Someone who might best be described as a “looper” wowed the audience when Lloyd’s Circus visited Waterford around 1901. The company famously performed at Wright’s Field, Ballytruckle, every Easter Monday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They typically opened their Irish tour here, and frequently returned to the city and county during the year.

Priding himself on having the best circus (Mexican or otherwise) in Ireland, proprietor James Lloyd invested, “at a big cost”, in “several gigantic attractions” to ensure bumper houses. In the one pictured here, a performer called “Minting” rode to the top of the tent on a bicycle by means of a spiral staircase.

The dangers were often at ground level. On the morning of Sunday, 8th October 1899, as Lloyd’s circus wagon was coming towards Waterford from Kilmacthomas — where it regularly set up at Fair Green — “two of the horses under one of the baggage carriages, when close to Kilmeaden, bolted. The carriage was overturned, and the driver was thrown with terrible violence to the ground. On being picked up it was found that his head was split open.”

Jimmy — popularly known as “Al” — “got the ghastly wound together, and bound it up as well as he was able, and at once sent him on to the Infirmary; but not much hope is felt for the injured man’s recovery.”

There was no indication afterwards as whether the employee lived or died. However, the ever-enterprising Lloyd, who was 53 at that time and used to the pitfalls of life on the road and daily high-wire action, brought out a pamphlet a few years later, launching it in Waterford in 1905.

Entitled “Over Fifty Years of Hard Study: Experiments and Experience”, it was pitched as an invaluable resource for farmers especially — advising how, among other things, to doctor, break and manage a horse; treat disease in sheep and cattle; and make recipes for sprains and bruises.

There’s no question that Jimmy knew his animals, even if he was charged with cruelty on a few occasions. He would continue in the “big top” business for another couple of decades and published a book of reminiscences in the mid-twenties.

In it he recalled the time when, in one of his regular horse-competition sideshows on Suirside, out of fifty entries he gave the prize to “The Wild Man from Borneo”; a little local chestnut which later won the 1895 English Grand National with a 17-year-old Joe Widger on its back.