William Cameron Coup

William Cameron Coup (1837 – March 4, 1895) was a Wisconsin businessman who partnered with P.T. Barnum and Dan Castello in 1871 to form the "P.T. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie and Circus". Previously Barnum had a museum at a fixed location in New York City and the traveling circus allowed him to bring his curiosities to more paying customers. Coup's innovations were the circus train to transport the materials from town to town; and he added a second ring to the circus.

Biography

His father was a tavern keeper in Indiana. After his mother died in 1849 he moved from Martin County, Indiana to Terre Haute, Indiana, to work as a printer. In 1853, he discovered Mabies' Grand Olympian Arena and U.S. Circus, the largest of the early touring shows. He took a job as a "mud-packer" and "all-around boy".

Ed Mabie and Jere Mabie sold the circus in 1865, he was their side show manager. Between 1866 and 1869, he managed the Yankee Robinson Circus then retired to livestock breeding in Delavan, Wisconsin. Former clown Dan Castello suggested an alliance with Phineas T. Barnum. On April 10, 1871, Coup and Barnum launched "P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Circus and Hippodrome" in Brooklyn, New York. Using a big top support pole system he innovated and a specially designed end-loading rail system, he was able to travel 100 miles overnight.

On April 18, 1872, at New Brunswick, New Jersey, William Cameron Coup developed the system of loading circus equipment on railroad cars that would be adopted by all railroad circuses and used through the golden age or railroad circuses and even by the Ringling shows today. The reluctant Pennsylvania Railroad provided the railroad cars for this venture. His method involved pulling wagons up a ramp located at one end of a string of flatcars and down the length of the train. He bridged the space between the cars with crossover plates and chocked the wagons in place on the train. Prior to this venture, when circuses had previously traveled by rail, the wagons had been loaded over the sides of each car. At Trenton, New Jersey, Coup rented sleepers for the performers and musicians and coaches for the workers. Although the systems sounds simple, Coup had significant problems in his endeavor. He found that the railroads did not have a uniform width and height for their cars; brake wheels were mounted at the end sill of each car which obstructed the wagons as they rolled from car to car. These brake wheels had to be removed in order to load and unload the train. With all the difficulty that Coup was having with the Pennsylvania Railroad cars, Coup took the final step in developing the circus train. He contacted an Urbana, Ohio, company (possibly the U.S. Rolling Stock Car Company) that built and delivered custom designed railroad cars to the circus at its Columbus, Ohio, performance date. These first circus flats were 32 feet in length. In Cleveland, Ohio, he purchased Palace stock cars. So, when the circus arrived at Columbus on June 28, their 65 car, brightly painted new circus train with uniform flatcars, a Wagner sleeping car for the performers, regular sleeping cars for the workers, boxcars for extra storage, and Palace cars for the livestock awaited them. The show could now travel 100 miles in a single night, avoid the smaller towns, and play only the larger cities which provided greater box office receipts. Not only did Coup create the railroad circus that would go basically unchanged for the next 100 or so years, but it inspired new developments in the railroad industry itself. [http://www.trainweb.org/circus/early_years.htm]

Under Coup’s direction, "P.T. Barnum’s Great Roman Hippodrome" opened at the site of Madison Square Garden in 1874. Elephants, camels, ostriches, llamas, horses, chariot races, high wire acts and acrobatics were presented in a multiple ring format.

In 1876, Coup opened the New York Aquarium and later organized "The Equescurriculum", "The New United Monster Shows" and several touring Wild West shows. A train wreck near Cairo, Illinois, damaged him financially. The Chicago Museum and "The Enchanted Rolling Palaces" were his last business ventures. He died in Jacksonville, Florida on March 4, 1895. His autobiography is called Sawdust and Spangles.

Circuses

* W. C. Coup's Circus (1885-1889)
* W. C. Coup's Rolling Palaces
* Coup's Equescurriculum
* W. C. Coup's New United Monster Shows
* Coup's 10 Consolidated Shows

External links

* [http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=371640 'Sideshow' raises the curtain on 'curiosities']
* [http://www.circusinamerica.org/public/corporate_bodies/public_show/13 Circus: P. T. Barnum's Circus, 1871-1880]
* [http://web.indstate.edu/community/vchs/wvp/!coupwil.pdf William Cameron Coup]

References

*New York Times; Wednesday, August 10, 1901 "With the Circus. Those who were interested in fish culture some twenty-five years ago have not forgotten William C. Coup, who first opened an aquarium in New York in the Centennial year, 1876. In this venture Coup showed the greatest enterprise. It was something in the way of a show entirely out of the common, and it was questionable whether it would be remunerative."