Sunday, October 3, 2010

Fascinating stories about life in 1879
An ad for the Bailey Circus as it appeared in The Pottstown Ledger in 1879.
Published: Sunday, October 03, 2010
By Michael T. Snyder

Menagerie spotlighted in area towns
If folks would stand outside Pottstown Iron Works to watch electricity make the night brighter, they certainly would pay to see a show that was completely lit up by it.
The owners of the Cooper, Bailey and Company's Great London Circus understood that, and gave their show the extra hype of three exhibition tents "equipped with the "Brush Dynamo Electric Light that used 18 electric chandeliers" that had a "lighting capacity of 35,000 gas jets."

Frank Ivers Frayne in costume as Si Slocum, one of his characters.

By 1879, Cooper, Bailey had combined with Sanger's British Menagerie to create a production so large it required a train of 40 railroad cars to transport it. Even their advance publicity was an effort of Steinbrenneresque proportions.
On April 21, The Ledger reported the circus's "advance brigade" would arrive soon and "fill the town with large posters for the show." In preparation, a local contractor was hired to erect 400 feet of billboards that were 12 feet high. The largest of these, placed on Hanover Street between King and Chestnut, was 160 feet long.
read more at: http://www.pottstownmercury.com/articles/2010/10/03/life/srv0000009526341.txt

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