Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
New York, 1908. "The end of the rampage -- 'Alice' under control, and thinking it over. Two zookeepers with restrained elephant lying on the ground after running free around the New York Zoological Park (Bronx Zoo)." Gelatin silver print from the William Temple Hornaday papers, Library of Congress. View full size.
How sad and heartbreaking. It appears that Alice was under-nourished. Perhaps she needed better attention and care.
This was not Alice's only attempt to escape. In June 1904 she was a resident at the Luna Park amusement, and sneaked out of her shed with two other elephants, taking to the river to swim from Coney Island to Staten Island where the New Dorp police took her into custody. (The other two elephants wandered in a different direction and were soon found).
"Press agent or no press agent, we got him, and we are going to keep him till a bondsman shows up," a police officer said, according to printed accounts of the event.
[The press agent would be Luna Park PR man Fred Thompson, who according to contemporary accounts is alleged to have "hired a furniture van to cart the elephant through Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge, through downtown Manhattan, and then on the ferry to Staten Island. Once near shore, Alice was released into the water." -Dave]
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5