"Pezon, the great French lion tamer, owed his success to the use of electricity in taming his beasts."

Not everyone in fin de siècle France had the best of sense when it came to behavior within a lion cage. Great lion tamer Jean-Baptiste Pezon had his wits about him, but others were not so wise. That’s proven in three short articles that follow, which were published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle between 1892 and 1900.

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“Lion Attacks Man” (October 4, 1900): “There was a serious accident to-day in the menagerie of the country fair near Privas, in the Department of Ardeche. A large audience gathered to witness a local butcher enter the lion’s cage, play a game of cards with the lion tamer and drink a bottle of champagne. The performance was successful until the butcher foolishly and without warning the trainer, approached the lion and held a glass of champagne under his nose, whereupon the lion bounded upon the butcher, ground his shoulder within his jaws and mauled his body dreadfully.

When the butcher was removed he was almost dead. In the meanwhile the audience was panic stricken, and in the stampede to escape from the menagerie many persons were trampled upon and badly injured.”

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“He Was Awake: A Lion Would Not Submit to Hypnotism” (November 30, 1892): “A Miss Sterling entered the lion’s cage at Bezier’s last evening, accompanied by the lion tamer, a professor of hypnotism having already attempted to hypnotize the fierce animals. In the case of one of them, however, he seems not to have been successful, as no sooner was Miss Sterling well within the cage when the powerful brute threw himself upon her and terribly lacerated her limbs. She was barely saved from being torn to pieces by the prompt interference of the lion tamer, who courageously attacked the animal and thus gave the wounded woman time to crawl out of the cage.”

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“Electric Lion Taming” (March 20, 1898): “Pezon, the great French lion tamer, owed his success to the use of electricity in taming his beasts. When a wild lion or tiger was to be tamed live wires were first rigged up in the cage between the tamer and the animal. After a time Pezon would turn his back, and the wild creature would invariably make a leap at him, but encountering the charged wires would receive a paralyzing shock sufficient to terrorize it forever.”