On Jan. 4, 1903, probably the first filmed killing of an animal occurred. The famous victim was Topsy the elephant. Topsy (named after a character in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) had been smuggled into America from Southeast Asia by a circus in 1875. The circus was a rival of Barnum and Bailey and falsely billed Topsy as the first elephant born in America. Topsy quickly developed a reputation as a “bad” elephant, which was good for drawing crowds. In 1902, she killed a drunken James Blunt. He had taunted her, threw sand on her, and then burned her trunk with a cigar. Topsy lifted him off the ground and threw him down and stomped him to death. The last straw came soon after when Topsy attacked a man who thought it would be fun to tickle her behind the ear with a stick. This caused the circus to sell Topsy to what became Luna Park at Coney Island. In October, 1903 Topsy became enraged when her handler William Alt stabbed her with a pitchfork to encourage her to pull an amusement ride. When the police arrived, Alt set Topsy loose to run through the streets. Later, a drunken Alt rode Topsy to the police station and tried to break in. Alt was fired and the owners decided it was time to put Topsy down. Originally, it was going to be a public hanging with paid spectators, but the ASPCA objected to the cruelty of hanging and the public spectacle. It was decided to poison, electrocute, and strangle the elephant before invited guests and the press only. Thomas Edison’s movie company was allowed to film, but he did not attend. Despite the myth, Edison did not use this as part of the Current War with Westinghouse. That competition had ended years earlier. During it, Edison had electrocuted dogs, calves, and even a horse using alternating current. Topsy was fed carrots laced with cyanide, put in copper sandals to conduct the electricity, and large ropes were put around her neck and connected to a steam-powered wench. The electricity caused her to collapse and probably killed her within a minute. Then the strangulating finished the job. The 74 second film (which did not include the strangling) was shown on kinetoscopes as “Electrocuting an Elephant”. It is available on YouTube.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)
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