James Anthony Bailey
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James Anthony Bailey (July 4, 1847 – April 11, 1906) (né McGinnis), was an American owner and manager of several 19th-century circuses, including the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (also billed as "The Greatest Show on Earth").<ref name="adamsgbaily">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Early life
James Anthony McGinnis was born July 4, 1847<ref name="adamsgbaily" /> to Edward and Hannora McGinnis in Detroit, Michigan. Edward McGinnis died in October, 1849 of cholera and in 1855, James was orphaned when his mother died. James then went to live with his older sister, Catherine Gordon.
Life with Catherine was difficult as she tended to be overbearing and harsh. Sometime between 1859 and 1860, James ran away from Catherine's home and found a job and a place to stay on a farm about 10 miles outside the city of Pontiac, Michigan. Finding life on the farm unrewarding, 13-year old James wandered into Pontiac where he found work at the Hodges House Hotel.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
After working at the hotel for a time, he was discovered by Colonel Frederic Harrison Bailey, a nephew of circus pioneer Hachaliah Bailey, and an advance man for John Robinson and Bill Lake's traveling circus.<ref name="adamsgbaily" /> F.H. Bailey gave McGinnis a job as his assistant, and the two traveled together for many years. McGinnis eventually adopted F.H. Bailey's surname to become James A. Bailey.<ref name="AmExp2018"/>
Circus life
In his diary, James' brother-in-law Joseph T. McCaddon writes that Bailey recounted stories of how he left the circus world at age 16 and went to work as clerk to a sutler during the Civil War.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
In 1866, with the war over, he went back to work for Bill Lake, who now owned his own circus with his wife Agnes Lake Thatcher. During this time, James met Ruth Louisa McCaddon of Zanesville, Ohio. James and Ruth became friends, fell in love, and were married in December 1868. The very next year in Granby, Missouri, Bill Lake was shot and killed. With her husband dead, Agnes Lake became the first woman in the United States to own a circus<ref name="adamsgbaily" /> (Agnes Lake would later marry famous gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok, who worked for a short time with Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West Show James A. Bailey would one day manage). <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Bailey later associated with James E. Cooper, and by the time he was 22, he was manager of the Cooper and Bailey circus. He then met with P.T. Barnum, and together they established Barnum and Bailey's Circus (for which Bailey was instrumental in obtaining Jumbo the Elephant) in 1880, with their combined show opening the following spring in Madison Square Garden.<ref name="AmExp2018">Template:Cite web</ref>
Barnum was the face of the circus, but James Bailey was the hard worker who insisted on staying behind the scenes. Barnum once wrote to him that James managed the show “ten times better than I could.”<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
Equestrienne Josie Demott Robinson wrote in her autobiography that "Mr. Barnum was the advertiser, who loved the limelight, who rode around in the ring, and announced who he was. But Mr. Bailey was the businessman, content to be invisible ... and interested only in the success of the show."<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
Bailey was considered by many to be a genius at logistics. His organizational skills for transporting people, animals, and equipment was copied by the military of more than one country.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
He hired Pinkerton Detectives to travel with the show and protect circusgoers from grifters and thieves.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
He established “Orphan Day”, one day a year when orphans could attend the circus for free. He was often known to carry children who could not walk into the circus tent and find them a seat away from the crush of the crowd.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
Following Barnum's death in 1891, Bailey managed not only The Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show on Earth, but in 1894, took on the management of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
Death and legacy
Bailey died of erysipelas in 1906 at age 58 at his home in Mount Vernon, NY.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in The Bronx, New York City.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His widow subsequently sold the circus to the Ringling brothers in 1907, who eventually merged the rival operations in 1919.<ref name="AmExp22018">Template:Cite web</ref>
In his book about the circus, Earl Chapin May wrote, “Probably...no circus owner and manager left more sincere mourners than the thin little magnate known to millions as James A. Bailey.”<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
Taped beneath a photo of James Bailey in the scrapbook of employee Harrison Gunning is a small scrap of paper that reads, “P.T. Barnum was the great showman, but Mr. Bailey was the supreme of all circus managers, past and present.”<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
James A. Bailey was inducted into the International Circus Hall of Fame in 1960 and into the Circus Ring of Fame in Sarasota, Florida in 1990.<ref name="adamsgbaily" />
References
External links
- American Experience: The Circus: The Life and Times of James Bailey, Part 1
- American Experience: The Circus: The Life and Times of James Bailey, Part 2
- American Experience: The Circus: The Life and Times of James Bailey, Part 3
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- The Affairs of James A. Bailey by Richard E Conover