o’clock. In the first train were canvas wagons, pole trucks and the horses. These were quickly hitched up and on their way through the town to The Racecourse, Derby Road. There were 106 wagons, 28 cages of wild animals, 800 people, 420 horses, 32 led animals such as zebras, llamas, buffaloes, 16 elephants and 16 camels.
The procession, from the Great Central Station to The Racecourse was planned to start at nine o’clock. The crowds had taken up positions along the route and some difficulties were experienced as the procession wound its way through the streets.
Heading the procession was a large band-carriage drawn by 40 horses, then followed the cages of wild beasts. There were troops of riders, male and female, 16 elephants, some enormous in size, followed by 16 camels. There were many more animals, floats and displays.
There was a menagerie of tents containing hippopotamus, rhinoceros, pachyderms and many more. The greatest attraction was Hassen Ali, the Egyptian giant who stood 7ft 11 inches*. The most bizarre was Rob Roy, the dislocationist – he could dislocate any joint in his body and put it back again at will.
The main tent was 595 feet long and 240 wide, seating 14,864 people.
Details taken from the Loughborough Echo, 2nd November 1899
Read an article about some of the effects Barnum and Bailey’s circus had on the town here.
This article was written for the Victorian Loughborough Exhibition at Loughborough Library in 2019. It was put together by the Library’s Local Studies Volunteers from information taken from an article published in the Loughborough Echo on Thursday 2nd November 1899.
*Info taken from the Loughborough Echo, though Hassan Ali’s promotional postcard gives a taller measurement.
What’s in a name?
24 October 2021
A Guild One Name Study
About 40 years ago my uncle asked me to look up some records for him at the Local Studies Department at Nottingham Library. This started me on my genealogical journey.
My maternal grandmother’s surname was Jex. This name conjured up many suggestions about its origins – the foremost thought is that it is derived from the Norman name of Jacques. However, there is no proof of this. As I traced my line of Jexes back in time, it showed that they originally came from Norfolk and they started out (well as far back as I could go at the time) as Jecks.
In Norfolk in the 1700s, there were Jecks, Jeckes, Jacques, Jakes and many more similar surnames. There were many different spellings due to illiteracy in the population when scribes would spell names as they thought fit, often phonetically.
About ten years ago I decided to embark on a “One Name Study” of the name Jex. Given that it is an unusual name, I thought that there wouldn’t be that many but I was wrong in that assumption. To date I have 3,800 on my database and probably the same number waiting to be added. In attempting to trace every Jex, or those with similar sounding names, there are too many to contemplate. Indeed, in America there are probably thousands.
I registered my study with the Guild of One Name Studies – fondly known as GOONS – paid my yearly fee and began. The rules are that your findings must be published either as a book, a document or a website and should anyone ask you for help with their research on the same name, you must provide help. I chose a website to publish my results:
https://sites.google.com/site/onenametest
I discovered Jex people in America, Canada, Australia, Belize and many other countries. A line of Mormon Jexes travelled to Salt Lake City on the wagon trains. They were a founding family and a book has been written about them.
Considering the resources that we now have at our fingertips to try to trace people with a certain name – censuses, births marriages and deaths, land records, criminal records, military records, wills and probates – the list is large. It is a lifetime’s work and is probably never ending, that is unless the name is so unusual that there are only a few family lines. Those studies where an end is obvious, are the fortunate ones. Mine is not one of those.
Every so often I continue to hunt for more Jex people and invariably I succeed, producing yet more to add to the database. Please feel free to look at my website and check on the GOONS website to see if your surname has a study attached to it.
Sharon Gray, Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteer Group