A is for Acrobat: Victorian England's Most Dangerous Jobs

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A is for Acrobat


The circus was hugely popular in the 19th century. In fact, it was so popular that alongside the traditional circus, circus acts often performed in theatres and music halls to warm up the crowd before the main show began. In part, it was the arrival of the railway which enabled the circus to thrive. For the first time, travelling circuses toured towns and cities, reaching the very farthest corners of the country. Unsurprisingly, audiences flocked to see these exciting shows in their thousands. Generally, the most popular performers were the equestrian trick riders but all types of acrobats, including trapeze artists and tightrope walkers, drew large crowds in their own right.

From the historian's perspective, acrobats are an interesting group to study since women formed so many of their number and society viewed these women in overtly sexual terms. Their costumes, for example, were a particular source of concern for the Victorian spectator, as shown by this observation of the famous acrobat, Mademoiselle de Glorion, from 1870:

A very pretty English girl, she seemed to be, of 18 or 20 years; trim and slight and shapely, standing about 5 feet 4. The only clothing she had on was a blue satin doublet fitting close to her body and having very scanty trunk hose below it. Her arms were all bare; her legs, cased in fleshings, were as good as bare, up to the hip: the only sign of woman about her was that she had a rose in her bosom, and another in her short curly hair. …There she stood, in sight of all the people; intent on preparing for her nightly peril, and taking no thought (nor did they, I think, just then) of the fact that she was almost utterly unclothed.[i]

For this spectator, seeing a woman perform in such a way was problematic: "Ought we to forbid her to do these things?" he pondered as he left the show. To him, it seemed only fair that a woman had the right to perform on the same terms as her male counterparts. However, he could not escape the feeling that the intermingling of Mademoiselle de Glorion's body with that of her male partner was "gross and corrupting" in the public arena.

Despite such comments, female acrobats were not deterred by such an overt sexualisation of their performances. As for the physical dangers of the profession, however, they could be neither ignored nor understated. To see just how dangerous Victorian acrobatics could be, we need look no further than 1860s when a number of accidents involving high-profile performers took place. The first of these happened on 14 August 1862 when the popular tightrope walker, Selina Young, performed at Highbury Barn in London. Her show had started as well as any other: dressed in a suit of armour and bathed in blue light, Selina walked confidently across the rope which sat one hundred feet in the air, pushing first a wheelbarrow before walking across covered in a sack. For her final act, Selina carried a long pole with fireworks attached to either end. This finale began well but having traversed about three-quarters of the rope, one of the fireworks on her right side went off before the one on her left. This disturbed her balance, causing her first to wobble before falling from the rope. Luckily, she was able to catch the rope with one of her legs but before too long, she again lost her balance and she plummeted headfirst to the ground. "One groan was heard," said one spectator, "before she was carried off insensible."

On the other side of the arena, a trapeze artist called Leotardo was mid-way through his act when one of the organisers told him about Selina. His face turned pale but keen to please his audience, he continued the act. The news, however, clearly upset Leotardo: on his next swing, he missed the centre trapeze and fell to the ground. Fortunately, he landed safely on both feet and without a single injury.
Meanwhile, Selina was taken from Highbury Barn to the nearby St Bartholomew's Hospital where doctors diagnosed a fractured thigh bone amongst a number of other minor injuries. It is rumoured that Selina begged the doctors to amputate her leg since the fracture now rendered it useless but this was never confirmed. Whatever the truth, Selina never performed again and, in fact, retired with her husband to Surrey where they managed an inn.

The next year, another tightrope walker, Selina Powell, suffered an even more serious accident, one which took her own life and that of her unborn child. On that fateful day, Selina was performing on the tightrope at a fete organised by the Foresters Society in Aston Park, Birmingham. It was a hot and sunny afternoon and the crowd waited desperately for a glimpse of Selina, the self-styled “Madame Genieve.” When she finally emerged, she wore a blindfold and her wrists were chained together. Lively music played in the background while the crowd cheered her enthusiastically. But Selina had barely moved when the rope suddenly snapped and she fell thirty feet to the ground. In a split second, this “graceful woman” was reduced to a “mangled mess on the green turf.”[ii]

At her inquest, the Birmingham coroner quizzed Selina’s husband, Edward Powell, on the suitability of the rope. Having purchased and assembled the rope and equipment that day, the finger of suspicion pointed firmly at Edward. The rope had been spliced, claimed several witnesses, but Edward denied any wrongdoing and the jury believed him. They returned a verdict of accidental death but, for many, society was the real culprit. Queen Victoria, for instance, wrote of her upset that “one of her subjects, a female” had been “sacrificed for the gratification of the demoralising taste for exhibitions attended with the greatest danger to the performers.”  

While Young and Powell’s tragic accidents caused no immediate social changes, the government did take heed of the dangers associated with acrobatic displays. In 1879, for example, the government passed the Children’s Dangerous Performances Act in 1879 which forbade children under the age of 14 from performing in any show which might cause harm. In 1897, this Act was extended to children under the age of 16. 

You might also like:
B is for Bar Worker.
C is for Chimney Sweep.

[i] Arthur Munby, Diary, 11 June 1870, http://www.victorianlondon.org/entertainment2/deglorion.htm.
[ii] The Rose, The Shamrock and The Thistle, p. 170.

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