On May 11, 1802, an announcement in the New Hampshire Gazette was addressed “To the Curious.” The full notice read as follows:
“A beautiful African LION To be seen every day in the week (Sunday’s excepted) at Mr. Wm. STAVERS’s. This noble Animal is between three and four feet high, measures eight feet from nostrils to tail, and a beautiful dun color: 11 years old and weighs near 500 weight; His legs and tail are as thick as those of a common size ox, He was caught in the woods of Goree in Africa as a whelp; and brought from thence to New York. Great attention has been paid to providing a strong substantial Cage, and to have the LION under good command. The person who has the care of him can comb his mane, make him lie down and get up at any time; and it is said by those who have seen Lions in the Tower of London, and many pats, that he is really worth the contemplation of the curious. Price of admittance 9 pence.”
I mentioned this lion earlier this week in an article called “Lewd Amusements in Downtown Portsmouth.” The title was meant to grab your attention, even though we were talking about the 1790s. Back then, before the traveling circus tents, exotic animals were often displayed one at a time for a small fee. Portsmouth residents were able to view elephants, lions, and a large male moose.
What’s interesting here is that, in order to draw crowds, early newspapers were developing the ability to print pictures as well as text. As any graphic designer knows, readers look first at images, then headlines, and lastly at the written word. This woodcut of a lion appeared with the text in the NH Gazette. The same woodcut and text appeared in newspapers across the East Coast. But his docile almost-human face – he looks to me like Bert Lahr in “Wizard of Oz”- was not fierce enough for some audiences. Other versions showed a more angry, growling lion, with sharp claws.
How do I know this? Because historian Peter Benes recently published an extraordinary 500-page book entitled “For a Short Time Only” (2016, university of Massachusetts) that catalogs the strange array of itinerant performers who traveled the country after the American Revolution. Benes includes his collection of woodcuts used in newspapers, handbills, and broadsides of the era. They were first used to promote tightrope walkers, wild animals, acrobats, and hot-air balloon demonstrations.
Woodcuts were also used to draw commercial attention to real estate auctions and the arrival or sale of ships to Portsmouth harbor. In some issues of the NH Gazette, a familiar woodcut showed a crude image of a black female next to the headline: “To Be Sold: A Negro Girl, about 16 years of age.”
In the same issue as the ad for the caged lion in Portsmouth, this notice also appeared: “RAN AWAY from the subscriber on the night of the 27h of April last, an indented apprentice named NATHANIEL STEVENS, being about 18 years of age, about 5 feet 10 inches high, of a dark complexion and black curly hair; had on when he went away a short blue coat, blue trousers, and a grayish waistcoat. Whoever will take up and return said runaway will receive five dollars, and a reimbursement of all necessary charges. All persons are cautioned against harboring, trusting him as they would avoid prosecution. JOHN HAINES.”
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson with research help from Steve Fowle at the NH Gazette.
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