The Townsville
Show has been running since the 1880s, when its primary focus was to showcase
North Queensland’s pastoral and agricultural industries. Sideshows, which are
now a staple of the modern show circuit, were discouraged because they might
attract a disreputable crowd.
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|
Sideshow alley, Townsville Show, 1956.
Photo: Christensen Collection, Townsville City
Libraries.(This image is copyright. Used here with permission) |
By the
early 1920s, the show’s organising body - the Townsville Pastoral Agricultural
and Industrial Association - was under increasing pressure to allow sideshow
exhibits. One of the earliest sideshow attractions in Townsville, and one of
the most successful, was Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe, which first appeared at
the Townsville Show in 1924.
Sharman
was a boxer and showman from New South Wales who was famous in Australia for
his travelling troupe of boxers and wrestlers. With catchphrases such as:
“who’ll take a glove?” and, “a round or two for a pound or two”, Sharman
invited locals who fancied themselves as fighters, to challenge his boxers in
the ring and win some prize money.
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| Jimmy Sharman's Touring Stadium, New South Wales, 1959. Photo: National Library of Australia. |
In
1926, 177 showmen from throughout Australasia banded together to form a
showman’s guild and elected Jimmy Sharman as their president. The move served
to put an end to the reputation of untrustworthiness that had previously tarnished
many travelling showmen, and gave the group an air of respectability. This
meant that country shows began to allow them to have their sideshows closer to
the main show ring, instead of expecting them to be on the fringes of the
grounds.
Sideshow
attractions quickly grew to be very popular with Townsville show-goers, and the
Townsville Daily Bulletin reported in
1929 that the sideshows “were never so numerous as at this show.”
“In the
silo-drome the Fearless Jacksons trifle with death, and defy the laws of
gravitation. The combination comprises Miss Jackson and two brothers, who
undertake daredevil rides on Indian motorcycles. Attaining a speed of a mile a
minute they ride up and down spirally, a perpendicular wall, driving and
ascending at will, and flying at break neck pace around the round top of the
drome, at times taking their hands from the handles of the cycles. Apart from
the defiance of gravitation, this is a most thrilling performance,” the Bulletin reported.
Another
“attraction” was Jolly Ray, a 22 year-old American woman who was billed as “the
fattest girl in the world”, weighing in at 260kg. Early sideshows commonly
exhibited people like Jolly Ray, or those with disabilities or genetic
malformations, as “freaks of nature”, that show patrons all too willingly paid
to leer at.
Others,
such as Elsia Baker, who claimed to be “genuinely half woman
and half man”, attracted large crowds. The
left side of Elsia’s body was presented to crowds as female in appearance, and
the right side as male. Using her right arm, Elsia could lift a man weighing
82kg, completely off the ground.
There
were also firewalkers, performing pigs, and a monkey named “Cannon Ball Joe”
who drove a car around a silo-drome.
Jimmy
Sharman’s Troupe was there again that year, with boxers Reggie Dodd (featherweight)
and Vic Stevens (Queensland champion bantamweight) among the local contenders prepared
to take on Sharman’s fighters.
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| An advertisement from the Townsville Daily Bulletin, July 1933, advertising boxing matches between local boxers and Jimmy Sharman's boxers, including Vic Stevens. Queensland champion bantamweight. Source: Trove. |
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