Darlington: Mr Tudor's Circus

I was looking for the great fire which destroyed Newcastle's Theatre Royal in November 1899, but all I found was a report of Mr Tudor's Circus.

"The chief attraction, no doubt, last night, at Mr Tudor's Circus, Darlington, was Mons Penje's riding lion. A cage was erected in the ring, and in this the lion rode on horseback," said the Echo.

What an act!

Tudor's Circus seems to have been operating at South Shields for a couple of years and then, in the same building which Mr W Tudor dismantled and relocated, in Sunderland Road, Gateshead, around 1894. He was there for about three years, before taking to the road. As well as Darlington, he toured East Anglia - there is a Tudor Place in Ipswich, named after where he pit on his shows until 1904.

Monsieur Penje - also known as Professor Penje - was an animal trainer. Whether he was French or not is hard to tell, as his first name was John. He seems to have worked with Carl Hagenbeck, a German exotic animal dealer who set up one of the first zoos (it still seems to be going in Hamburg). They were performing in New York in October 1894 and here http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/39970 you should be able to find a postcard of Mons Penje's lioness riding on a pony's back, just as happened in Darlington.

Neither pony nor lioness look particularly enamoured with the stunt, but as they both had to do it every night, day in, day out, for years, they were probably heartily bored.

Sadly, the Echo's report doesn't say where in town this super entertainment take place.