When Tom Thumb showed up on the scene in eighteen thirty, there weren't too many places to go. Back then, there were only twenty three miles of railroad track in the whole country, so as you can imagine, getting anywhere was pretty tough. This Tom Thumb, though, wasn't P. T. Barnum's famous pint size protege that we've already discussed in an earlier episode. This Tom was a tiny steam engine, one of the first ever to be built in America. It weighed less than one ton and made its inventor, the
industrialist Peter Cooper, very proud and very excited. The Tom Thumb steam engine was under the ownership of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, or the B and O for short. On July four, eight Charles Carroll broke the first ground at the lines official commissioning. At years old, he was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. One day in eighteen thirty, Peter Cooper decided he would take Tom Thumb out for a spin on the tracks near Baltimore.
He was out in a rail yard when a horse drawn train pulled up alongside him and challenged him to a gentlemanly drag race. Peter's engine had been known to clock speeds as high as fourteen miles per hour, and he wanted to test its metal. The two men lined up with each other, sitting in parallel on their respectful steeds. Paused for a moment, and then we're off to the races. Down the tracks, they surged at what must have felt like breakneck speed, although it's more likely they barely broke
into the double digits. Peter and his tom Thumb effortlessly took the lead, but it wouldn't last. One of the trains belts had broken loose, and it slowly came to a halt. But it wasn't over yet. You see. Peter may have lost this battle, but he would end up winning the war because he had impressed some important people that day, people who would be making the big decisions for the future of the train line. The tom Thumb demonstrated promise through its raw power, and the executives decided
that they would convert their entire railroad to steam. Horse drawn cars were out. Less than a century later, those twenty three miles of train lines would multiply exponentially by over one thousand times. In fact, at the railroad's peak in nineteen eleven, enough track had been laid throughout the country. That's hypothetically speaking, it equaled the distance from the Earth to the Moon, with miles to spare. To say that the train was one of the important technological innovations to
ever hit American shores would be an understatement. Railroads would go on to upend almost everything about life at the time. They changed the way we worked, traveled, and played, and those who got to be up close to them, whether to ride or just look, couldn't help but marvel at what the future seemed to promise. The country would never be the same. Trains were becoming a spectacle, celebrities in their own right, and sometimes so were the people who
wrote them. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome to the side show. It was only a matter of time before their wishes would outgrow their hawthorn tree. Jenny and Eddie Ward were young enough to remember, but also old enough to know that life wasn't going to be easy. Their home life was unstable and money was always tight. Plus there was a rotating cast of father figures, with their mother always searching for a reliable man that could afford them a
better existence. When Eddie was in third grade, he dropped out of school and got a job. He had to take care of his family after all. Jenny, a few years younger, loved her brother mightily. He was her caretaker and her best friend, and they were inseparable. Together they could be unafraid of whatever life through at them. On just about any day of the year, they could be found climbing the limbs of their hawthorn tree. They were
happiest there. At one point, Jenny and Eddie strung up a crude trap he's made of rope and a bar. As a parent, I am terrified just thinking about it. They played for hours at a time, swinging and jumping through the air, always earth bound, yes, but attempting to defy gravity, to test physics and fate. They loved it, and you know what, they were good at it too.
It's true that we're all products of our environment, but one can't help but think that Jenny and Eddie had appeared in the exact right place at the exact right time. They were born in the last decade of the nineteenth century in Bloomington, Illinois, a city whose legacy would become inextricably linked with the world of the circus. Bloomingtons had become aerial It's ground zero, just two decades after the
flying trapeeze first appeared in Europe. Jenny and Eddie's flying trapeeze birthright was not one of heritage, but of proximity. The history books tell us that a few years before they were born, some local brothers had set up a trapeeze in their barn, replicating the aerial acts that they had seen when the circus wagons had passed through town. They practiced their flips and tricks, much to the dismay of their father, who sooner wished they joined the family's
confection or business than tempt death. But before long those brothers had paying customers. People came to watch and eventually to train. Want to be acrobats arrived from not just all over the country, but all over the world. According to one newspaper, the city became the capital of the aerial Kingdom, making it impossible to visit a circus anywhere
without running into performers who hadn't done time there. By nineteen oh three, Eddie and Jenny had graduated from their tree and landed their first paying gig at a local fair. It was a twenty mile train ride out of town, but it felt a world away here under the big top. They were reborn as the flying Wards. Their week long contract was worth fifteen dollars, but they brought home so
much more. By passing around a hat to the enthusiastic audience, they managed to collect the equivalent of over ten thousand dollars in modern currency. The crowd had spoken, they were a smash hit, and the siblings couldn't believe it. With that, their professional career had begun. What Jenny and Eddie didn't know at that moment was that they were on their way not only to stardom, but to creating a circus
family dynasty. The world didn't know, it hungered for. It was the golden age of the circus, and they were right on time. The Trapeeze was going to be Jenny and Eddie's ticket out of town. Countless shows were now moving through the country by rail, including P. T. Barnum and his entourage. The rail held their future. The following year, the flying Wards appeared at the Atlanta Fair. In nineteen o five, they were hired by a small amusement company.
The year After that, the Ringling Brothers circus got hold of them before they jumped ship to join up with the Van Amberg circus. By nineteen twelve, their ranks had grown to include a rotating cast of friends and two aerial artist spouses. Jenny married Alec Todd and Eddie married Mamie Faye. Together they opened a training barn in Iowa, and then another back home in Bloomington in nineteen fifteen. But lest you think this was any old barn, think again.
That label doesn't quite do it justice. There's was a structure built to mimic a circus tent, thirty eight feet high with twenty two large windows that made the place glow with light. In one of their most famous acts, Jenny would hop on a trappies bar above Eddie's own bar, who sat with his legs dangling forty ft above the ground.
From there, she would drop head first, deadweight like a corpse, earthbound like a bomb, and he would catch her, of course, but with his feet, all of this with no safety nets. In nine Hampton magazine wrote up a profile about the Wards. The reporter had teased Jenny she was as fearless as a gladiator, but all wrapped up in more sinewy demure packaging.
Jenny told the reporter that she didn't see why she would have anything to fear when performing, because she knew that her brother would catch her because he had to. But she admitted, without batting an eye, there was something else that rattled her more than hurtling toward the ground. Ever, could railroad tracks? Railroad tracks? Asked the reporter incredulously. It seemed all things considered to be a very silly thing to worry about. Jenny shot back. Who wouldn't be afraid
of a great, big engine? She always worried about the chance that she wouldn't make it across, Perhaps her foot would get stuck, or she would trip and fall with no one there to catch her. It was as if Jenny knew something, something that told her that, for all her high flying and death defying acts, trains were the thing she had to be afraid of. But for someone who would go on to make her living being ferried from one city to another aboard the iron horse, she
had to get used to it. But that nagging sense of worry she felt it was almost as if she knew this wouldn't end well. One of America's greatest technological inventions had revolutionized mass entertainment. No, I'm not talking about the television or even the radio. I'm still talking about the railroad. Rail had made the country accessible in a way it never had before, traversing prairies and mountain passes, cutting through cities and into small towns alike. For decades,
showman and their entourages had been traveling by wagon. It was slow and hard. Barnum himself had acquired a hundred or so wagons to transport his show, plus a few hundred horses to pull them. It was a grinding, hardly profitable way to try to squeeze out a living. Just weeks after the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in eighteen sixty nine, a Wisconsin man took his two elephants and two camels on tour from Nebraska to California. And these companies got
the process down to a science. Weeks ahead of a circus performance, advertisements promoting the stars of the show would appear in local newspapers and advertisements. No place in a thirty mile radius of their next show was safe from big, colorful postering. A glittering three mile parade was promised to spectators who showed up, and that promise was usually kept.
For rural farming communities especially, the anticipation was palpable. They knew that the biggest event of the whole year was about to roll into town, and when the circus appeared, everything else in their life just sort of stopped. In the magazine, McClure's called the modern circus a kingdom on wheels,
a city that folds itself up like an umbrella. The writer also wrote that quickly and swiftly, every night it does the work of a Laddin's lamp, picking up in its magical arms, theater, hotel, schoolroom, barracks, home, whisking them all miles away, and setting them down before sunrise in a new place, as if by magic. A parade of exotic animals would appear at dawn and march down main street. Townsfolk watched as canvas tents spring up like mushroom caps.
They could rub shoulders with tattooed ladies and dwarfs, the painted likenesses of which stood twenty feet tall on wood and canvas to announce their arrival. To say that the circus was a spectacle was an understatement. They was here that Americans were utterly transported to a world that at that time existed only in stories and their imaginations. The circus train made it real. It was a rolling fantasy, a hulking dream machine that rolled into town under the
cover of night. That's how everyone would get around for a good time too. It became standard business practice, so in nineteen eighteen, the Flying Wards climbed onto the Haggenback Wallace circus Train ready for their next tour. It was an old school set of cars, all made of wood. For Jenny and Eddie and their troop, it was familiar and cozy. Their personal quarters of bare bones sleeper car was full of bunks stacked two and three high. Overhead
oil lamps kept the cars glowing throughout the night. It was a swaltering existence with the bodies of hundreds of performers all stacked together in the summer air. But this was what the Wards had worked so hard for. To them, this circus train was home. Their show that season was going to be a good one. They boasted and I quote twenty five different acts advertising the presence of sixty aerialists, sixty acrobats, sixty writers, fifty clowns and one hundred count them,
one hundred dancing girls. They also brought along seventy elephants, eighty horse drawn wagons, twenty trick ponies, and a home and nagerie of other exotic creatures. That's a lot of numbers, but you get the picture. The Wards and Company arrived in Michigan City, Indiana, on June one, nineteen eighteen, to
give a charity performance at the Indiana State Penitentiary. All things considered, this was going to be a light and leisurely performance, and it was an afternoon show, one that would give them enough time to wrap up with daylight left to burn. As the cars finished loading, they would head off in stages. The first section of the train to leave the station at one am, was full of animals,
their handlers, and six sleeper cars. The second, comprised mostly of performers, was slated to leave at two thirty am. After a long day, the performers all settled in for the night. Eddie and Mamie together, Jenny and Alec nearby, the family and single women carriages were towards the front. The married acts were sandwiched in the middle, the single men roustabouts and trainers all pulled up the rear of
the train. The engine rumbled to life. The passengers felt the jolt as their cars began to roll, and turned their heads to the windows. The town sailed by like a silent movie screen. It wouldn't be long now until their next stop, which would be early enough to see the first light of dawn. The train rattled and shook across the night. It was creaky at its joints, but did its passengers a surface. It rocked them to sleep. Little did they know that this night would be the
last for many on board. Some, in fact, would never wake up again. Alonso, Sergeant, was on a collision horse, and he had no idea. Often one never does. We spend our lives hurtling toward the future. Are minutes ticking on at our seconds winding down, And sometimes it's only when we're forced to come to an abrupt stopped do we realize that we might be out of time. Alonso, the train engineer at the throttle of engine of the Michigan Central Line, hadn't gotten much rest in the past day.
He was tired. He closed his cab window to save himself from the night's chill. He knew these tracks, and he knew his job, and he closed his eyes just for a few moments. Of course, Alonso knew that he didn't have long to go now, but what he missed were the two caution signals, and instead of slowing down, he sped up. Up ahead was the Hagenbach Wallace circus train with the mechanical issue brakeman Oscar tim was walking the rail, taking stock of the situation. They were just
five miles from their destination of Hammond, Indie Enna. Suddenly, Oscar heard something he shouldn't have, the smooth rumble of the tracks, and then saw something that shocked him, a huge plume of smoke and the headlights of an oncoming train, one that seemed to have no intention of slowing down. Part of the circus car was on the transition rail, but the rest of it was still on the main line,
directly in the path of this billowing beast. Oscar grabbed an emergency flare and took off toward Alonso Sergeant's train. Oscar screamed he waved frantically, but Alonso couldn't hear him. His window was closed, after all, and so he never noticed when Oscar threw his burning flare at him. It bounced off engine as the train sped onward. The few who also saw this train coming watched Oscar's efforts in vain.
In a moment of sheer terror that we can only imagine, they could do nothing but jump out of the way as one fifty tons of steel hurtled straight towards them. For the witnesses, we can imagine that time slowed down in the seconds before impact, stretching and warping to fit the full shape of the situation's horror. All the trainmen could do now was wait and pray that the folks inside the train cars were asleep and dreaming. And with that,
Alonso's steam engine made contact with the circus train. It plowed into the caboose's steel frame, the air exploding with gnashing roars and the tearing of steel. The engine's cow catcher created a plowing, rolling effect, effectively mashing the circus train into a snowball of twisted metal and sparks. The next car beyond the caboose was one of the sleeper cars. In an instant, a tidal wave of metal smashed through
the old wooden car. It shattered like glass, timber, splinters everywhere, the walls coming down while smashed kerosene lamps pitched riders into darkness. Those sleeping were sucked up in the undertow of debris, living breathing bodies being dragged forwards as the engine tore through the next passenger car, and then the next, and then finally one last one before slowing down. It was suddenly quiet for a moment, and then came the screams.
A moment later, the train began to burn. When Mamie Ward came to she was upside down and folded into a pocket in the wreckage. With the sound of Eddie yelling for her from outside, she freed herself and climbed to the top of the mountain of carnage. It was, according to her, as tall as a telephone pole. Eddie, who had been thrown from the wreck went back to help. There were hundreds of people on that train. Survivors started digging,
pulling friends and family from the wreckage. They got to work excavating frantically, following sounds of wailing and the smell of burning flesh. But the smolder grew and the fire turned into an inferno. The local fire departments were even called in, but with few water sources nearby, there wasn't much they could do. One newspaper later reported that the task of identifying the dead and seriously injured was almost hopeless.
Not only were many of the bodies burned so badly that recognition was impossible, but practically everyone on the train was killed or hurt. The injured and dying were laid on the ground next to the tracks. Morticians with their horse drawn wagons stood by, making quick work of loading the unidentifiable corpses and taking them away. Altogether, eight six people died and over one hundred and twenty were injured.
The sun rose that day on a new world for many of the Circus trains passengers, the ones who were left behind to pick up the pieces of that fateful summer night. Eddie was hailed as a hero by the local papers. He had gone back into the wreckage time and again, helping who he could, while clearly looking for someone in particular. Just before he collapsed from exhaustion, he succeeded and stepped out of the wreckage carrying something. It
was the lifeless body of his beloved sister Jenny. He hadn't been there to catch her and now she was gone. Jenny's final train ride took her home to Bloomington's, and there where it all started. She was late to rest. Eddie would never recover. On June, just a few days after the accident, the caskets of fifty six train wreck victims were buried in a common grave at Showman's Rest Cemetery in Forest Hills, Illinois. Only thirteen of them had
been identified. The rest were charred beyond recognition. If you were to visit there today, you'd find that many of the headstones in that plot are inscribed with unknown male and unknown female, But if you look closely enough, you'll be able to find more affectionate names, such as Baldy Smiley and four horse Driver. Ever since, Showman's Rest has become the final resting place for hundreds of circus folk,
from roustabouts to owners and everyone in between. Some neighbors claim that they can hear the sounds of phantom elephants at night, but as the records show, no elephants were actually buried there. I suppose we'll just have to chalk it up to the zoo nearby. Oh and almost unbelievably, the Hagenbach Wallace Circus only canceled to performances. Assistance came from the Ringleing Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in
the form of equipment, animals, and performers. Survivors of the wreck were able to perform once again, because even in the face of extraordinary tragedy, it seems the show must go on. In a world where many of us spent a lot of time at home during the pandemic, it's amazing to imagine the ways will travel and the things will see in the years ahead. The way we move, the where, the how, and with whom. All of it gives shape to our lives in truly meaningful ways. But
we're not done just yet. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear one more tale about the side show and maybe find some inspiration for your next road trip. It's hard to say if he ever knew it, but one of the quite literally biggest celebrities in the world was so unanimously loved. His beginnings were quiet and his life was good, but that all changed when his mother
was shot and killed. He was kidnapped from Sudan and forced to walk hundreds of miles before being taken by boat to Paris, where he was brought to the Jordan Duplont. It was France's botanical garden, a jewel in the eyes of biologists working to understand the secrets of the natural world. His life there, well, it was pretty bleak. His transfer was eventually negotiated in the form of a trade. He would go to the London Zoo in exchange for a rhino, a jackal, two eagles, a pair of dingos, a possum
and a kangaroo. There, Jumbo the elephant would become a star. Even though he was a smaller African elephant. The calf would grow to a hearty twelve feet tall, and they're under the watchful eye of his caretaker, Matthew Scott, Jumbo flourished. He was sweet, and he was gentle, and within a few years he was giving writhes to children, including those of Queen Victoria, a boy named Winston Churchill, and if
the legends are true, even a young f dr. The public loved him and they came to visit him by the tens of thousands. But this situation wasn't built to last. At around age twenty, the beginning of the teenage years of an elephant if you will, he began acting moody p t. Barnum caught wind of this and offered to take Jumbo to America. After much protest from tens of thousands of Londoners and from Queen Victoria herself, Jumbo once again boarded a ship and set sail west towards his
new home. Barnum, ever, the opportunist, was able to conjure a crowd for Jumbo's arrival. According to some sources, it was the largest crowd New York City had ever seen. Before long, Barnum had made Jumbo an even bigger star. He became the face of many products and a household name. At that the term Jumbo became synonymous with giants. Together, they logged tens of thousands of miles on the circus train, breaking a ten records everywhere they went. But all good
things must come to an end, it seems. In September, as Jumbo and his entourage were loading into a circus train after a show, an unscheduled train came barreling down the tracks and t boned the friendly giant. Jumbo perished within minutes. But if you think that would be the end of his story, you're dead wrong. As you've seen by now, Barnam and his cronies never let an untimely death get in the way of good business. Nope, quite
the opposite. They saw death as yet another money making opportunity, one that certainly wasn't going to slow them down. Barnum, you see, had a taxidermist on call. The taxidermist made quick work of Jumbo, disarticulating his keleton and rebuilding it, as well as stuffing his hide. Just shy of a miracle, the modern day version of multiplying bread and fishes for the masses, if you will. Barnum now had two Jumbos for his audience. Stuffed Jumbo traveled by train to Tufts University,
a Barnum beneficiary. He was large, cumbersome, and totally immobile. It said. It took many horses and over fifty people to get him up the hill, and once they got there, it was easier to get the good natured volunteers to disassemble the university stone doorway than to get him inside by any other alternative. And it's here Jumbo, to point oh, would stay for decades, once again becoming a beloved mascot to an adoring crowd, but it seems one last tragedy
would befall him. In the spring of n an electrical fire broke out, burning Jumbo's building to the ground. Barely anything was left of his stuffed mortal remains. A quick thinking employee was able to save some of his remains, though, and if you're up for it, you can still go see them. Today. He sits on a shelf there Tufts University in the athletic director's office. Rumor has it it's considered good luck to say hello to him before a game, but he's certainly easy to miss because all that's left
of Jumbo. Today's ash collected in a small glass jar that was once used for Crunchy Peanut Butter. Side show was written by Robin Miniter with narration by me Aaron Manky. Research for the series was by Robin Minater, Taylor Haggard Dorn, and Sam Alberty, with production assistance from Josh Thay, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Grim and Mile Presents was
created in partnership with I Heart Radio. You can learn more about this show and everything else from Grim and mild Over at Grim and mild Dot com and as always thanks for listening. M