Circus historians lavish fairly liberal praise upon Richard Sands’ illustrious career as equestrian, acrobat, clown and showman founder of the American Circus and Franconi’s Hippodrome. Occasionally their kudos err on the side of hyperbole, but it's probably no stretch to say that the name of Richard Sands—whether singly or associated as Sands & Lent or Sands & Nathan—suggested spectacular entertainment to early 19th-century New Yorkers as readily as the words Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, Cirque du Soleil or Madison Square Garden would today.
Equestrian Leaps to Success
Richard Sands’ rise to prominence coincided with New York City’s population boom and subsequent appetite for spectacular diversions. In 1826 the country’s largest theater was Mount Pitt in lower Manhattan, near Grand Street by the East River. It was surely a Mecca for a twelve-year-old Long Island farm boy like Sands. Where else could a country lad with unbridled pluck leave 4,000 spectators cheering, then breathless, then cheering again? Sands’ coup de théâtre was a series of backwards somersaults called “flip-flapping” from galloping horses. The equestrian feat literally thrust the youngster into fame.
Annals of American circus history variously credit Sands with having “invented the circus poster.” The claim seems at best difficult to substantiate. One might also quibble with another account that Sands “had the first circus calliope in 1859,” since the Pittsfield Sun, a Massachusetts paper, reported two years prior, on July 9, 1857, that “The calliope has been put to a practical use at last. It has been adopted by Nixon’s and Kemp’s Circus Company to whistle up visitors for their exhibitions. Mounted on a big wagon drawn by 40 horses, it traverses the streets giving notice that the Circus is coming.”
Sands the Acrobat
What is undisputed is that Sands was a formidable acrobat. His “antipodean pedestrian” feat of walking across a ceiling earned him some of his most widespread fame. In 1853, Sands crossed London’s Drury-Lane stage upside-down with the aid of suction-adapted footwear. He became the rage as the "air-walker", the "ceiling-walker" and the "human fly." Publicity posters in England hailed him as “the Wonder of the Age.”
Sands' acrobatic feat was indeed a theatrical tour de force. But was it original? On February 19, 1852, The Semi-Weekly Eagle, of Brattleboro, Vermont, reported, “Professor McCormick is performing the feat of walking on the ceiling of the Bowery Amphitheatre, New York, with his head downwards. The means by which the feat is accomplished are not perceptible.” And the next day The Barre Patriot, a Massachusetts paper, also noted: “A. McCormick of Cincinnati has discovered a method of walking on a smooth ceiling with his head downwards, and has, it is stated, actually performed the feat before a private party.”
One might assume that any praise a wider public soon showered praise upon Mr. Sands for this same feat would have been to Mr. McCormick’s deep chagrin. Indeed, there are extant reports of Sands also performing “as a ceiling-walker” at the end of 1852 at the New York Amphitheatre—one and the same as the Bowery Amphitheatre?
But again, if absolute substantiation as to who created the stunt is elusive, our intrigue is sufficiently heightened about the circus’s competitive nature in years past. It is telling that, during the summer of 1852, elaborate reports of Sands’ death while performing his stunt on a dare circulated in several journals. Finally, a tiny notice appeared on August 5th in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle stating, “The report that Mr. Sands, the equestrian, was killed by a fall from the ceiling of the court house at Walcott [Massachusetts], turns out to be a fabrication. He was alive and well yesterday.”
Sands was indeed full of life when he returned from Europe in July of 1853. The New-York Daily Times noted his arrival with “a very diminutive elephant, and some rare species of ostriches” intended for Franconi’s Hippodrome. This enterprise, which he and a syndicate of other circus showmen co-owned at the junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, was a precursor to today’s Madison Square Garden.
From Circus Greasepaint to Cemetery Marble
When death finally came to Richard Sands in 1861 he was still at the relatively young age of forty-six. Since then he has presided in the westerly division of Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan's Washington Heights. Built during the advent of the American Civil War, his monument looms as large as his antebellum theatrical reputation.
Richards Sands’ tomb is an Olympian presence, perched upon an embankment. Six Corinthian columns form a circular open temple inspired by the 4th-century B.C. Choragic Monument of Lysicrates of Athens. A tall female figure at the top clutches an anchor against the folds of her gown—the symbol of hope. But an empty pedestal in the center suggests an enduring and regrettable slight-of-hand endemic to many a historic cemetery. For from here a marble bust of Richard Sands, the venerable lion of the sawdust ring, has long since vanished.
Sources:
19th-century newspapers: Barre Patriot, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Pittsfield Sun, New York Times, Semi-Weekly Eagle.
A History of the New York Stage, Thomas Allston Brown, (Dodd, Mead, 1903)
Online: Olympians of the Sawdust Circle, Circus Historical Society, by William L. Stout, 2005.
Eric K. Washington - Eric K. Washington is the author of Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem and contributed to the recent MTA-licensed guide book, New ...
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