One hundred years ago
We know few things more cruel than the way in which lion-tamers like those at Sanger's menagerie. at Birmingham deal with their victims, in order to give the public the trivial amusement of seeing them act like tame animals, when they are really kept down only by terror. On Saturday, , the Birmingham lion., tamer, Alicamousa, a • .coloured man, who had previously severely punished the large.lion, 'Wallace,' for his attack on the cage-cleaner, was himself attacked by the resentful animal and narrowly escaped with his life, though not without terrible injuries, being saved only by the thrusting of red-hot irons through the bars of the cage. It seems probable that by this last display of temper the lion, if • he survives his wounds, which are as desperate as his assailant's, will secure for himself the comparatively peaceful captivity of the Zoological Gardens, and be tormented no more by displays of his preternatural submissiveness to a tyrant whom he must hate. So much the better • for 'Wallace.' But the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should prosecute all those lion-tamers who gain their ascendancy solely by cruelty and keep by it constant recourse to the same means.
Spectator, 29 January 1881
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