The evening herald. [volume] (Shenandoah, Pa.) 1891-1966, 1892-03-16
AN AWFUL DEATH
A LiOn-Tamer Torn to Pieces
by Wild Beasts,
TIE SPECTATORS HoRRIFIED
Terrible Some Enacted in a Menagerii
in an English Town,
TIE SPECTATORS HoRR1FIED

Montana, the Negro Trainer, While En-.
tering cage slipped aud Fen to the
Floor, where He Was Pouuced Upon
by the Brutes and Mangled IN a Horrible
NIanner-It Was Impossible to save Him.
The Animals Iusensible to Blows.
LONDON. March 16 There was big
crowd in the tent. Wombell's Menagerie
was showing in Hednesford, Stafford
shire, and people had come from the sur
rounding villages to see the celebrated
lion tanner, Delhi Montana.
The strong cage was rolled in Three
immense bears and a wicked-looking
hyena paced restlessly up and down the
narrow confines of their prison, growing
and showing their fangs.
Montana sprang lightly into the ring,
a confident smile on his lips. He ap
preached the cage and entered the outer
compartment. He was separated then
from the wild beasts only by an iron
barred door. Again he turned and
bowed to the hushed audience. confident
and smiling still. He opened the iron
door
AS he was about to enter the den of
the snarling animals who covered before
him sulkily, half-threateningly half
fearfully, he slipped and fell. The iron
door closed upon him with crash.
Montana was at the mercy of the
beasts. His power over them was gone.
He tried to rise, when the hyena, which
was the first to realize that the spell was
broken, sprang upon him with a fierce
shrek that sounded to the horror
stricken spectators like the coarse laugh
of a demon.
Setting his fangs in the flesh of the
lion-tamer, the beast mangled it with
tooth and claw. Then in burst of wild
rage he tossed the bleeding man to the
other side of the cage.
The bears had all this time kept up a
tremendous growing. The spectators
were shrieking with terror. Women
tainted from horror.
The bears seized Montana and tossed
him from one to the other, as a terrier
does r.,, The same time biting him
in savagt. ri nneF and tearing his bod Y
and limbs cruelty.
The taste VI blood enraged the brutes
still more, and they kept up their hor-
ribe sport with the negro's body for
fully fifteen minutes
The attendants of the menagerie, who
were at first paralyzed by the fri htful
spectacle, finally attempted to rescue
Montana. In spite of their attacks on
the fierce beasts. they were unable to get
the mans body from the cage for fully a
quarter of an hour.
When the hrutes were at last beaten
off, and the lion tanner was dragged from
the cage he was still alive. He was torn
and mangled from head to foot, and was
completely covered with blood.
They carried him to a nearby hotel and
everything possible was done to relieve
his intense sufferings. He fingered in
great agony for an hour.
While the sickening spectacle was 60
ing on in the cage, those people who
We're not chained to the spot by the very
I horror of the scene, rushed for the exits
fearing that the maddened brutes would
break from the cage and attack the
crowd
doctor who witnessed the awful
scene said also that everything possible
/ had been done to get Montana out of the
cage, but tnat the animals seemed insen-
sible to all the blows and proddings sd-
ministeTed to them.