Mary, with Red Eldridge, during the parade
On September 11, 1916, an itinerant hotel clerk in St. Paul, Virginia, was hired by a circus that happened to be traveling through town. This clerk, Red Eldridge, was to learn how to handle the circus’ elephants and become an elephant keeper.
That was not to be.
The next day the Sparks World Famous Shows circus made a stop in the brand new city of Kingsport, Tennessee, for a show. Prior to the show a parade was held with an elephant named Mary in the lead, since she was the main attraction. Eldridge rode atop Mary In the parade.
As the parade proceeded through town Mary noticed a watermelon rind someone had discarded beside the road and, being a bit hungry, decided she was going to eat it. When she moved out of line, Eldridge prodded her behind the ear with a metal hook to get her attention, something he shouldn’t have done.
Mary, who, it’s said, was found to have had a bad tooth in the area behind that ear, didn’t like the prodding. Enraged, she reached up with her trunk, grabbed Red and threw him to the ground, then stepped on his head, killing him.
There are several accounts as to what happened next, many of them silly and many of them gruesome, but there is no doubt that a decision was made to euthanize the elephant, since she had had other instances of losing her temper in the past.
On this day in 1916, after a Sparks show in Erwin, and before a large crowd of 2,500 circus-goers, Mary the elephant was placed next to a railroad derrick in the Clinchfield Railroad railyard, a chain placed around her neck, and she was hanged on the second attempt (the first failed when the chain broke).
