Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1907 — BAD ACCIDENT AT NIGHT CIRCUS [ARTICLE]

BAD ACCIDENT AT NIGHT CIRCUS

One of the "Swinging by the Teeth” Performers Falls to the Ground. Ah accident o ecu red at the night performance of the Hagenbeck* Wallace Friday night that resulted in the serions compound fracture of the leg of Mrs. John Sutton, one of the performers in a daring aerial act entitled “Swinging by the teeth.” Her husband is the manager of the act and the performers—three ladies and one gentleman. Each performer catches hold of a knob at the end of a roj: e with their teeth and all fonr are drawn to near the top of the tent and then swung round and round. They are lowered to the gronnd two or three times daring the progress of the act for costume changes and it was jnst after the white robes were used in tne serpentine dance that she fell. Probably she was 20 feet in the air and the centrifugal motion of the frame that held them, threw her tq the edge of the ring and her left leg struck across the heavy,frame structure around the ring.

The aid of local doctors was at once summoned and examinatioa proved that both bones were broken above the ankle of the left leg, the small bone in two places, and that the splintered bone had forced itself thru the flesh. After spending the night in the office of the attending physician, she was removed on Saturday morning to Mrs. F. J. Sears boarding house, where the limb was set and placed in a cast at noon. It will probably be two months before Mrs. Sutton can be moved from here. She is 36 years old and a native of Tasmania. The act in which she took part was devised by herself and husband and is an entirely new one, being the only act of the kind ever performed.