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The roll-call of circus impresarios in the first half of the nineteenth century is a list of almost constant success. Men such as Richard Sands, Avery Smith, Nathan Howes, Seth B. Howes, James Raymond, Aron Turner, the Mabie brothers, John June and Lewis Titus represent a long parade of profitable field show operation. Not one of these men ever reported what might be termed a failed season.
There were accidents, of course, and riots and the loss of valuable property, and there were seasons of little or no profits. However, they were never in a position where their shows failed financially and none of them withdrew from exhibiting because of external factors. This is an amazing record in the light of the experiences of showmen in the late nineteenth century.
John M. Kelly, the attorney, in his famous brief seeking a reduction of inheritance taxes for the estates of Henry and Alf T. Ringling, offered a long list of failed circuses. He used the phrase “Of the overwhelming majority of circuses it may be said that they were failures.” (1) He included in his brief the names of over a hundred shows that he termed to be unsuccessful in the sense that they came to have no intrinsic value. Once the owner or owners departed, according to Kelly, there was nothing of worth. Kelly couldn’t have written that brief in 1860, as there were not enough examples of failure to prove his point. This is not to say that there were none, but they were so few that when we find one it is of unusual interest. Such a situation arose in 1853, and it happened to one of the most successful of the managers of the period, Rufus Welch. It is his misadventure in that year that is our topic.
In 1853 Welch was in his twenty-sixth year as a showman. He was fifty-two years old and had just finished a successful season in which he had two circuses on the road. Since 1845 he had been the leading circus impresario in America. Even his western rival, Gilbert R. Spalding, admitted that in 1849 Welch stood at the peak of the profession. (2)
Born in New Berlin, New York, Welch first entered the record as a menagerie manager in 1827. By 1832 he was a partner in a firm that eventually became well-known under the title Purdy, Welch and Macomber. These gentlemen were part of the Boston Zoological Association which imported large shipments of animals from Africa in 1833, 1834 and 1835. They were also members of the Zoological Institute from 1835 to 1837.
All this establishes Welch as being among the leaders of field show operators at the time of collapse of the Zoological Institute. Zebedee Macomber and Eisenhart Purdy retired when the Institute went under, and we assume it was their money that had funded the firm of Purdy, Welch & Macomber, as Welch was unable to continue in the menagerie business without them. It was at this point that he turned to circus management, a much less capital-intensive branch of outdoor entertainment.
He had a variety of partners over twenty years that followed his move from the animal business. Men such as Jonas Bartlett, Alvah Mann, William Delavan and John J. Nathans allied themselves with Welch in the various circus titles he presented to the public.
Beginning in 1845 Welch had two circuses on the road each season. The larger one was titled Welch & Mann for five years and then was called Welch’s National Circus for seven more. The smaller show was known by a variety of names - Welch & Delavan, Welch, Delavan & Nathans and Welch & Nathans - as partners came and went.
By having two circuses Welch could practically dominate the business in New York and New England. While one show toured those areas the other could visit the rich Ohio territory. In the East his opposition was Richard Sands and Avery Smith and in the West it was Gilbert Spalding.
Welch’s major circus, the National, was named after the National Theatre in Philadelphia, which he leased for twelve years. At the end of each season he produced a winter show at the National, and in fact he dominated the circus business of that city.
Welch made a lot of money, and apparently put it all back into the business. He was once quoted as saying that though he had made over a million dollars with his shows, he had also spent a great deal upon them. (3) His larger circus had the most performers of any on the road, rivaling Gilbert R. Spalding. It was not unusual for Welch to have twenty or twenty-five athletes at a time when most circuses had but eight or nine.
With all this, his fortunes took a terrible turn in 1853 in what can only be described a disastrous season, one of those times that are defined by the modern apothegm that says “if something can go wrong it usually will.”
It was in 1853 that Franconi’s Hippodrome opened in New York, the property of Richard Sands, Avery Smith, Seth B. Howes and Gerard C. Quick. The hippodrome idea, born in Paris and successful in London, was expected to be a crowd-pleaser in America. Based on the idea of a race track under canvas with circus acts in the infield, it was certainly novel. The races were of every kind imaginable - horses, elephants, camels, chariots - the idea being that these competitions on a fifth of a mile track would create excitement in the audience. In addition a great pageant involving hundreds of performers was part of the program.
That men with the reputation of Sands and his partners would seize on the idea certainly caught the attention of other circus owners. Dan Rice, James M. June and Levi J. North all added the word “hippodrome” to their titles in 1853, though we have no evidence that any of them had the track that typified the genre. The name is still with us, of course, and today every circus with more than one ring typically has a hippodrome track.
Welch, hearing of the Franconi venture, decided to frame a hippodrome of his own. He ordered what may have been the largest tent manufactured to that time. Several contemporary observers say it was the largest tent they had ever seen. (4) Both Welch’s and Franconi’s tents were oblong in shape, whereas conventional forms were round. They each claimed a capacity of over four thousand persons. A Philadelphia writer reported that Welch had first ordered an even larger tent than the one he used, but felt that the sightlines would be too long for audience viewing. Welch claimed in his ads that the tent covered two acres.
A group of American performers was hired, but the main attraction was to be the Soulier Troupe from France. The Soulier Circus was a leading French institution of the day, and Welch no doubt expected them to offset the lure of the Franconi name on his rival’s hippodrome. Unfortunately, the first of Welch’s disappointments that season was the defection of the Soulier contingent. They decided not to come to America. So, here was Welch with a huge tent, and his American performers under contract and no horses. The Souliers were to have provided the animals. As we said, Welch had two circuses on tour in each year through 1852, but he had apparently decided to confine his activities to the Hippodrome for 1853, thus he had no place to put the performers. His solution was to frame a small show under his Welch’s National Circus title and send it out while he reorganized. The circus went into Virginia and Washington and Baltimore.
Welch rented a building in Philadelphia and proceeded to acquire and train horses for the contemplated tour. By June 30 Welch’s Parisian Hippodrome was ready. The small show had returned to Philadelphia and the big tent was raised on the land where the Academy of Music now stands, the corner of Broad and Locust Streets.
They played four weeks in Philadelphia to generally positive reviews. Then they took to the road, moving west through Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky. They played the cities one would expect them to on such a route, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville.
The Franconi Hippodrome’s traveling unit also visited Ohio, but because of their early season foray into New England they were a month behind Welch in most cities.
With the exception of a clem involving circus personnel and a railroad construction gang in Somerset, Ohio, the westward journey of the Parisian Hippodrome was seemingly uneventful and presumably prosperous. They reached St. Louis on November 10 and performed for a week on what was known as the Lucas Lot, present site of the Federal Building.
Some businessmen of the city tendered Welch a banquet on November 16, honoring him for bringing his big eastern show to St. Louis. It was actually the first time a Welch-owned circus had ever been there. The banquet was the last good thing that happened to the showman that season.
The plan was to travel from St. Louis to New Orleans by steamboat, performing in the river towns en route. This meant that the baggage stock was superfluous, so they were shipped to New Orleans to be sold. One might question as to why the horses weren’t sold in St. Louis. The answer lies in the fact that they would bring a higher price in the South, because the lack of good pasture in that region. Horses brought up on northern grass tended to be heavier and healthier. As it turned out, Welch would have been better off if he had peddled the animals in St. Louis, because the agent they were assigned to in New Orleans sold them and kept the money.
The steamboat that the company leased was apparenly owned by persons who indulged in dubious business practices. At several cities where the Hippodrome performed local sheriffs placed liens on the craft for unpaid bills from previous voyages. Needing to keep up with his advertising Welch couldn’t spend a lot of time arguing these cases, so he was required to pay off the liens in order to proceed on his route. This drained him of a considerable sum of money.
We use Welch’s name as if he was still with the company, but it appears he did not accompany the troupe beyond St. Louis. Suffering from the rheumatism and gout that was to bring on his death in 1856, he had returned to Philadelphia and taken to his bed. This could very well account for some of the problems that beset the show. He turned the management over to Hiram Franklin, who had been the equestrian director. Franklin was an accomplished performer, having had twenty years in the business, but he was without significant managerial experience.
The show reached New Orleans on 3 December and proceeded to set up on a square between Erato and Clio Streets. After performing for a few days it was discovered that the lot was too wet to support the performances in their best light. They then moved at some expense to Baronne Street, between Poydras and Hevia. Performances on the new, more solid lot began on December 13.
In addition to this problem, while the Hippodrome was in New Orleans the steamboat burned at its berth. It was uninsured so it quite likely became Welch’s obligation to reimburse the owners.
Franklin moved the company to Mobile, Alabama, where a suitable lot was procured, but misfortune still dogged the undertaking. This time it was the weather. It turned very cold in January in Mobile and this affected attendance to the point where Welch’s Parisian Hippodrome seemed a lost cause.
From his sick-bed Welch told Franklin to turn the property over to the employees, who could then operate it as a cooperative venture, sharing income and expense between them. Still using Welch’s title, and his advertising cuts, the company proceeded overland to Columbus, Georgia, and from there to Macon and Savannah. They were able to make a little money as they hired a steamboat in Savannah to haul them to Charleston, which they reached on February 13, 1854. Here they played one week and then threw in the towel.
Hiram Franklin delivered the remnants of the company to Rufus Welch in Philadelphia. All that was left of the original investment, launched with such optimism in June, 1853, were eight horses.
Perhaps the saddest part of this devastating adventure was that Rufus Welch never recovered from it. We don’t know how much money he lost, but we do know that he took Lewis B. Lent in as a partner in 1854 and for the next three seasons Lent managed the concern, which was known as Welch & Lent. Lent was the managing partner and as far as we now know, Welch had no hand in the operation. Lent may well have paid Welch something for the use of his name. Welch’s illness kept him from an active role. This man, who only four years previous had stood at the pinnacle of the business, last had his name before the public in April, 1856. Rufus Welch died in Philadelphia on November 29, 1856.
We have recited here what we know of the Parisian Hippodrome. A few newspaper advertisements survive to mark it, and there is one more artifact, one that many readers have seen, probably without knowing what it was. In the Irvin Feld Exhibit Hall at the Circus World Museum one of the largest posters on exhibit is from Welch’s Parisian Hippodrome. That big, printed bill is our only relic of Rufus Welch’s disastrous season of 1853.
Footnotes
1. Fred D. Pfening, III, ed., “The Taxable Value of Circus Goodwill,” by
John M. Kelly, (Bandwagon, xii: 1 (1968), p. 6.
Some of this material came from a clipping from an unidentified Philadelphia
newspaper in the Chindahl files. Circus World Museum.
2. Interview with Gilbert R. Spalding, St. Louis Republican, 1 February
1880.
3. James Reese, New York Clipper, 10 March 1883, p. l.
4. An example is the editorial statement in the Missouri Republican (St.
Louis), 11 November 1853.
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.