Old circus in Bangor was widely attended

Bangor had had its share of great performances and glitzy spectacles during the year, but none came close to attracting the numbers the circus did that steamy Monday, July 25, 1904, for Circus Day. Thirty-thousand strong, area residents trooped under the big top. It was a busy day for the police as well.

For weeks, huge colorful posters had been plastered all over the sides of buildings in eastern and northern Maine announcing that “The Great Adam Forepaugh & Sells Bros. Vast Circuses, Menageries and Hippodromes United, which for successive seasons have, in every way, broken all Arenic Records in Madison Square Garden, New York City” was coming to town.

Employing 740 people and using 400 horses, it was one of the biggest of the dozens of circuses that crisscrossed the country by train each summer. James A. Bailey, whose name is immortalized today as part of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, was part owner.

Among the acts were 14 “full-grown, living” polar bears – “a greater number than Sir John Franklin, Kane, Greely or Peary ever saw together at any one time.” Also featured were La Famille Bruin Lecusson, “seven male and female arenic geniuses in their phenomenally original performance, ‘On the Way to the Grand Prix Race, Paris,'” and Mons. Hubert, “The Mounting Maniac of the Bewitched Bike.” The All-Conquering Aurora Zouaves and the chasm-vaulting cyclist Prodigious Porthos were also among the 17 featured acts.

All this could be seen for 50 cents or for a quarter if you were under 9.

At 4 a.m. Sunday, it was raw and foggy as the circus train rolled onto a spur on Railroad Street. Workers poured from the 14 sleeping cars to begin the trek to Maplewood Park – Bass Park today. When they were done, about 30 tents packed the area “between the old baseball grandstand and the farther fence,” but the big top, where the main show would be, would not go up until the next morning, according to a Bangor Daily News reporter.

After a tour of the grounds, the reporter dined in the eating tent for circus managers and performers where the food and service ranked with the finest hotels. The roast beef and other delicacies were “well cooked and neatly served by a corps of negro waiters.” Even circuses had their social hierarchy, and there were separate sleeping quarters and eating accommodations for the laborers, although conditions were far better than they used to be when workers slept under the wagons.

The next morning a “monster parade” was scheduled before the afternoon and evening performances. Thousands of spectators were headed for Bangor, including a large number of farm boys who planned to tipple in the city’s famed liquor establishments and perhaps find entertainment in the numerous unsavory “boarding houses.” Not since 1898, when a Bangor company of National Guardsmen headed off to the Spanish-American War, had such a huge crowd assembled.

An estimated 5,000 to 7,000 out-of-towners swarmed into the city on the morning trains the next day. The noon train from Aroostook County brought an additional 1,328.

The parade was “one of the longest, cleanest and most gorgeous” ever seen in Bangor. It left the fairgrounds at 10 a.m., heading down Main Street, down Railroad, through Summer Street and Pickering and West Market squares, across

the Kenduskeag Bridge, through Harlow Street, back over Central Bridge and up Main Street again. A third of a mile in length, it included “besides gilded chariots and band wagons and floats, a herd of 16 elephants, 14 camels, troops of soldiers, a big squad of lady riders and a splendid steam calliope.”

Bangor’s police were put to the test. At times they had to “bunt into the front ranks with rigor” to keep exuberant spectators from falling under the wheels of the circus wagons.

The “grief chariot,” drawn by old Billy, the patrol horse, also got a workout that day. Drunks were the biggest problem, including a number of “good looking fellows from the country” who “commenced to weep” when they woke up and found they were behind bars. Apparently feeling they had to do something about all the drunkeness, the police arrested a single barkeep, Patrick Kavanaugh at the Commercial House, and seized his supply of beer and liquor.

Upon receiving several complaints of stolen money, they arrested a pickpocket from Portland. Fights were not uncommon and two men were seriously injured when they fell off one of the city’s packed trolley cars.

At the fair grounds, thousands mobbed the ticket booth in the stifling heat. “Hats were jammed, coats were torn, and everybody perspired and said things,” remarked the reporter.

The ticket seller, who was inside “a little red cart, which is made of steel,” was up to his knees in bills and change. Sales finally were shut off as things promised to get wilder, and “the crowd swarmed over everything in sight.”

Inside the big top, the audience was sweating profusely, and many people couldn’t see much of the show because of the thousands who were forced to stand in the aisles. But they were happy to be part of this convergence of humanity, and many clapped even when their vision was blocked.

The reporter awarded top honors to the Prodigious Porthos, who rode a bicycle along a narrow plank from high above the audience downwards at a 45 degree angle for 100 feet before jumping “a wide chasm” onto a platform to a spontaneous outburst of cheers and clapping. We can speculate that this Evel Knievel of a century ago either retired or modified his act soon thereafter, since motorized cycles were already making their way east to Bangor.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters including The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War. He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.