Old-Fashioned Pachyderm Lynching
We’ve all read a saccharine “Remember the Good Old Days?” email. The forwarded messages go something like this:
Remember when you could watch three movies at the matinee for two cents, and that included rootbeer and popcorn?
Remember when kids said yes sir, no sir, and turned flips if Santa brought them a single baseball card, Barbie doll, or a mended sock for Christmas?
Remember the whole town turning out when the circus came to town? And Remember when the elephant stomped on the trainer’s head, and a lynch mob hung the pachyderm by the neck until it was dead, dead, dead?
Ok, that last item’s mentioned less often, but it does indirectly bring us to this Thursday’s
On September 13, 1916, the townspeople of Kingsport, Tennessee, strung up a five-ton elephant.
Not long after Sparks World Famous Show rolled into Kingsport that September, the main attraction, Mighty Mary—apparently not satisfied with the watered-down booze—used her trunk to sling a handler against a drink stand. Then Mary stomped on the trainer’s head, and, as one witness remarked, “blood and brains and stuff just squirted all over the street.” Well, that’s sort of what you’d expect to happen. And since a murder is a murder is a murder, the town decided to have a hanging party.
Wait, let me back up…
AFTER the local blacksmith (and the sheriff, too) fired a couple dozen slugs of lead at Mary’s head (What? Nobody had an elephant gun?), and…AFTER they tried to electrocute the poor beast with 44,000 volts (she just danced a little) THEN the town decided to hang Mighty Mary.
The next day, 2,500 people gathered to watch some guys put a chain around the elephant’s neck. Then she was hoisted off the ground by a railcar crane.
At first, ligaments and bones snapped—because someone forgot to untie her leg from the railroad track. Then, once she was dangling, the neck chain broke (she did weigh 10,000 pounds.) The fall broke her hip, but there was no need for alarm because a bigger chain was quickly located. On the next try, Mary had a good thirty-minute swing. And, she was finally out of her misery.
Ahhh, sweet halcyon memories…that days could be that good again.
Read More: elephant, hanging, lynching, tennessee, circus, good old days, Mighty Mary
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