Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison
Cruelty to animals was considered entertaining by many people in nineteenth-century America. At a time when cockfighting was widespread, and draymen beating horses on city streets was common, mobs greeted traveling circuses to gawk at exotic beasts. No animals suffered more than elephants, chained together on display, vulnerable to tormentors offering peppered apples and whiskey. Elephant keepers, many of whom were ill-paid alcoholics, could be just as abusive, using sharp hooks instead of kind words to control their charges. As circus owners P. T. Barnum and Adam Forepaugh touted their increasingly larger herds of elephants, sensational newspapers reported on a series of accidental deaths of their keepers. The elephants were always blamed. Weaving together stories about circus rivalries and the contest between power companies to wire America, Daly recounts how a once-beloved baby elephant grew up to be condemned to a public execution using electricity, the technical innovation of the time. Not for sensitive readers. --Rick Roche