The Bouncer Wagon: A Uniquely English Invention?

Towards the end of the 19th century European circus saw the gradual decline of wild animal acts being presented inside "beastwagons" (mobile caged containers, now used on circuses just as sleeping quarters) in favour of the new caged arena style acts. However, there would be one last hurrah for these types of act, an invention that came out of the early part of the 20th century, known as the “bouncer wagon act” (aka the “bouncing lions”). Above there is a picture of a beastwagon that would eventually be used for this purpose. The act pictured is the sometimes confused “Posing Act” which is the original type of trained wild animal act presented in the beastwagons. My grandfather, Dick Chipperfield Snr., stands on the outside whilst Carol Caldwell presents the act inside. The act was presented on Chipperfield’s Christmas Circus in Bingley Hall circ.1961/62 and was televised and shown on Christmas Day.

Prior to the posing acts, animal “trainers” of the 19th century wore armour and virtually fought with the wild animals. In many respects the bouncer wagon harked back to these days albeit in a far safer and more humane fashion. The bouncer wagon act was a highly trained and energetic routine, where lionesses raced around, up the sides and even on the ceiling of the wagon.

My grandfather saw perhaps the first ever bouncer act. He also rescued his brother's father-in-law, Tommy Purchase, from a savage attack by a lion in a wagon just like this one. This was not a bouncer wagon act; it consisted of two male lions that posed while Rosie, Purchase’s daughter, danced between them. After this presentation the bouncing act was done with a single lioness called “Old Vic” who worked in just a quarter of the wagon. The rescue made front page news at the time. Sadly Purchase, an amputee, who presented the act with a wooden leg, died soon after from a gangrenous infection caused by the wounds sustained in the attack.

Our sources indicate and it was the opinion of journalist, circus historian and amateur wild animal trainer, Eddie Campbell, that the bouncer wagon act was a uniquely English invention of the early 20th century. There does not seem to be any evidence of the act existing prior to "Captain" Tommy Purchase. My father, also a circus historian and a well-respected wild animal trainer, said "I am sure he was the first, although Tommy Day could have pipped him to the post". He then added "Apart from Eddie, the Chipperfields (Dick Chipperfield Snr, Dick Chipperfield Jnr, John Chipperfield and Terry Duggan), Tommy Day and Tommy Kayes nobody else did it. All the acts from ‘Bostock and Wombwelle’s’, ‘Biddel’s’, ‘Sedgwick’s’, ‘Mander’s’, ‘Anderton and Roland’s’ only did posing acts with a few tricks, no running up the walls, which defines the true bounce. “Captain” Tommy Kayes was undoubtedly the best, with one lion and two lionesses. I have seen some footage of him and it was absolutely fantastic." Kayes also had a caged arena set up to the same dimensions as a beastwagon to perform the bouncing routine. Pathe News has footage of it on their archive site under "Manchester Can Take It", where it is featured at Belle Vue.

Dad also spoke to Tommy Day's son who told him about his father's act:

"[it] concluded with him jumping out of the wagon and leaving the door open. The lioness then stood and roared at the audience out of the open door. I actually achieved this as well when I attempted to train the act, but had a few mishaps, so best left it out".

Family politics prevented my father from presenting the bouncer wagon act. My uncle Dicki (Dick Chipperfield Jnr.), presented the act when he was just 15 and was actually televised doing it. There are some who say that he did when he was 14! Chipperfield's were forced by the authorities to terminate his performance on the basis of his age. John Chipperfield, Dicki’s uncle, took over the act before it was passed onto Terry Duggan. Clem Merk, one of the “house” animal trainers, also attempted to work the act, but despite his impressive background presenting fast-paced lion acts he did not adapt to the bouncer style. He was knocked down a few times in rehearsal and he never worked the act in front of an audience. It would appear that the bouncer wagon act was an art all of its own. Dicki would work it again in 1964 and then when his family’s circus toured South Africa, 1964-67. After this, however, there are no records of anyone else working the bouncer wagon act again.

Postscript: In 1972 Dicki and my father attempted to resurrect the bouncer wagon act an American TV show. Work even began on building the wagon, but it was left unfinished when the contract fell through for financial reasons. In 1987 Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Circus asked my father to resurrect the bouncer wagon act again for their 1988 season as a prelude to his 14 lions in the caged arena, presented by Larry Alan Dean. The wagon was to be pulled around the track by an elephant. Dean would perform the act and then go straight into his caged arena performance. However, it was deemed impractical and the act was substituted for a single lion posing with his paws on the pedestal. Sonia Allen, “The Lady of the Lions”, presented the last of the fairground lion shows. These were posing acts in a beastwagon. The act was eventually sold to Sanger’s Circus in 1955.

Sam Lockhart as "Big Dick"?

Is this picture taken from the 1889 performance Sam Lockhart gave in front of Queen Victoria with his "Royal Elephants" Jock and Jenny? My father seems to think so. This real illustration has been reproduced, as the trend has been for some time now, and captioned with a cheeky joke.

The trainer riding the elephant is not depicted in the usual way contemporary newspaper artists drew Sam Lockhart. Photos and illustrations I have seen of Sam and his brother George, who is a main character in my book "The Legend of Salt and Sauce", show them with classic thick but neat moustaches. The character riding the "One Eyed Jumbo" clearly has a beard. I have no evidence either to suggest that Sam rode any of his elephants. However, there are plenty of examples given in my book of artists of the period and decades afterwards of artists straying way off the mark in their depiction of characters and incidents.

So who are the characters in the picture? Who was the elephant, the trainer and the spectators? Is that a rather youthful depiction of Queen Victoria, Prince Edward (to be Edward VII), Princess Alexandra et al? We know that the Victorian and later Edwardian family were all regular visitors to the circus who saw many of George and Sam's performances.

Update on the Strait Bargate Boston Photograph

My last post on here featured a photograph with "Prince" Abdul Karim with Salt and Sauce in Strait, Bargate, Boston, UK taken around 1950 when they all were working on Ringland's Circus. Also pictured was one of Karim's children. I have seince made contact with Farouk Karim again and asked him the identity of the little boy featured. He confirmed this little boy was his elder brother, Hussain. My gratitude to the Karims and their continued support of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce".

There will be more on Abdul Karim shortly, as my father has recently come into possession of a programme featuring Karim under another stage name of his, "Bey".

Salt and Sauce in Strait Bargate, Boston circ. 1950

Recently Ray Dolling, a very helpful circus historian and supporter of my book "The Legend of Salt and Sauce", sent me this photocopy of a picture taken around 1950. It was a photograph owned by a friend of his who is featured in the picture. He is the little boy you can just see looking out of the window with his mouther above Hepworths. It is a classical example of the old circus parades once common in the UK, but banned since the 1970s due to the Dangerous Wild Animal Licence 1976 and Health and Safety legislation. Standing in the foreground is the bounding rope performer and sometime presenter of Salt and Sauce, "Prince" Abdul Karim with one of his sons. I hope to have this son's identity shortly. At the time Karim and the elephants were touring with Ringland's Circus owned by "Long" Tom Fossett and later by his son, Dennis, who also worked Salt and Sauce.

Karim's life was dramatically changed along with the rest of his family when Salt died in Canterbury 1952. Fired from his job on Ringland's Circus Karim settled in Canterbury, where the family retained a local celebrity status for decades.

Actually now that I look at the photo I see I have reversed it! Ah well, according to the general consensus on genertions I just missed "The Net Generation" by one year. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Forgotten Fame II: The Incredible Abernathy Brothers

Following on from my cousin, Jim Stockley's interesting post regarding the amazing story of the Abernathy brothers, I felt that it is worth giving this piece of history its own post. The Abernathy boys became famous for a short time when they travelled from Oklahoma to New Mexico and back again on horseback to welcome President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt back from him European visit. As my cousin pointed out, it might be the case that their 62 trans-American record has not been beaten. However, what makes the story even more incredible is the fact that Bud Abernathy was only nine and his younger brother, Temple, was only five. This was a very different age. It was an actual event in the mould of Mark Twain's most famous creations, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer (whose adventures I joyfully downloaded onto my ipod this year!)

From "The Weekly Wire":

"Bud was 9 and Temple only 5, the two boys set out with their father's blessing
to ride horseback from Frederick, Oklahoma, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and
back again...alone. They went not out of necessity, nor on some desperate
errand; they went for the fun of the adventure. It was 1909. In the next
four years, they would undertake even more prodigious travels through
America, becoming minor celebrities, securing corporate endorsements and
meeting President Taft in the White House."

For the full article, please click below:

http://weeklywire.com/ww/03-22-99/tw_book1.html

Salt and Sauce at Bingley Hall 1932/33

George Pinder has very kindly sent over two scans of a Christmas programme for Bingley Hall's circus 1932-1933. The programme shows listings of the elephants Salt and Sauce. At the time the elephants were owned by John "Broncho Bill" Swallow. He had auctioned off his own circus in 1930 in the wake of the Great Depression. Salt and Sauce had been one of the few items that had not been sold*. They ended up becoming a big part of the business that would sustain him for 15 years before his death in 1945.

Notes:

George Pinder's famous French/English circus family feature a lot in my first book, "The Legend of Salt and Sauce". The Bingley Hall booking is also noted in my timeline appendix.

Bingley Hall has special childhood memories for me, as my parents ran their circus there for the Christmas season of 1982/1983 and 1983/1984. Sadly 1984 would be the year that the building caught fire, damaging it beyond repair. It was owned by the famous yachtsman, T0ny Bullimore, at the time my parents worked there and for years afterwards we still received Christmas cards from him. Bingley Hall replaced Bingley House in 1850.

Image via Wikipedia

*Actually there is more to this story than meets the eye as my book reveals.

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• Tony Bullimore is rescued by the navy (telegraph.co.uk)

Beelzebub's Broker!

I am proud to announce my new blog, "Beelzebub's Broker". The point of this new blog is to showcase more experimental and controversial work. I am happy to also promote and recommend work that I feel is in line with my objectives. Writing will be shaped by, but certainly not limited to individualism and scepticism.

Open Mind (versus empty head!)

"Open Mind (versus empty head!)" is the last of my tenet series of articles. It addresses the need to be able to change and be flexible both in the short and long term. It's main focus is on the martial arts and self protection, however, it is also touches upon various other aspects of life and I thought would be appropriate for this blog.

http://www.clubbchimera.com/?p=568

Recently I was prompted to post up my notes on my modern definitions of cynicism, pseudoscepticism, ancient scepticism and modern scepticism. They are virtually unedited, completely unbalanced and taken straight out of an email conversation. I also admit them to being partial as there is a lot more I could have added. However, seeing that more people I am in contact with have taken some interest in the scepticism and what is often meant by the term I thought I'd best share it here. For the record, this is not a sceptical blog, although I am an unashamed modern sceptic and individualist.

Cynic = A person who always assumes worst in everything. Varies from a Samuel Beckett or Phillip Larkin (both who I enjoy reading) pessimist to someone who has a generally nihilistic view on life and an irrational capacity to seeing the worst in everything. It’s a position that should be avoided, but we all have it in us in some form.

Pseudosceptic = Teenage syndrome! In short, those who attack something that has the biggest body of evidence, but refuses to accept the burden of proof. Some are controversial for the sake of being controversial whereas others are your typical confirmation bias conspiracists etc.

Ancient scepticism = I can’t pretend I have a large amount of knowledge on this subject, but from what I can gather this form of scepticism started off with very good intentions – like today’s modern version – but ended up becoming very much like the pseudosceptics. Advocators of this traditional form of scepticism ended up posing improvable academia like “Prove that the world wasn’t created five minutes ago and we arrived with all our memories intact” or “Everything is just a figment of our imagination”. This is where my prejudice may come in, but at its worst I see this as cowardly cop-out mental masturbation. It’s the sort of nonsense I loathe in martial arts - “Ah but in a real situation I would do this and you wouldn’t do that”. If we can’t replicate it, test it or see workable examples to support the hypothesis aside from “philosophical evidence” (there’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever seen one) then it doesn’t warrant an equal oppositional argument. It’s the same sort of thinking that con-theos or conspiracists use when all their arguments have been debunked by hard evidence – “Everything is a conspiracy!”

See a description George Edward Moore' s philosophical argument against traditional scepticism and the case for "common sense": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_a_hand

Modern sceptic = Not to be confused with the ancient Greek school of philosophy, which many do. I think the modern sceptic at his best is a hard rational thinker with a genuine open mind. He accepts facts as “temporary conclusions with the biggest body evidence”. He doesn’t accept absolutes, but will go where the evidence is strongest and continually tests and questions with logic. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Lister, Jenner and Einstein all questioned the prevailing opinion of their times, but they did so with hard data and compelling evidence. They took their burden of proof and were willing to prove their ideas. What I love most about these examples is that they didn’t do it through force of personality – often the staple tactic of religions, cults and philosophies – but through ideas that could be proven the world over by similarly educated individuals.

Forgotten Fame: Salt and Sauce meet Seabiscuit and the Match King

Cover via Amazon

It amazed me when I first started researching the two music hall/circus elephants Salt and Sauce just how much I didn’t know about my own cultural history. Salt and Sauce were often quoted as being the most famous elephants of their time, and yet four decades after the death of Sauce at Butlin’s Holiday Camp, they had been all but forgotten. I guess it is appropriate, as their demise occurred when a new era arrived. Salt died in 1952 and Sauce in 1960. The ‘50s were a time of dramatic cultural change and just as Salt and Sauce moved on from Music Hall, a form of live entertainment that declined with the advent of the “talkies” on the cinema, circus began to slowly fall out of favour. The traditional circus wouldn’t disappear altogether – my parents’ own show toured from the late ‘70s until the early ‘80s – but by the end of the 1960s two of the three biggest UK circuses, Billy Smart’s and Bertram Mills, would both have ceased touring.

It was extraordinary. They were featured in books, radio broadcasts and cultural folklore. The celebrity artist and circus fan, Dame Laura Knight featured them in an etching. They had appeared on some of the most famous stages and circuses in British history alongside its most famous contemporaries, but when Sauce died the smallest of obituaries marked her passing in the weekly newspaper for showmen, the World’s Fair. They were seemingly locked in their time. Very little has been written about them since their death and most my research came from the era they lived in.

Forgotten fame is an interesting phenomenon. There are other examples of figures that were even more famous than Salt and Sauce, but little was written about them in retrospect. Another animal celebrity contemporary of Salt and Sauce that gallops to mind is the rags to riches racehorse “Seabiscuit”. Seabiscuit, of course, has since had his fame resurrected in the form of a book written by Laura Hillenbrand, “Seabiscuit: An American Legend” in 2001, which was made into a major feature film starring Tobey Maguire in 2003. At the time of the stallion’s success he captured the depression era’s imagination as a real Cinderella story in much the same way that James J. Braddock did around the same time. Seabiscuit had inauspicious beginnings on a farm in Kentucky, where his undesirable size and appearance did not originally bode well. However, after he changed hands from the legendary trainer, “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimons to trainer “Silent Tom” Smith, employed by the thoroughbred’s new owner Charles S. Howard, the automobile entrepreneur, his potential began to be realized.

Seabiscuit became a massive celebrity throughout the 1930s and a symbol of hope in the depreciation era as he won race after race against serious competition under odds that included some apparent foul play. 1938 saw him win “Horse of Year” and set the country alight with the drama of the racetrack. What made Seabiscuit exciting was not only the back-story of a “no-hoper”,* but also his style of racing. He would pace out the race and then make a sudden burst towards the end. This is something that would make his story the stuff of celluloid joy especially when he made his return to racing after an injury that many believed would signal the end of his career. He not only returned but won the Santa Anita Handicap race in 1940 for the $121,000 prize in front of 78,000 paying spectators. That year noted track writer, K. Beckwith wrote “Seabiscuit: The Saga of a Great Champion” and “The Story of Seabiscuit” was the inevitable yet highly fictionalized feature film about the horse’s racing career released in 1949 and starring former child star prodigy Shirley Temple. However, the legend would fade and Seabiscuit’s next notable appearance would be in an illustrated children’s book “Come on Seabiscuit” written by Ralph Moody in 1963. This would serve as the inspiration for Hillenbrand’s book written almost four decades later when Seabiscuit had almost faded into obscurity.

Ivar Kreuger is a different type of historical animal altogether. The only human of my trinity of forgotten famers, he’s a character that would not be popularly thought of as “noble” or “heroic”. This is especially true at the time of writing. I am living in a post-Enron era when we are in the midst of a global recession. The old capitalist model is being seriously challenged and so are questions regarding individualism. Kreuger, at the height of his fame, was the embodiment of the capitalist entrepreneur. He inspired the great libertarian philosopher and writer, Ayn Rand, to create several characters after his model. Gail Wynard of her breakthrough novel “The Fountainhead” is very much an Ivar Kreuger personality and the circumstances surrounding his death clearly influenced her play “Night of January 16th”. Rand saw in Kreuger a dynamic individualistic force that seemed unstoppable in his ambitions, but yet was far from perfect. Rand would perhaps see this imperfection simply as weakness – he committed suicide in 1932 when it came out that his financial empire was unstable and later would be revealed to be involved in mass fraud. Many others would see his weakness as unquenchable greed and after his death he would sometimes be given the title “The World’s Greatest Swindler”.

Ivar Kreuger’s most famous title was “The Match King” and this was no understatement. He changed the whole the face of the safety match industry, starting in his home country of Sweden and then expanding outside until he controlled the vast majority of match production in the world. Before he tried his hand at the family match producing business he was already an ambitious innovator. He had tried his hand at running several businesses, including a restaurant in South Africa, and was a qualified and trained engineer who introduced new building construction methods to Sweden. It was while he was a building contractor that he formed the company that would later be known as “Swedish Match”. He would grew his business interests in huge monopolies and generate tremendous trust that he was able to huge raise loans from various governments. By 1929 and through the acquisition and investment of over 200 companies, Ivar Kreuger was considered to be worth the equivalent of about $100bn by 2000 standards, according to the Wikipedia article.

Kreuger’s life story is a far more fascinating, complicated and involved biography than the mashed together paragraphs I have written for the purposes of this article. He was massively famous at the time purely based on the immense power he wielded and his innovation on virtually areas connected to business including sourcing materials, manufacture and production, financing, distribution, marketing and branching out. In many ways he was a Randian hero and a champion of the individualist cause. However, after his death his fame would make a giant descent into infamy. Many might argue that he was perhaps he was the moral lesson that Enron proved the industrial world hadn’t yet learned. As Seabiscuit was bringing hope and joy to those who lived in the Great Depression Iver Kreuger became a symbol for all that had been wrong about the extravagance and selfish greed of the era that had preceded it. And yet by the time the Second World War was over his memory would also fade in the public interest.

A book, “Kreuger”, was written by Paul Bjerre in the Match King’s native country of Sweden upon the year of his death. With the exception of a book written by Allen Churchill called “The Incredible Ivar Kreuger” in 1957 there was little written about this individual until 1995’s Swedish book “Ivar Kreugar” written by Lars-Erik Thunholm. This was then translated into English and republished in 2002 at “Ivar Kreuger: The Match King”. It was Professor Frank Partnoy who would bring up the subject of the lessons history could teach us and what got roused my attention on BBC Radio 4’s the “Today” programme on 23 February 2009. He also likened Kreuger’s temporary fame to be like Seabiscuit’s. In both instances it would take a good many decades before anyone took any serious interest in writing again about these figures that definitely warrant a position in western history.

And so I arrive back at my minor celebrities who also had their history truncated. Why do figures that excite so much attention at the time, suddenly fade into historical obscurity? Let us not confuse them with the “one-hit wonders”. All three examples were not famous for a short period - they were famous for most of their lives. One theory I would like to offer is that the dramatic change of the times made their story suddenly inappropriate. Salt and Sauce were not TV celebrities, in fact despite being one of the numerous pachyderms featured in “Elephant Boy” I have yet to see any film footage of them. When Sauce died the era of the TV had arrived and traditional travelling circus had already peaked. Seabiscuit was a symbol of hope for those of the Lost Generation and Greatest Generation that lived through extreme hardship through and between two world wars and economic disaster. His story had little relevance to the children born into prosperity and optimism of the ‘50s and ‘60s. In fact, horseracing did not have the mainstream appeal it clearly had during the Seabiscuit era. As for Iver Kreuger, the last thing anyone wanted to hear in the time of rebuilding and re-invention was a story about a hugely successful man who seemingly destroyed everything.

As historians, however, it is not our business to be trendy. My dear online friend and historian Dr. Heather Vallance has often discussed the folly of how many historians try to read into past events with the eyes of today. Although our technologies of today are great for doing this and we can perhaps collate more data that can help unravel mysteries, we need to understand why people behaved a certain way by understanding how they viewed things. Salt and Sauce were two amazing animals that regularly lumbered into the lives of communities with far less connection with the rest of the world than we can imagine today. They were seen on the roads, through the countryside and then onto a public field to impress the spectators with their incredible abilities and sheer size. Seabiscuit defied odds and showed the hard beaten victims of the Great Depression that seemingly anyone could make it if they had enough belief and spirit. Iver Kreuger revolutionised his industry with the spirit of innovation and then his fall showed them the people of his time extreme folly of greed. As we learn more and progress forward we must always be mindful of what has gone before. We don’t need to just learn from our previous mistakes or even draw from the wisdom of old. Rather we should look with the eye of objectivity and try to see with the eyes of that past.

*Historical sceptic check, it would appear according to the Wikipedia account that as amazing and full of drama Seabiscuit’s story was, his early career with Fitzsimons was not as bad as Hillenbrand and the subsequent feature film would have us believe. The price Fitzsimons sold the horse to Charles S. Howard was $8,000 (equivalent of $100,000 in today’s monetary terms).

Clubb on Clubbed: A Reflection

When I was 18 I wrote to a new martial arts author called Geoff Thompson. Previously Geoff had annoyed me with the articles he was producing for the martial arts magazine I bought. I grew up in showbusiness right in the middle of old family circus culture and then via a business shift by my parents into film work. Therefore, movie stars, pop stars and other mainstream celebrities never really phased me much. They were accessible to a certain degree. However, living out in the sticks meant there weren't many martial arts clubs or at least there weren't many good ones, certainly not those taught by my heroes in the magazine I had religiously collected since I was 13. Now this new character on the block, Geoff Thompson, seemed to be really upsetting the proverbial apple cart by debunking popular ideas relating to how martial arts worked in real life. He was a doorman who had written about his experiences working the doors in 1980s Coventry in a book called "Watch My Back" and his conclusions were a very bitter pill for many in the martial arts world to swallow.

Then I had another reality check and in a short episode discovered that the stuff I thought I loved about martial arts didn't work for me and what I'd learnt from my circus background did! Geoff was right, but I felt a little shellshocked at the time and needed some support. So I wrote to the man seeking new knowledge. He replied to me with a handwritten and deeply considered letter. The correspondence continued and I became converted to the Geoff Thompson revolution! His work made the same impact on me that Bruce Lee did to the generation before me.

11 years later and I met Geoff for the first time as a seminar and would go on to train under his coaches, host seminars for them and eventually get an instructorship under Geoff in his self-defence system. We became friends and I have just recently written the forward to his latest book. The following link is a reflection on his first feature film, released this year, "Clubbed". http://www.clubbchimera.com/?p=543

Pseudoscepticism and Pseudo-History

When I was researching "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" a key issue I wanted to address was pseudo-history. There was a huge amount of Chinese whispers, urban legends and exagerrated and mixed up accounts to cut through to get to the truth relating to these two famous elephants. Pseudo-history, like the better recognized pseudoscience, is an unhistorical way to look at history. I have covered conspiracy theories in two of my previous posts on here. First in my interview with Dr. Heather Vallance and later in my short report on the psychology of conspiracists. They are perhaps the most easily recognizable and prolific form of pseudo-history. However, there is also unintentional faction and pulp non-fiction. Both of these were covered in my article "Myths, Faction and Pulp Non-Fiction". All of this type of think goes off on a confirmation bias rather than following the sage advice uttered by A.C. Doyle's fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Reigate Squires": "Now, I make a point of never having any prejudices, and of following docilely wherever fact may lead me".

Recently the news has featured a member of the Catholic clergy who was criticized for his views on Holocaust Denial. Bishop Richard Williamson, who according to the Times news paper is a member of an "ultraconservative sect" of the Catholic Church, had his excommunication lifted in January this year, but immediately ran in to problems due the views he expressed on a Swedish TV show. He issued a public apology on 26 February, but few people were happy with its tone. Williamson apologized for upsetting anyone, but he didn't indicate he had changed his views. There is now more talk about him being prosecuted in Germany where it is apparently an offence to deny the holocaust: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0228/1224241990165.html

Holocaust Denial is, of course, another example of pseudo-history. There is also a conspiracy theory believed by many "Holocaust Revisionists". Understandably it is a very offensive "theory" to those who lost their relatives to the holocaust. It is also hard to see any other link to holocaust denial and especially those who believe in the "Jewish Consipiracy" than anti-semetism. It is for these reasons that many see Holocaust Denial as a hate crime. Unfortunately I fear, taking the view that you should be arrested for propagating bad history will only help strengthen the con-theos rather ridiculous case. For more on holocaust denial I would

Cover via Amazon

recommend you read Michael Shermer's chapter on the subject in his "Why People Believe Weird Things" book or his collaborative work "Denying History", which focuses on the whole argument. Here are some worthy reviews of the latter work http://www.holocaust-trc.org/deny_history.htm As a side point and in the interests of keeping matter objectiv, there is also an interesting critique of Shermer's argument that doesn't support holocaust denial in anyway, but nevertheless pulls the author up on supposed logical fallacies http://www.geniebusters.org/915/04g_jumping.htmlThis gives an example of what makes history and science the best known methods for establishing fact: they are always up for review and objective criticism, and good historians and scientist welcome such challenges in the interests of further knowledge and understanding.

Holocaust denial is also an example of pseudoscepticism (pseudoskepticism). This is a term coined by Marcello Truzzi.

Image via Wikipedia

Truzzi succinctly put what he meant by pseudoscepticism in the following paragraph taken from a 1987 piece he wrote called "On Pseudo-Skepticism" in the "Zetetic Scholar" journal:

"In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new 'fact.' Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of 'conventional science' as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof".

Very often con-theos are pseudosceptics by design. They start with a preconceived conclusion and then progress with a confirmation bias. Such an approach means that they are prone to nitpick for details they feel contradict the established view and support their own. Often in the recording martial arts and circus history I have noticed that too much has been provided by anecdotal evidence and, worse still, qualified by the appeal to authority logical fallacy argument. This is why I don't like to see any historical figure to be presented in a saintly or devilish light. I want "warts 'n all" accounts so that I can humanize the figure and get closer to the truth.

A pseudosceptic can also be a cynic. They can take the position of doubt

Image via Wikipedia

without even hearing the case, which is not good history or science. The position of the good sceptic is to say "that sounds like a really interesting idea. Please prove it". The good sceptic/scientist/historian has to also ask himself as well as the person he is in conflict with: "Is there anything that woudl make you change your stance?" It's an argument put forward by the famous sceptic and magician James Randi. It's a wonderful starting point. If you or your debater says there is nothing that could be provided that would change their point of view then the argument is already over.

Damoo Dhotre Celebrations in India

Following up from a post I made on my father's behalf regarding the career of Damoo Dhotre, we were recently sent photographs of a special event held in the great Damoo's native land of India to celebrate the 36th anniversay of his death 23 January 1973. The event was organized by his great grandson, Anand Dhotre who very kindly sent me some photographs of the event and gave me permission to reproduce them on my blog.

New Blog for Pen and Spindle

The Pen And The Spindle: The Pen And The Spindle Post Updates February 22, 2009

The Psychology of Conspiracism

Image via Wikipedia

I am delighted at the response I have received and the interest from various different quarters I have prompted with my recent interview/article with Dr. Heather Vallance "Can History be Objective?" http://jamieclubb.blogspot.com/2009/02/can-history-be-objective-conversation.html The discussion has been a fascinatingly varied series of posts from some really interesting people, discounting no one! I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge those who have contributed both on the thread and outside it via email. Thank you for lending such a wide scope of knowledge and experience. I salute you all!

On the subject of conspiracy theory, which I think is still the strongest and most prolific example of "bad history" in action, I was fascinated by a whole area that dealt with the psychology of what they call "Conspiracism". Wikipedia has a good entry on this subject that I think may intrigue many of my readers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories#Psychological_origins

Learning from students, teaching the teachers

These days I try to keep my mainly martial arts related work separate from work produced on this blog unless it concerns a book I am writing. Today I kind of broke that rule, as it is also being used to promote my second book "When Parents Aren't Around". Kwoklyn Wan, brother of famous TV fashion personality Gok Wan, is the martial arts entrapaneur behind the Martial Arts Festival or MAF UK, to be held in Leicester on 4th and 5th April. I was kindly invited to teach my Clubb Chimera Martial Arts system on two workshops at the event. The following is an article I wrote for the festival's programme, which will be featured opposite Gok Wan's work with Kidscape, an important children's charity raising awareness and dealing with child bullying.

The short article is a brief edit of the series I wrote a couple of years back for Martial Arts Illustrated. It describes how I learnt from teaching children how to get the best out of students. Martial arts are sadly often bound up in rituals and conveyor belt money-making schemes with little thought regarding how to get the most out of students. The focuse seems to be on those who made a success of a certain style and everything else is geared towards venerating and emulating the masters of old without considering the principles the art was founded on or the needs of those wishing to learn. At CCMA I have done my best not just to turn this outmoded method of teaching on its head, but also to bring it into alignment with other effective proactive teaching technologies.

http://www.clubbchimera.com/?p=529

Review by CFZ

A kind review of my first book,"The Legend of Salt and Sauce", was published in the most unlikely of places, issue 44 of "Animals and Men" last summer. The magazine is connected to the Fortean group and has a website http://www.cfz.org.uk/ dealing in zoology and cryptozoology. Being a sceptic the last time I read about the Forteans was in the now classic "Fads and Fallacies" written by Martin Gardener.

Image via Wikipedia

Nevertheless, I also used to read Fortean Times and was often impressed by their journalism - there was a thorough debunking of Sawney Bean for example. CFZ assure me that there is a wide scope of contributors to their website (from the scientifically sound to the wildly esoteric) and asked me whether I would blog for them, which is something I would be happy to do. Here is their review, for

Image via Wikipedia

which they have kindly allowed me to reproduce:

The Legend of Salt and Sauce: The Amazing Story of Britain's Most Famous ElephantsBy Jamie Clubb and Jim Clubb

Paperback: 148 pages Publisher: Aardvark Publishing Language English ISBN-10: 187290436X ISBN-13: 978-1872904368 Salt and Sauce were two Asian elephants owned, for a while, by the elephant trainer George Lockheart. They had been wild caught in the 1890s and brought by the legendary animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck.

They were part of a group of performing elephants known as the 'Cruet', others being called Pepper, Mustard and Vinegar. What made Salt and Sauce so special is the conflicting stories about their nature and the long life they spent together in zoos and circuses under differing owners. Ultimately they caused the death of two of their owners.

Father and son team of Jamie and Jim are well known in the zoo and circus world as experienced keepers, trainers and zoo historians.

In this unique book they have tracked down old photographs and records of the animals throughout their lives. They also interview folk who had first hand knowledge of the animals.

Some recall the beasts as unpredictable and dangerous, other as placid and loveable. What was the real story of the elephants that were known to have killed two men? Were they panicked into such actions, were the animals genuinely aggressive, or was it a case of poor training?

As a zookeeper myself and one who has lost a friend through an elephant attack, this proved to be a highly interesting book. Not only for looking into the circumstances behind the two incidents, but for the long and engaging story of the career of the elephants who were still working in the 1950s.

All in all a remarkable book in the same vein as David Barnaby's 'The Elephant that Walked to Manchester'. A must for all interested in zoo and circus history. RF

Damoo Dhotre: Notes on his career with Alfred Court

The following are notes taken from circus/zoo historian and wild animal trainer, Jim Clubb (my father). They are a response to questions asked of him by a descendent of the great Indian wild animal trainer Damoo Dhotre. From 1938 until 1952 Dhotre was in the employment of the legendary French wild animal trainer, Alfred Court. Court was a massive inspiration of my father's. You will note that Dhotre presented snow leopards, trained by Court. They were the first snow leopards ever trained. Bailey Fossett was the second person to train this species and my father was the third.

Damoo Gangaram Dhotre: Brief History from when he joined Alfred Court

1938: Damoo joined Alfred Court at the age of 36 to present Court’s new group of small cats (leopards, black panthers, jaguars, pumas and the only trained snow leopards in the world). He arrived in Paris and went to Liege in France to work at Circus De Jonghe. This was a small circus that took the act in its first season to break it in to the lighting, music and public.

1939: Blackpool Tower Circus, Great Britain. The act consisted of 15 mixed small cats (seven Indian and African leopards, two black panthers, two black jaguars, two pumas and two snow leopards). Damoo usually worked the matinees (afternoon performances) and Court worked in the evening. Because of the outbreak of war, Court left Blackpool half way through the season and went to Europe to organize the sale of some of his animals to other circuses and the transportation of two of his large mixed groups to go to Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus in the USA at the end of the 1939 season.

Court originally left to go to Berlin to organize a winter engagement for the mixed leopard act, but while he was there he was informed of the imminent outbreak of war. The Germans invaded Poland while he was in Berlin, so his plans changed overnight. While he was away Damoo presented the act, assisted by Wilson “Willy” Storie, Alfred Court’s nephew and business manager. After the first week of the season, the male snow leopard, Niet, died of pneumonia.

December 1939: The animals, accompanied by Damoo and one groom, left from Liverpool docks on the American ship, “The West Chatala”, heading for New York. The journey took two weeks and experienced bad weather conditions. They eventually arrived in the USA and were transported by rail to Sarasota, Florida, which was the Ringling Brothers' winter quarters. The other two mixed groups arrived at a similar time accompanied by Fritz Schultz, Joe Walch and Harry and May Kovar. Damoo wrote to the American historical magazine, Bandwagon, in 1967, listing all of Court’s animals that had been transported from war-torn Europe to Sarasota. They were:

Six Himalayan Black Bears
Six Polar Bears
Four Pumas
15 Lions
Six Tigers
16 Leopards
Six Black Panthers
Two Jaguars
Two Black Jaguars
One Snow Leopard
Two Spotted Great Dane Dogs

1940: At Ringling's winter quarters Damoo and Court trained five additional leopards as spares for the act. One of the leopards attacked Court, injuring him and also bit Damoo in the hand. The act opened with Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus at Madison Square Gardens. Alfred Court and Damoo were in the centre ring with the mixed group of panthers. During the dress rehearsal one of the leopards, Igloo, managed to get through the petition that separated him from the snow leopard, Dotchka, biting her in the neck and killing her. Damoo and Court tried to save her without success. The Igloo, when in the arena cage, attacked Court and clawed him in the face, resulting in Court nearly losing his right eye. Nevertheless, he carried on with the rehearsal! Igloo then climbed the cage and bit through the safety net above, escaping into the Madison Square Gardens auditorium. The leopard was eventually captured by the Court grooms.

1941-1942: Damoo presented the mixed group of small cats, flanked either side by Fritz Schultz and Joe Walsh with a mixed group of lions, tigers and bears, and Harry and May Kovar with a mixed group of lions, tigers, bears, black jaguars and Great Dane dogs.

1943: Alfred Court trained a new mixed group – his last. It consisted of nine tigers, five lions, two leopards, two pumas and a jaguar. However, the jaguar and pumas were omitted later on. The act was due to be presented by Damoo, but unfortunately one of the leopards took a dislike to him, so he was unable to present it. However, I do have pictures of him rehearsing the act in winter quarters. Damoo enlisted in the US army. The mixed small cat act was taken over by May Kovar who had quite a few accidents with this very dangerous group.

1944: May Kovar still presented this act, but in July 1944 Ringling’s suffered a terrible fire at Hertford, Connecticut and the circus had to return to its winter quarters.

1945: The leopard act was presented by Willy Storie, assisted by Vincent Dorr and Walter Flint. It also contained six girls who worked with the leopards. This act only worked for the 1945 season.

Winter 1945/46: Damoo returned from the army and took the original leopard act to a winter circus in Havana, Cuba. Storie, Dorr and Flint went with him. At that time the act consisted of the following animals:

Leopard "Sonia" Female
Leopard "Champion" Male
Leopard "Boopet" Female
Leopard "Taboo" Male
Leopard "Mincezu" Female
Leopard "Igloo" Male
Black Panther "Meckow" Female
Black Panther "Bangkok" Male
Black Jaguar "Zougou" Female
Black Jaguar "Negus" Male
Puma "Sudie" Female
Puma "Riton" Male

1946: Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus did not have a wild animal act for this season. They subcontracted the mixed small cat act with Damoo to Sparks Circus.

1947/48: Damoo, with his act, returned to Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey. The act worked in ring one. In ring two (centre ring) Roman Proske worked with his tigers and Ring three had Michael Konzelmann with Hagenbeck’s 14 polar bears.

1948: Damoo also doubled for Jonny Weissmuller in the feature film, “Jungle Jim”. For this filming he used his leopard Sonia for an attack sequence. The same footage was used again three years later in “Fury of the Congo”.

1949: Damoo was in ring one with the mixed small cats. Ring two (centre ring) featured Clausen bears and ring three had Mathies with Hagenbeck’s tigers.

1950/51: Alfred Court negotiated the sale of the act with Damoo to Circus Amar in France. It then consisted of five leopards, two black panthers, three pumas and two black jaguars.

1952: Damoo joined Circus Pinder in France. I am not sure if Amar sold the act to Pinder or what capacity Damoo worked at Amar. At the end of this year he returned to India.

Notes: It is worth reading the book “Circus Doctor” by J Y Henderson, as he mentions Damoo quite a lot. There is also a French book published about the transaction of the act when it was sold to Circus Amar. The above information was taken from various correspondence me (Jim Clubb) and friends of Alfred Court, including Willy Storie, and articles written by Alfred Court himself.

©Copyright J S Clubb 2009. Any reproduction or direct quotes from the above to be cleared through J S Clubb jclubb@amazinganimals.co.uk

Can History be Objective? A Conversation with Heather Vallance

“...conspiracy theorists are the ignorant and bored amusing themselves in areas they are least qualified to speak” – Dr Heather Vallance

We all need our teachers. I have always felt a great desire to honour and remember all of mine. I dedicated my first book “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” to my first teacher, the person who helped set me on the path of telling, reading and listening to stories. Years later I got bitten by the history bug, and became equally interested in investigating so-called “true” stories. During my time writing and researching “Salt and Sauce”, which is an historical investigation, I was put into contact with a brilliant historian from Canada who specialized in researching hard to find data and, in particular, primary source material. Dr Heather Vallance is a writer whose work is inspirational in the way it tries to quite literally bring history to life. In addition to recording and fighting to preserve historical data with a relentless passion, she is not frightened to use different mediums to convey her ideas. This has ranged from homemade documentaries to an actual historical novel, “The Tumbleweed Wars”. It is this combination of fact-sticking self-discipline and relentless imaginative energy that inspires me to regularly consult Heather, as a teacher, regarding most writing matters and particularly those concerning historical research.

In recent years I have taken the approach of the sceptic, after the fashion of the scientific sceptical community. It was a long “soul” searching decision that gradually progressed from a desire to establish facts and to filter out irrationality. It is now a philosophical approach that affects all parts of my life from my approach to teaching martial arts to the way I approach history. My book, “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” was all about filtering out myths and distortions of facts to establish the closest account of the truth I could find. However, I have noticed that the scientific community takes the lion’s share of sceptical analysis and debunking. They certainly have a lot to fight, but so do historians and, like science, history is also a discipline that is concerned with establishing hard facts. Just as there is pseudoscience baffling the ignorant, naïve and ill-informed there is pseudo-history fuelling paranoia and distorting our understanding of past events. It was this subject I broached with Heather and I learned a lot.
For me, the worst example of the pseudo-historian is a group of people we have ended up describing as the “conspiracy theorists”. Conspiracies, of course, do exist and have existed, but they rarely operate in the manner described by those who believe that the moon landings were faked, Princess Diana was assassinated, the Freemasons were behind the Jack the Ripper murders, the US government engineered the 9/11 tragedy or that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. People lie and secrets are kept, but there has yet to be a truly plausible account given of how a conspiracy orchestrated any of these events, and often it is the approach taken by conspiracy theorists that goes against rational and sober historical investigation. They operate on confirmation biases, counting anything that supports their theory and disregarding anything that opposes it, often the point of nitpicking small inconsistencies that always turn up in anecdotal evidence. At best such approaches bring history into disrepute at worst they fuel paranoia, unfairly hurt the relatives and descendents of those involved in the period of history being reported and draw attention away from thorough historical research. The conspiracy theorist is to historians what the lowest of the sensationalist gutter press is to responsible journalism.

So I took my attitude towards pseudo-history to Heather. She had just completed writing the third of her trilogy of books on Anglo-American history between the two Boer Wars, “Golden Nemesis”. No stranger to “misinformation and disinformation” in history, Heather had done a lot of debunking with the life of US solider John Young Filmore Blake in her first book of the trilogy “An Unconventional Soldier”. Her email responses to me, as always, were frank and informative for which I am very grateful:

“There is no such thing as objectivity or truth but there is a space in all research where we can try to see things as they are and not as we want them to be. Strangely, skepticism can get in the way of reaching that space as much as the inability to face what lies there.
“What is essential in seeking lived experience is that we build checks and balances on ourselves and our own responses rather than do what is believed to be the correct thing and that is place checks and balances on external things. By monitoring ourselves scientifically we automatically apply principles of internal integrity onto our subject of study.

“History as a discipline alone is too steeped in 'tradition' and mainstream to explore lived experience using just its principles. That is why I encourage people to go into parallel philosophies such as phenomenology for inspiration”.

On the subject of conspiracy theories, Heather described to me the difference between a conspiracy, and the methods used by conspiracy theorists, and something she calls “networks of intention”, which have solid historical validity:

“If you can plot the interaction between people it is not a conspiracy. If researchers think in conspiracies they can never unearth the truth about things. It becomes an intellectual game rather than a plotted lived experience. This type of thinking is as much a fantasy as is the rigidly adhered to traditional history.

“There are reports and congressional documents which show that Cecil Rhodes was in talks with John Hay and other Americans about bringing down German commercial power by 1920. That is not a conspiracy that is business advantage. If you do not plan and project in business you fail.

“Now, if the conspiracy theorists get going then the truth of that experience is lost in silliness. I often say that conspiracy theorists are the ignorant and bored amusing themselves in areas they are least qualified to speak. Unfortunately, conspiracy theory has become a fad and is 'taught' in history classes. Which perhaps just goes to prove my point.

“Anyhow, conspiracy theory is a game not an actual research method and its proponents either have to go around in circles or grow out of it and become thinking analysts. And, as we both know, some people just don't grow up.

“I don't cater for that type of individual as a writer, researcher, and historian. From seeing your work and how you process you findings I doubt that you do and will. The aim in primary source research is to build patterns of interaction over time and across space and let them speak for themselves. Questioning and curious minds who can accept that life is not what we try to pretend it is will always be drawn to you and your work.

“From my part, and this is not related to your own comment at all, I am maddened by individuals who refuse to accept that networks of intention do exist and have existed and treat these as 'conspiracy' thereby undermining our understanding of human interaction over time.

“The case in point is in [Golden] Nemesis which is a chaos of interwoven relationships of self-interest that eventually explode and shatter lives and countries.

“The story which is chronologically logged step by step is a chess board of greed, power, and money enveloping not just the so-called terrorist organizations and idealists but respected historical figures such as Rhodes and Barnato. They used systems of aggression to underpin their own aims and ambitions. There is nothing conspiratorial about this. The same thing goes on today. Sometimes, you have to live the chaos to identify it, and often those who sit around debating conspiracy theory come from very closed and protected homes and societies where everything can appear cut and dry.

“Hence the power of perception in writing history and my statement about objectifying our own responses rather than the data”.

This returned us to our discussion regarding objectivity and the area of confirmation biases, which brought up a very interesting discussion regarding personal preferences, fact-finding and the right attitude a historian needs to take:

“I think researchers in any sphere of interest who say that they do not hope for a set of results when they begin their projects are liars. We all engage in projects because we have specific beliefs, hopes, and hypotheses. The test is to separate the impetus for a study from the data as it reveals itself during the study.

“For example, I do believe that John Young Filmore Blake was an honorable man and an idealist who adhered to a set of morals which made him different from many others in his day. There is a substantial body of data to support this belief and to challenge the characteristics assigned to him by those who did not wish him well either during or after his life time. I also know from the data that he was a man who saw no problem with using physical violence against his perceived enemies - as long as there were no civilian casualties, a self-delusion suffered by many activists because there are always civilian casualties in guerrilla warfare.

“I am also a pacifist who believes that war is never an answer to anything if we as a species wish to remain civilized and/or to continue reaching our potential as a species. I had to temporarily overcome my aversion to war and violence in order to research and record a narrative largely about acts of violence and amoral behaviour which eventually implode on the perpetrators and bystanders alike.

“If as a researcher you want to reach into a muddle of lived experience through primary sources or any other means then you have to learn how to disassociate yourself and your personal beliefs from those of the actors of the time and their narrative. But you also have to saturate yourself in their world to understand something of what they saw and experienced.

“I cannot pass judgment on men like Blake because I have never experienced the horror of their lives and the lives of their families, nor should I become so empathetic that I endorse actions that do not adhere to the Geneva Convention. For instance, a group of fighters who joined Blake in Africa during the Anglo Boer War did so wearing the Red Cross, an inexcusable misuse of a neutral symbol. However, had they not done so they would not have reached the battle lines. There is no way an historian can weigh the two sides of the coin morally, but practically, as a method of attainment of a goal at the time these men lived and planned their engagement in the war, there can be no judgment passed on the plan they used to attain that goal.

“Cecil John Rhodes, equally, has been portrayed as a higher being or at worst a flawed god, even by historians I admire. In truth, he was an amoral megalomaniac who cast aside lives as Nancy Hammond said, like trees shed leaves. I respect Rhodes in many ways, but I think that we also need to understand that the underlying narrative of men like Rhodes is that even treason has a place in the world, and all things are expendable. Rhodes became the role model for many front runners of the early 20th century, and that to me is scary.

“We talk about blood diamonds today without any association of the meaning to our own present and past.

“I know I am about to bring down the wrath of the gods for this, - but the Rhodes scholarship funds are comprised of the interest garnered off the sale of blood diamonds in the past. That blood did not belong exclusively to traditional African men and women. The original 'mineral' blood was shed by Irish, American, Native American, South American, European, and even English men, women and children. In essence, what this means is that many students have gained knowledge off the backs and blood of men and women who are their own ancestors.
“Heather the person sees this as a form of unconscious cannibalism. Heather the historian sees it as a fact to be recorded, as a facet of what made the Anglo American 20th century at once both good and bad, strong and weak. Admirable and frightening”.

Her closing remarks in connection with her latest work, “Golden Nemesis”, are a reflection of the type of historian I aspire to be. Like “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” Heather’s book is not intended to be an absolute, but rather a platform for future historical researchers. I am happy to be in contact with more and more people who are secure enough in themselves and passionate enough in the interests of furthering history that they can accept their work is never a closed book:

“What I am trying to do with Nemesis is not formulate a definitive narrative but show through a progression of interaction composed of the relics of the lived experience that we have limited the story to what we want to remember instead of exploring all its angles and themes. It is my hope that others can add to the narrative or tweak bits that are not up to speed, using additional primary sources which I do not have access to. I think of it in terms of a 3D panorama which grows as each new, individual and independent photo is added”.

Links: http://heathervallance.blogspot.com http://penandspindle.blogspot.com