James Fielding Blount

1: Topsy (4-Paw Topsy, Crooked-tail Topsy) (fatal attack)

1. 1902-05-27: visitor James Fielding Blount fatal attack by Topsy (4-Paw Topsy, Crooked-tail Topsy). threw Blount to the ground with her Trunk and then crushed him with either her head, knees, or foot, or some combination thereof. James Fielding Blount † James Fielding Blount Died 1902-05-27, Brooklyn.

Early the following season in Brooklyn, "4-Paw Topsy" killed a man named Fielding Mount who was visiting the show. She was donated to nearby Coney Island Park but after a futile attempt to handle her, she was executed by electrocution, an event filmed by the Thomas Edison Movie Co.

William "Buckles" Woodcock Buckles Blog

In 1902, another event brought her again to prominence: the killing of spectator James Fielding Blount (originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana and described as a circus follower, maybe trying to get employment at Forepaugh) in Brooklyn, New York, at what was then the Forepaugh & Sells Brothers' Circus. Accounts vary as to what happened but the common story is that on the morning of May 27, 1902, a possibly drunk Blount wandered into the menagerie tent where all the elephants were tied in a line and began teasing them in turn, offering them a bottle of whiskey. He reportedly threw sand in Topsy's face and then burnt the extremely sensitive tip of her Trunk with a lit cigar. Topsy threw Blount to the ground with her Trunk and then crushed him with either her head, knees, or foot, or some combination thereof.
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