If Crockett temporarily lost his nerve on this occasion, it must be acknowledged that he exhibited it in a wonderful degree at the time when the lions got loose at Astley’s. The beasts had arrived the night before from Edmonton, where Sanger’s circus was at that time located. How they got loose is unknown, but it has been whispered, as a conjecture which was supposed not to be devoid of foundation, that one of the grooms liberated them in resentment of the fines by which he and his fellows were mulcted by Batty, and in the malicious hope that they would destroy the horses. Loose they were, however, and before Crockett, to whose lodging a messenger was sent in hot haste, could reach the theatre, one of the grooms was killed, and the lions were roaming about the auditorium. Crockett went amongst them alone, with only a switch in his hand, and in a few minutes he had safely caged the animals, without receiving a scratch. These lions were afterwards sold by the Sangers to Howes and Cushing, when the latter were about to return to America, and Crockett accompanied them at a salary of £20 a week. He had been two years in the United States, when one day, while the circus was at Chicago, he fell down while passing from the dressing-room to the ring, and died on the spot. The Sangers possess lions at the present day, and one of them is so tame that, as I am informed, it is allowed to roam at large in their house, like a domestic tabby. This is probably the animal which, on the occasion of the Queen’s thanksgiving visit to St Paul’s, reclined at the feet of Mrs George Sanger, on a triumphal car, in the ‘parade’ with which the day was celebrated by the Sangers and their troupe. While Crockett was still travelling with the Sangers, and to counterbalance the attractiveness of his exhibitions, it was suggested to Joseph Hilton by James Lee, brother of the late Nelson Lee, that the former’s daughter should be ‘brought out’ in his circus as a ‘lion queen.’ The young lady was familiar with lions, another of the family being the proprietor of a menagerie, and she did not shrink from the distinction. She made her first public appearance with the lions at the fair, since suppressed, which used to be held annually on Stepney Green. The attractiveness of the spectacle was tempting to the proprietors of circuses and menageries, and the example was contagious. Edmunds, the proprietor of one of the three menageries into which Wombwell’s famous collection was divided on the death of the original proprietor in 1850, formed a fine group of lions, tigers, and leopards, and Miss Chapman—now Mrs George Sanger—volunteered to perform with them as a rival to Miss Hilton.