James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke

From the list of elephant persons Family: O'Rourke

James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke
James O
Personal details
Country United States
Locations
Title elephant trainer -1902
Location at Harris Nickel Plate Shows in United States
Biography details

James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke , circus elephant trainer in United States

Born 1848 dead 1902-11-22 in United States .

Affiliation with 1 elephants

1: Empress (Gypsy) (fatal attack)

Casualties

1 casualties
  1. 1902-11-22: elephant trainer James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke fatal attack by Empress (Gypsy). Gypsy abruptly stopped and O’Rourke fell to the cobble-stoned street. “For a long while, O’Rourke lay on the street under the huge elephant’s Trunk. He failed to get up. (Gypsy) hesitated to lift him back to her head,” according to The Times. “Then, slowly, deliberately, the mammoth beast kneeled down over O’Rourke and crushed his body. She then rolled the limp body along with her Trunk and Tusks for some 50 yards. James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke † James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke Died 1902-11-22, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia. Police Chief Dampier went home to fetch his Krag-Jorgensen rifle, which he had carried in the Spanish-American War, according to most accounts, and shot her dead at Cherry Creek.


James “Whiskey Red” O’Rourke inherited the job of handling Gypsy for the W.H. Harris Nickel Plate Shows. In New Orleans, Gypsy knocked O’Rourke to a sidewalk. She attempted to stomp him with her front Feet. She broke three of O’Rourke’s ribs. In another incident, she dislocated O’Rourke’s hip. On another occasion, after O’Rourke reportedly had several drinks, he disciplined Gypsy. A smaller male elephant named Barney “became irritated. He waited until O’Rourke moved in front of him and then knocked (O’Rourke) down three or four times,” Johnston wrote. “The situation was laughable.” Terror in Valdosta On a Saturday morning, Nov. 22, 1902, the Harris Nickel Plate Shows arrived by circus train in Valdosta. Gypsy was billed as “The Biggest Born of Brutes,” a star attraction, the elephant that could play harmonica. By this time, circus employees estimated Gypsy’s age at 65-67 years old, according to the Lowndes County Historical Society, adding the elephant weighed an estimated five tons. The Valdosta show went well and “at the conclusion of an afternoon performance, the circus began folding its tents to go into winter quarters at Pine Park,” according to reports in The Valdosta Times. “All day Saturday, O’Rourke had complained of being sick and in the afternoon he began to take quinine and whiskey,” according to local newspaper accounts. Gypsy and O’Rourke’s history of mutual abuse was known and reported in local accounts of the era, but the reports added, “the elephant, in a more docile mood, had (in the past) picked the intoxicated trainer up and lifted him back onto her head when he had fallen off.” In sour health, saturated with whiskey and quinine, O’Rourke reportedly drank a final sip of whiskey before climbing onto Gypsy’s head. “Following a trip for a change of O’Rourke’s clothes, the elephant walked north up Patterson (Street) with the drunk man tottering on her head,” according to accounts. They went one way, then another, and finally turned onto Central Avenue, away from the circus grounds. Residents yelled to O’Rourke that he was traveling in the wrong direction but “he paid no attention.” The elephant and rider attracted the attention of Valdosta Police Chief Calvin Dampier, who also yelled for O’Rourke to turn the elephant around. O’Rourke answered with “an incoherent mumble,” according to Johnston’s account. At the Central Avenue-Toombs Street intersection, Gypsy abruptly stopped and O’Rourke fell to the cobble-stoned street. “For a long while, O’Rourke lay on the street under the huge elephant’s Trunk. He failed to get up. (Gypsy) hesitated to lift him back to her head,” according to The Times. “Then, slowly, deliberately, the mammoth beast kneeled down over O’Rourke and crushed his body. She then rolled the limp body along with her Trunk and Tusks for some 50 yards.” What happened within the next few minutes is debatable due to differing accounts. The Valdosta Times and Johnston’s article report that Chief Dampier alerted the circus of the freed elephant and O’Rourke’s death. Circus employees, including former trainer Bernard Shea, attempted driving Gypsy to a railway boxcar, but a locomotive blast and the gathering crowds spooked the elephant. In a 1973 article for the Lowndes County Historical Society newsletter, E.D. Ferrell wrote that one of Gypsy’s Tusks broke off while dragging O’Rourke along the street. The pain enraged her.



Reference list

References

Koehl, Dan, (2025). elephant trainer James "Whiskey Red" O'Rourke in United States. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 27 March 2025 at https://www.elephant.se/person.php?id=3419. (archived at the Wayback machine)

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Categories elephant trainer | circus | Harris Nickel Plate Shows | O'Rourke family | Born 1848 | Dead 1902 | People from United States


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