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The word 'hippodrome', as you may know, stems from the Roman for horse racing stadium. But during the London Hippodrome's early years, it was better known for its lions.
The theatre just off Leicester Square — designed by Frank Matcham of London Palladium and Hackney Empire fame — opened in 1900, with many of its astonishing acts involving live elephants, polar bears and the like. Taking the biscuit as "one of the most thrilling animal acts ever seen", though, was the lion tamer, Claire Heliot, who, after making a name for herself at a zoo in Leipzig, came to the Hippodrome with a pride of lions (the records suggest between nine and 14 of them) and caused quite a stir.
The show — which played a number of times at the Hippodrome in 1901 and 1902, as well as at various other theatres across Britain — saw Heliot stride on stage in a white evening dress, to Bizet's 'Carmen'. She'd then cooly perform tricks with the lions — things like getting them to roll barrels and walk on a tight rope.
"She pats them on the head like ponies," wrote the New York Times, "hugs them like kittens, romps about with them as no mere women could possibly do if they were not as safe as house cats." Heliot also fed the big cats with pieces of raw steak, using a long fork. This she would do while sitting at a table, around which the creatures would gather, as if at some particularly perilous dinner party. As the sign-off for each show, Heliot would carry a lion called Sacha off-stage, on her shoulders. "A more daring and blood-curdling exhibition," suggested the Penny Illustrated Paper, "one would not like to witness."
Heliot had nerves of steel. "They would not have the heart to kill me," she told people. (She claimed she tamed the lions "with sentimentality" although she also brandished a whip and a revolver, and her act today would be regarded as animal cruelty.) Unfortunately, Heliot's nerves did eventually give way. In 1907, she was attacked by a group of lions in a cage, at the Circus Orlando in Copenhagen. She was saved by three attendants, although badly injured. Heliot acknowledged the lions had sensed her nervousness, and literally pounced. After this near-death experience, sources suggest, she became a hairdresser.
The lion tamer's legacy lives on today at the Hippodrome's aptly-named Heliot Steak House, where, in a tribute to its namesake, you might want to order your steak blue and point it in the direction of your fellow diner on the end of a long fork. There are no live animals here today, of course, although scaling the walls of the restaurant is a troop of golden monkeys. As for the lions? A series of big golden cats hold light bulbs between their teeth.
There are some great images of Heliot's act from Tatler and the Sphere, which we can't share here for copyright reasons, but which you should check out if you have a British Newspaper Archive subscription.
