Thursday, January 26, 2012

Unknown Elephants At the Boston Childrens Hospital





Any ideas? The "uniforms" look a lot plainer and cheaper then the "uniforms" worn by the people in the below post. Three men with two elephants kinda reminds you of today's Ringling show. It also makes you really appreciate a "broad" doing the mounts.

3 comments:

Cynthia Bean said...

Hi,
Saw your blog site off a circus site, thanks for sharing these beautiful photos, brings back memories.
These b&w's are a collection of Leslie Jones from June 7, 1919 at the Boston Commons then to the Children's Hospital. The elephants are Molly, Waddy & Tony. I was privilged to see these on display @ BCH as works of the recently departed Leslie Jones ('67) My weekly trips for years to BCH were to see the elephants (pics) not the doctors. lol.

Cynthia Bean said...

Wade,

There is a wonderful site I found that tells more of the story of these elephants. I don't know how to post it, but the website is http://litajudge.com/pennies B.F. Keith's Theater was selling the elephants. The children of Boston raised pennies to buy them, including children @ the hospital. The were presented to the children in June of 1914 at Fenway, paraded thru the Commons and BCH to reside at Franklin Zoo; therefore my recalled date of 1917 is probably incorrect as Molly died of pneumonia shortly after. I had to dig up newspaper clippings from my grandmother's trunk, she sent pennies, they were HER elephants. LOL
Sweet memories - Cynthia

Wade G. Burck said...

Cynthia,
Welcome and thank you for the great comments and link in regards to Molly, Waddy, & Tony. Leslie Jones indeed recorded a wonder part of Boston history.
We will look forward to comments and any other information that may come your way.

Wade