Guest column: Historic poster a prized find, tells great circus story

I know a lot of people, if they found a beat-up, bedraggled circus poster from the 1900s, would toss it in a dumpster without hesitation.

Published May 11, 2024 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 2 minute read

Meredith Smith is shown with a framed circus poster after restoration. (Supplied)

By: Jim and Lisa Gilbert

CHATHAM-KENT — We know a lot of people, if they found a beat-up, bedraggled circus poster from the 1900s, would toss it in a dumpster without hesitation.

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But there are others who would see it as a valuable artifact and have it restored, no matter the cost). Thank God for Douglas Smith, his wife Colleen, and their daughter Meredith.

While exploring a relative’s dusty, musty attic, they happened on a colourful poster, in rough shape, hyping the one-day visit to Chatham of Sanger’s Combined Shows sometime in the early to mid-1900s.

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Most likely, they set up their massive tent on an early town green at Fourth and Wellington streets.

Now, this was not just any circus. The Sanger circus is described by many circus historians as one of the most important travelling circuses of the Victorian era. Begun in the 1840s in Carnoustie, Scotland, by the 1880s they were big enough to hold their own against P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth three-ring circus behemoth and they performed throughout Europe.

After dissolving his business partnership with his brother, John, George Sanger created the Lord George Sanger Circus in 1880. He was described as an eccentric millionaire, a brilliant showman, well known as a fashionable, if somewhat wild, dresser.

So how did they end in Chatham on Tuesday, May 28, long ago? Good question. My guess is they had a hunch Southern Ontario was hungry for such a spectacle and, if advertised the right way, it could be a very lucrative trip across the pond.

So how, in the early 1900s, did they manage to transport, across the ocean, horses, elephants, lions, jugglers, acrobats, clowns, huge tents and all the other accoutrements that go with the kind of spectacular circus George Sanger was famous for?

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After Chatham, the circus travelled, in quick succession, to Tillsonburg, Aylmer, Sarnia, Petrolia, St. Marys, Seaforth, Exeter, Goderich, Kincardine, Wingham and Mount Forest. Can you imagine having to set up and be ready, sometimes very rapidly, all these places? It boggles the mind!

Wherever they went, the Sanger Circus was known for their colourful, spectacular and detailed posters like the one the Smith family uncovered.

What the Smiths found was, we think, a real treasure. These posters are rather rare (especially in Canada, and even more so for the Chatham show). Though it cost them a lot to restore the poster, we think their efforts would be handsomely rewarded If they ever decide to sell it — but we don’t think they will.

This brilliant poster hangs as prized possession in Meredith’s home, As time goes, we’re sure it will increase in value, in more ways than one.

As a community, we owe the Smiths a huge debt of gratitude for finding this poster, realizing its worth and taking the time and money to restore it to its former glory. It is truly one of a kind.

In a time when baby boomers are downsizing, throwing away and pawning off to family a lifetime of accumulated stuff, a word of caution: Be careful what you get rid of.

Some people’s junk may be another person’s prize.

Jim and Lisa Gilbert are award-winning historians with a passion for telling the stories of Chatham-Kent’s fascinating past.

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