Lion tamer

[cathayb]

1879 salford
1881 liverpool
1883 bristol

[dee-jay]

Sorry, I should have explained more clearly that their actual dates of birth (with month as well as year) should enable me to calculate more closely when, and possibly where, they were all together.  Also, if the mother registered all the births, it is feasible that their father could have been absent during the late stages of pregnancies, earning his living on the road with a travelling circus or menagerie.  The gap between birth and registration date is also of significance.

As an example,  GRO Birth Sep 1879   PETERS, James    Salford 8d   102 could have been registered July, August or September 1879, so it's impossible to calculate where they might have been when he was conceived.  However, if his birth was actually in September, I would be searching for a circus whereabouts in the Christmas period 1878 in the Manchester/Salford area.

Similarly, for Charlotte aged 3 months at 1881 Census, I would be searching for a likely circus whereabouts in spring/summer 1880.  Circuses tended to keep to regular routes, which followed similar patterns each year, not forgetting that Liverpool served as a seaport for Ireland, and the Welsh and Scots also enjoyed circus visits.

[dee-jay]

I've found several reports of the death of a "Negro", mauled by lions at a circus performance in Cannes in Sept 1882. The circus was Sangers. Might this have been George? If so, it means that he died before the birth of his youngest child.

In a letter to The Editor of "The Era", Saturday 9th September 1882, Sanger refutes the reports on the incident at Cannes and relates his own findings.  It appears that one of the lions had retaliated to a violent blow on its tail from the "Negro", by inflicting a talon wound in the front of his thigh, and, reassuringly, he was the first man encountered in the street connected to the circus when the Sangers arrived in Marseilles …...  Another myth bites the dust!