Leander Millward, known as “The Serpent King,” photographed by James M. Goins, circa 1888. Collection of Nannette V. Maciejunes.
FROM THE LATEST ISSUE OF BANDWAGON
Imagine walking into a Cincinnati photography studio in the 1880s—and finding a man calmly posing with snakes wrapped around his neck, shoulders and arms.
His name was Leander Millward, but circus audiences knew him as “The Serpent King.” A Civil War veteran turned circus performer, Millward spent decades with the John Robinson Circus and became one of the country’s noted snake charmers. His fascination with reptiles extended well beyond the showgrounds: according to accounts from the period, snakes accompanied him into virtually every corner of his life.
A remarkable surviving cabinet card inspired Theresa Leininger-Miller to look beyond the photograph and uncover the man staring back at the camera—and a circus career considerably stranger than the portrait first suggests.
Meet the mysterious “Serpent King” and discover the story behind one of nineteenth-century circus photography’s most extraordinary portraits.
The Serpent King of Robinson’s Circus in Cincinnati
By Theresa Leininger-Miller
Volume 69 • Number 3 • 2025 • Pages 20-33
This extremely rare and striking cabinet card features a male snake charmer who sits placidly on a one-armed, wheeled wooden chair in a photography studio, hands grasping multiple writhing timber rattlesnakes, racers, and young boa constrictors, as other serpents coil around his neck and under an armpit, slithering over shoulders. The tail of one racer dangles over the upholstered seat’s edge.
The petite man in his early thirties, with bushy mustache, an overbite, and close-cropped hair under a snug, velvet cap embellished by pale piping, has a blank expression and unfocused, light-colored eyes. Sitting erectly with legs slightly parted, feet flat on a carpet, he wears plain, dark wool pants and a performer’s waxed cotton smock with a mandarin collar, fringed in silk at the elbows and across the chest. The painted backdrop at right depicts a carved pilaster with a male figure in tights at top, suggesting a refined atmosphere. The fezlike hat and Persian carpet clearly further exoticize the handler and his sinuous charges. A reflector stand, the edge of which is visible in the lower right, helped provide even lighting to the portrait. One can only imagine the commotion it must have caused to have such dangerous snakes in a photographer’s studio in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio.
Such a sensational image fed into consumers’ ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) or herpetophobia (fear of lizards, reptiles, and other vertebrates). Collectors also may have been attracted to a whole series of notable portraits, as indicated by the central word, “Celebrities,” printed in gold capital letters on the bottom of the dark green card mount.
Indeed, this remarkably calm performer was a minor celebrity, both locally and nationally. Leander J. Millward (ca. 1848-1894, variously spelled Millwood, Milward, and Millword), known as “The Serpent King,” was one of the best snake charmers in the country. Born in New York to immigrants from England (his father) and Canada (his mother), Millward was a toddler in Lewistown, New York and spent his childhood in Lemont and Downers Grove, Illinois. A Civil War veteran, he served as a private in the 153rd Illinois Infantry for seven months in 1865, enlisting in Chicago in February and mustering out in September in Memphis. At five feet one inch tall, with blue eyes and light hair and complexion, he was about seventeen years old.
The complete article is available to members of the Circus Historical Society through the members-only Backyard.