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Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books, 1875-1925 Main Menu Introduction Introduction to the book and information about ways to navigate the content. The American Experiment: Circus in Context Circus performers and American history timeline Routing the Circus: The Things They Carried Circus Routes Map, 1875-1925 Ethnological Congresses and the Spectacle by Rebecca Fitzsimmons Outsiders in Demand: Chinese and Japanese Immigrant Performers by Angela Yon and Mariah Wahl Shattering Gender Roles: Women in the Circus by Elizabeth Harman Side Show Sounds: Black Bandleaders Respond to Exoticism Annexed Circus Musicians by Elizabeth C. Hartman Native Performance and Identity in The Wild West Show by Mariah Wahl Showmen's Rests: The Final Curtain Circus Cemetery Plots by Elizabeth C. Hartman List of Performers Performers covered in this exhibit Bibliography & Further Readings Bibliography and readings for each chapter Acknowledgements Creative Commons License

Aimee Blondell

38294 Daring Women
Known as the Lion Queen, Aimee was a lion tamer in the ring of John Robinson’s Circus in 1905. There is no information about Aimee outside of the route book and news articles about her death in the ring. Near the end of the 1905 season, Aimee was attacked by one of the lions during a performance. It was later revealed in the route book (but not in any newspaper accounts) that after her death, it was discovered that Aimee was born male. Whether or not this was factual or for the sake of the act however is irrelevant to the fact that Aimee performed as a woman in the ring, which is something seldom seen in the early 1900s. 

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