Sanger Circus Collection

Aerial performers combining poses together whilst suspended from ropes.

Sanger’s circuses began in the 1840s and ’50s, but by the 1880s, they had grown to such a scale that they were able to hold their own against the behemoth of P.T. Barnum’s three-ring circus, which arrived in London for the first time in that decade. The Sanger Circus Collection contains negatives, handbills, programmes and other items of ephemera relating to George Sanger's circus and the Hall by the Sea.

Photograph of Ellen Sanger (née Chapman), lion tamer and wife of George Sanger. Ellen performed under the name of Madame Pauline De Vere, the Lion Queen.

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