The Mystery of the Poisoned Elephants
On the morning of November 5, 1941, the 47 elephants of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey herd did their chores as usual, unloading the circus train and helping to set up the big top on Atlanta’s Highland Avenue Showgrounds. The nationwide tour was in its final weeks, the last season that the circus would travel from coast to coast before wartime restrictions would prohibit the four sections of the train from traveling to California and the Pacific Northwest.
After completing their work that morning the elephants were taken to a long, sloping embankment near the lot where they enjoyed the cool autumn weather. According to elephant superintendent Walter McClain, about noon one of the handlers told him that 41-year-old Lizzie seemed to be sick. “By the time I got to her she was done and gasping for breath. I sent for a local veterinarian, but before he arrived she was dead.”
Over the next five days 10 elephants died in Atlanta, with another dying in Augusta a few days later. An autopsy showed they had all died of arsenic poisoning.
Meanwhile McClain reported that in 1937 eleven elephants had been accidentally poisoned in when grazing on grass near a chemical plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, the town that the show had played two days before Atlanta.
Although some speculated that maybe they had eaten grass sprayed with insecticide, The veterinarians who treated the sick and dying elephants doubted that the they could have ingested that much of an insecticide to kill an elephant – let alone eleven of them.
John Ringling North then hired Pinkerton detectives to determine what might have caused the death of the elephants, each valued at between 10 and 15-thousand dollars. What they learned created even more of a mystery.
After retracing the route of the circus from Danville,Virginia through Charlotte to Greenville, South Carolina to Atlanta, samples of grass were analyzed, and the detectives checked every feed and drug store in an attempt to discover who might have purchased poison large quantities. Although a small amount of chemicals were found on grass along a railroad siding, it was not enough to kill an elephant.
The detectives then reported that it had to be an “inside job,” and attention shifted to the 1400 or so employees who were traveling with the show. Of the nearly 1000 transient laborers, about 100 of them were assigned to the elephant department.
Despite the opinion of the detectives, McClain wouldn’t accept that it was an inside job. He was among those who believed that the elephants picked up the arsenic while grazing along a railroad tracks or near the Charlotte chemical plant.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t long until a suspect was arrested. Elwin Bolgen Michael, a 32-year-old member of the train crew was taken into custody when the show arrived in St. Petersburg where the circus was set up on the lot at 16th Street and 38th Avenue
Michael was picked out of a lineup of 250 circus working men by two circus fans from Gastonia, North Carolina who were taken by police to Florida to make the identification after they reported that they had seen a circus worker feed four capsules of some sort to one of the elephants when they were in Charlotte.They said he was wearing the same hat that he was wearing at the time, and investigators said they found a clipping about the elephant poisoning in his personal possessions.
Michael flatly denied any involvement, saying that he was at a matinee performance of the movie “Robin Hood” at the time that the circus fans claimed to have seen him feeding the capsules to the elephants. He waived his extradition rights and was taken to Charlotte where he was questioned – and released with no charges being filed. The investigation continued, but no more arrests were made.
78 years later – the Mystery of the Poisoned Elephants remains…a mystery.
-Chris Berry
(Charles Cushman Photo – Soldier Field, Chicago – August 9, 1941)