The Escalation of the Circus Conflict

This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human. This stress check AKA friendly have fun rememinder is brought to you by State Farm. because you deserve to decompress and protect your peace For me It's painting my tabletop miniatures. I know, random, but it works. Big stress, Mi warriors total reset It helps me clear my head, slow down, and just breathe Mental health matters and hobbies help like a good neighbor State fararm is there Refresh your yard this summer with fourourth of July savings from the Home Depot. Choose your power starting at ninety nine dollars with tools from trusted names like Rioobi and Milwaukee rom backyard get togetethers to end of summer upgrades, fourourth of July savings on cordless tools deliver the power and mobility to keep up with every job without slowing you down. Power on the goo is here and summer projects are easier than ever with the Home Depot. Well supplies last, Store Online for details Hey and welcome to the shhort stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's here too. She's justound mute and she's sitting in for Dave who's not here And this is short stuff. That's right The Toronto Clown riot That was dead on Toronto. That was supposed to be a clown horn. It sounded like a sick mule In my head it was kind of come out better. and I thought about doing a second take, but who cares let's leave it in there and's fun It was a sick mule doing the disco call And we also colded a lot of information from the Toronto Star Spacing magazine spepecifically Adam Bunch on Spacing Magazine and the circus Diaries The sexiest minis series. the Red shoe circus tires But we are talking about one of our towns that we love a lot, Toronto And we are coming back there to Masssey Hall, by the way.. As part of our Canadian tour, we always love Massy Hall in particular and playing to our friends there. I think that I think our very first live show ever was in Toronto, right I think it was actually yeah, our bars episode. Good call, Chuck. That was our first one. That's right. That's what gave us the taste, everybody U the taste of Tirana That's right. And also I've spoken to Chuck everybody. He's promised to do like ninety percent less Gordon lightfoot jokes this time That's right, But we need to hop in the wayayback machine for this one because we're going back to eighteen fifty five When Toronto was a different place, it's not the it wasn't the metropolitan kind of refined big city that it is now. It was it was it was tough. It had like three hundred and fifty two drinking establishments for the forty thousand people there. had a lot of brothels And they they were people that like to to mix it up, it seems like back in the day. For sure U notot just the people at Sorana, but the people who were in circuses too liked to mix it up And specifically in july eighteen fifty five, when our event takes place The SB House Star Troop and menagerie in Circus was in town And that circus was from New York State And they showed up in Toronto, they set up their tents and said, Hey, everybody come see and Of course, this is a circus, even an eighteen fifty five circus, there were a bunch of clowns there, Chuck And these clowns, they had a long day of performing and they said, let's go to a local brothel And they did as a group That's right. They said, let's go get drunk. doing other things you can do at brothels. And they went to Marianne Armstrong's brothel. It's a corner of King and John Streets And this happened to be a brothel where that was kind of the main hangout of the hook and ladder fire brigade. So We need to explain a couple of things about these two groups the clowns at the time are not the lovable psychopaths that we have now in our circuses. they were, you know, they were kind of the road crew as well as clowns. So they had to put up these big tents brereak everything down, get all the gear in place. So they were they were Brawnny like big dudes and the firefighters of the day in Toronto at least, and I bet there were like this in a lot of places. It was before the city government had you know, was in charge of that kind of thing. so you had private fire departments and private companies that you know, build for their services like we'll put out your fire for this amount of money. So you have fire private fire companies like racing to fires to get their first And there were several instances of them arriving at the same time and like, fighting one another to put out the fire while the fire is burning Yeah, several instances. One as recent as just a couple weeks before, that hook and Ladder company who called Marianne Armstrong's House of Iill repute their hangout U They showed up to one and there was already another company there and they got into a fight And a riot broke out Right So there was a firefighter riot at a burning house. The firefighters all decided instead of putting the house out, they let it burn and looted the houses around it. It was that kind of riot. These are the firefighters in Toronta at the time, right? So by the time this Toronto Clown riot happens, the hook and ladder company has already been in one riot within the last few weeks and I guess they were itching for another one or something Yeah, so they were there and they were hanging out and they were drinking and u The clowns show up and they're ready to do their thing. and Pretty much everyone's account is the same is that the clowns started it. I didn't see anything that said that the firefighters did. So it was either like clowns cutting in line or there was a clown that knocked this is all sounds very funny by the way. evenven as it's coming out of my mouth. Or a clown knocked the firefighters' hat off and went And all of a sudden a big brawl breaks out and O mayaybe we should take a break there and tell everybody who won right after this. This mood check is brought to you by State Farm, Pquetuartam Bing Meres Poteion. Getal Miente, honey German checking inontio. takeake a second Litento pari. How's your korason feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little offf, you're not alone Have you eaten Algorico? Taking a deep breath Maybe even turned off your phone for sinominotitos? I promise the memes will still be there. Sometimes self care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sinbena. You don't have to prove anything today. just be Breathe. isasas Sieandoomjore puez. And yes, that's enough. 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Listen to seeason three of Oour Skin, a personersal Discovery podcast on the IiHart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chapventure. St I'll tell you who won Chuck the clowns won You know it I don't think anybody disputes that because one firefighter was seriously injured and so he was kind of removed from the brothel And as his fellow firefighters were dragging him off, they all retreated as well So the clowns just were like, okay, great. Well, we're here now. So they just enjoy the rest of the night there, right problem was is that The city of Toronta at the time was run and was for like one hundred plus years by an Irish Protestant group called the Orange Order. It was kind of like a fraternal Order And if you wanted to be an elected official, a cop, a firefighter, if you wanted a government job, you basically had to be an orange man, a member of the order. And the hook and ladder compomany were all orange men, which meant they were deeply connected to a lot of other people they called brothers in town and the clowns had just stepped in at big time Yeah this has got to be from Syracuse University's Orangeen, it's gott to be related, right? don't know. I meant to look that up, but as soon as I saw orange, man, I was like wait a minute Syracuse. So I imagine that came from the same Irish Protestant order. That would be a weird coincidence. How many orange men are there after all Well, they grow a lot of oranges in Syracuse, so maybe that's Okay, that's probably it Genta Winters there goodood for the fruit Uh so Wd spreads about what happens at the fite and the next day U a bunch of mad orange men show up. and they're like, we're going Kick the kick the fun out of these clowns They started attacking the circus basically, and it got really out of hand Yeah, it did get out of hand. They were throwing rocks, they were beating up the clowns and the crowd just kept growing and growing. And so this not just the clowns, but the entire circus was overwhelmed. Then the hook and ladder company who had been in the fight the day before with the clowns, they showed up And rather than put out any fires, they actually started fires. They started burning down the tents They had fire axes, which they used to break up the property of the circus Um like everybody kind of dragged the the circus performers wagons down to this lakeside and tipped them over. Yeah. It was a bad jam for sure Yeah, so the circus is in big trouble at this point. So they're like, you know, thank God, the police. The police show up, but they were also corrupt because they were also orange men, orange people, or at least the chief was. and I bet a lot of the cops were. Mayor Quimby finally steps in and calms everything down He arrives on the scene and this is I love this because this is totally made up lore, but I've got to read it anyway. He's said to have grabbed the axe out of the hand of a rioter midswing as he was about to bring it down upon a clown. Yeah the mayor's office put that out the next day. For sure He was shirtless too when he did it Yeah The police chief who, like you said, was an orangean and was very corrupt. He is supposedly credited with saving the animals or keeping the rioters from harming the animals, which Not the elephant. It's a big mark in his favor, frankly. No, for sure. Aside from that, though, the police just sat on their hands. They purposefully did not intervene, right? Eventually this riot what became known as the Toronto clown riot or the Toronto circus riot. I prefer clown riot. What about you? Yeah, that sounds that's the better band name, so that's what I'll go with. Sure