Topsy

Her new owner Adam Forepaugh (1831-1890) claimed that she was born in captivity and advertised her as the first American-born baby elephant. Forepaugh was the owner of Forepaugh Circus, one of the two largest circuses in the country. The other was Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Its owner was Paul Boyton (1848-1924), a showman best remembered as the inventor (or popularizer) of the immersion suit. The amusement park was famous for its aquatic circus and sea lions, but Boyton was seeking out additional attractions to face the competition. Topsy's animal handler from the circus, William "Whitey" Alt, was hired by Boyton to keep charge of Topsy. Later that year, Paul Boyton leased the amusement park to aspiring businessmen Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy. The new owners started expanding the park, remodeling it, and renamed it to Luna Park. It continued using the name until destroyed by a fire. Taking advantage of Topsy's notoriety, the new owners had her working hard and transporting cargo and a new airship. The media broadcast her work, presenting as Topsy doing "penance" for her bad behavior. Topsy was however soon involved in negative publicity again, mostly due to the erratic behavior of her handler William "Whitey" Alt.

Topsy was apparently named after the fictional character Topsy, an African-American slave girl featured in the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Topsy was originally a wild elephant, born in Southeast Asia c. 1875.

She was captured by elephant traders while still a baby and smuggled into the United States by 1877.

Topsy served most of her life as a circus elephant, performing at various incarnations of the Forepaugh Circus from 1877 to 1902. She gained a bad reputation for allegedly injuring and killing circus workers.

1900, but not that she actually killed them.

Her notoriety as a "killer elephant" was solidified in 1902, when she killed a spectator by the name of James Fielding Blount. Blount reportedly had been teasing the circus elephants, and throwing sand at Topsy's face. When he burnt the sensitive tip of her trunk with a lit cigar, Topsy grew angry and retaliated. She killed the man easily, although there are contradictory reports on the exact manner of his death. The death of Blount generated much publicity. The Circus benefited for a time, when crowds of spectators kept arriving to see the "killer elephant". All went well for about a month, until a spectator by the name of Louis Dodero decided to tease the elephant himself. Dodero supposedly used a stick to tickle Topsy behind the ear. She used her trunk to seize him around the waist and then threw him to the ground. Dodero was apparently injured but not killed. The ongoing publicity turned negative and threatened the reputation of the Circus, and its owners decided to sell her.

In Summer 1902, Topsy was sold from the Circus to the Sea Lion Park, a Coney Island amusement park.

In October, 1902, Alt was arrested by the police for setting Topsy loose in the streets of New York City. In December, a drunk Alt used Topsy to attack a local police station and to scare away the police officers. His employers fired him, but there was the problem of what to do with Topsy. The Luna Park tried to get rid of the problematic elephant, originally by trying to sell Topsy to someone else. No circus or zoo was interested in buying an elephant notorious for bad behavior. So the owners announced to the press that they would euthanize Topsy by electrocution. The initial plan was to publicize the event and sell admission tickets. A protest by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals resulted in the decision to avoid turning the death to a public spectacle. But the Society still allowed the plans for execution to continue, just demanding that the death should not be inhumane. Uncertain whether electrocution would be enough to kill Topsy, the planners of the death added two additional ways to kill her. She would also be poisoned by ingesting poisoned food and strangulated by a machine.

Topsy was an Asian elephant (species name: Elephas maximus), the only elephant species native to Asia. Their habitat range includes various countries in South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and East Asia. They have been an endangered species since 1986, with less than 60,000 individuals still alive by the beginning of the 21st century.

A memorial dedicated to her was erected in Coney Island in 2003.

Sensational news reports claimed that she had killed 12 men, though a 21st-century finds these reports unreliable. There are reports that she injured one of two workers c.