Sam Lockhart

Sam had travelled to Burma with Wilson’s Great World Circus and in 1881 in the timber yard of the Bombay & Burma Trading company in Molmien, he saw two baby elephants which he purchased and arranged to have shipped back to London on the ship SS City of Venice.

Sam christened his two baby elephants Jock and Jenny and almost by accident he began a career as an elephant trainer.

Queen Victoria looks on at Olympia as Sam performs with Jock & Jenny in March 1887

Over the next thirty years Sam imported and trained a number of elephants and became the foremost elephant trainer in the world. His most famous troupe were three female elephants Wilhelmina, Trilby and Haddie known collectively as the Three.

His father died in 1894 when Sam was in Antwerp with a circus and in 1897 his wife Alice died at the young age of 41 at the house named La Pallas in Warwick New Road, Leamington where they then lived.

He also found time in 1897 to put on a show at Warwick Castle for Lady Warwick to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Daisy Warwick was a close friend of Sams and she also owned Kim, an elephant which was kept on the river island at the Warwick Castle menagerie. The elephant had later to be given to Sam Lockhart.

Sam married his second wife Harriett at St Matthews church in Brixton in 1898 and the couple moved to a large detached house next to Milverton Station in Warwick New Road.

The last record of Sam appearing with his elephants comes in 1910/11 when he was on the bill at the Theatre Royal in Leamington with four elephants Mustard, Salt, Vinegar and Little Saucy. Sam lived in Leamington up until his death in 1933, Harriett survived him and died in 1938. The couple never had a family and are buried in Milverton Cemetery.

leamingtonhistory.co.uk