Killed by Lions

[Valda]

Do you know where Annie Margaret is buried? Are there any gravestones for the family which might reference to Joseph and Ellen?
Alice Maria's birth certificate would supply the last known information about her father's occuaption and would confirm whether he was still alive.

Regards

Valda

[Richard Knott]

Something of a longshot, as most of the queries are more recent:
http://www.circushistory.org

This is presumably one of your contacts:
http://creativegraces.net/data/seston.doc

Richard

[marktod]

rjknott:

Thank you.

The circus site is interesting.  With a search I couldn't find any reference to Joseph Phillips but there is one to John Cooper:

'ORLANDO, Dick. Circus artiste. Was helping John Cooper, the lion tamer, in Milan, on 24th May 1870, when his arm was blown off by a gun. Survived the accident.'

The second ref. is the site of masgrace who started this thread.

[marktod]

Valda:

As you suggested, I have obtained the certificates for the children's births, Maria's marriage and Annie's death.

The information about Joseph's profession is similar to that on his own marriage record.  On Annie's birth certificate and Maria's marriage certificate he is described as 'Musician'.  On the marriage certificate (10 Feb 1884) he is noted as 'deceased'.

On Maria's birth certificate he is described as 'Professor of Music'.  For both births the mother, Ellen, is the informant.

Strangely, Joseph is also mentioned on Annie's death certificate (7 March 1896), although English (as opposed to Scottish) death records do not contain a space for information about the deceased's father.   In the column headed ' Occupation' is written 'Wife of Joseph Phillips, Musician' - although this is scarcely an occupation and she was of course his daughter rather than his wife.  I guess there must have been some confusion when the informant (her brother-in-law George Dolphin, 'present at the death') gave the information.

As you say, the fact that we haven't found Joseph or Ellen in 1861 doesn't mean that they must already have died.  As reported, the story is that they lived with their grandparents because their parents were working away rather than because they were immediately orphans.

Best wishes,

Mark Todd

[jorose]

What an interesting thread!

As John Cooper seems to have travelled abroad with the circus, you might want to try the Overseas death indexes (primarily the Consular death indexes). If the death of either Phillips was registered with the British authorities in the country where they died it should be there (but some deaths were not registered).

The Times shows that in 1865 John Cooper was in Turin (with six lions), so an overseas death does seem quite likely.

[JStockley]

Hello,

I'm getting lost on this thread, it has drifted somewhat from the original post 

Who is it we are looking for ............ the lion trainer John Cooper 1840/1920 ?

Have we agreed on who got killed by lions in the circus ring? If we have, I may be able to help. 

kind regards

Jim

[marktod]

Jim:

Thank you for bringing this thread back to life after some months. It would be wonderful if you could supply some information.

Actually we don't know if anyone was killed by lions, but this is the story that has been handed down.

What we know is:

Joseph Phillips married Ellen Halliday in Bromsgrove 1855, aged about twenty and eighteen, and they had two children.   We know the children were brought up by their grandparents in Dodford and Birmingham.  No record reference to either Joseph or Ellen can be found after the children's birth records, the second being in 1860.  In the 1861 census or any later we can't find Joseph or Ellen, nor have we yet found death records for either of them.  In the records we have, Joseph's profession is described as 'musician'.

The local historian of Dodford interviewed the late Alfred Dolphin, great-grandson of Joseph and Ellen, about twelve years ago.  He told her that his family story was that Joseph and Ellen's children had been brought up by grandparents as their parents were circus artists, Joseph being known as 'Major Phillips'.  |The story was that 'Major Phillips' had died in the ring of a heart attack and that Ellen had been killed during a stunt when she put her head in a lion's mouth.

This is the story we have been trying to authenticate or otherwise.

The reason that I have brought John Cooper into the thread is that there was a family connection with Joseph Phillips - this might explain how Joseph got involved in the circus in the first place, or conversely confusion in the family's mind with John Cooper, a famous lion-tamer, might have led to a dramatic story about Joseph's death being dreamt up and improved over the generations.

The connection was that John Cooper's brother Charles was married to Joseph Phillips's sister Susannah.  John Cooper certainly did not die in the ring as in 1911 he is alive and well in retirement, recorded as living with Charles' Cooper's widowed son-in-law Thomas Stead. (To add another quite irrelevant dramatic death to the thread, Thomas was the nephew of the editor W.T.Stead who was to die in the Titanic the following year).

If you can help with any information or clues about the deaths of Joseph and Ellen, it would be much appreciated.

Best wishes,

Mark

[JStockley]

I'll ask around for you.......... in the meantime I thought you might like to see what the 'head in the lions mouth' trick actually looks like 

Here is Pablo Noel doing his version in the 1960s ....... one of the best !

[millymcb]

Hi - I got sidetracked by your fascinating story and came across an old book which gives a great account of John Cooper's lion taming act..It is digitised as PDF here... (Cooper is on about page 14 I think)


http://www.rootschat.com/links/06bm/
&

http://www.rootschat.com/links/06bn/

Milly