Newbury showman battered to death by employee in North London
There's a fascinating new book coming out, written by New York Times bestselling author Karl Shaw, about the brutal death of a renowned Newbury showman, which shocked Edwardian England.
On 28 November 1911, just a few weeks before his 86th birthday, the retired showman died violently at his home in North London. Later a coroner ruled that he was battered to death with a hatchet by an insane employee. Known to the world as Lord George Sanger, he was once the biggest name in showbusiness, and was venerated as a national institution. He became a magician, married a lion tamer, reinvented himself as a circus proprietor. Just as PT Barnum ruled the world of popular entertainment in America, for more than half a century Sanger was the biggest brand in British showbusiness.
And he was born in Newbury.
Using previously unpublished archival material, hidden for 110 years, Karl Shaw reveals the true story behind the brutal murder of Britain’s biggest name in showbusiness, which shocked Edwardian England. Shaw is a North Staffordshire-based journalist and author of the New York Times bestselling Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty and The First Showman, shortlisted for the 2020 Arnold Bennett Prize.
The death of Britain's wealthiest showman reads like a popular crime thriller: a merciless killer, a famous victim, a desperate manhunt and a dramatic denouement few could have anticipated. But for over a century, questions have persisted about the murder and many details about the case were never testified in court. Like so much in Lord George’s life, nothing was quite as it seemed.
Weaving in the history of George’s rise to fame in Britain’s travelling entertainment industry and using previously unpublished archival material, The Killing of Lord George reveals the gripping true story behind a brutal, callous crime which appalled Edwardian England and made global headlines.
WHEN THE LORD OF THE RING CAME HOME TO NEWBURY
On Thursday, July 25, 1889, Lord George Sanger’s Circus arrived in Newbury for a spectacular homecoming performance in the Grand Pavilion on the Marsh.
Normal life was suspended whenever Sanger’s Circus came to town. Schoolchildren went missing from classrooms and factories closed for the day. At one o’clock promptly, an hour-and-a-half before the first performance, the grand parade began, a taste of the wonders to come. It was led by the band wagon, a vast gilded chariot drawn by thirty piebald horses. On top bandsmen in uniforms of white and gold blew furiously into their brass instruments making a racket that could be heard at least half a mile away.
Behind followed the Queen’s tableau, three tiers high surmounted by a throne. On top was perched Britannia in a white-plumed helmet, in her left hand a shield painted with the colours of the Union Jack, in her right a golden trident. Next came the red and gold wild beast cages, twenty or more. Walking behind were handlers leading larger animals including zebras, llamas and ostriches, then the mounted cowboy musicians, blaring out their music in competition with the stridently discordant uniformed bandsmen at the front.
A line of camels followed, then a herd of elephants, and on their heels 250 historical characters on horseback, dressed according to the occasion: lancers for a military spectacle, cowboys and native chiefs for a Wild West show. The parade was perhaps half-a-mile long and took the best part of half an hour to pass any given point, a panorama of constant interest from end to end.
Then the show began, lasting about two hours. Anyone who could afford the modest entrance fee was rewarded with a sensory overload of spectacle and skill. The thirteen-metre ring was packed with a galaxy of talent from all over the world, an ever-changing cast of human performers offering breath-taking stunts that required great strength, nerve and skill. A strongman caught 50-pound cannonballs fired at him at point blank range. There were hair-raising feats on the high-wire and women and men were stuffed into the mouths of large pieces of artillery and fired through the air. The highlight was usually a pantomime or a hippodrama and this entertainment was full-blooded, a reminder to the audience that Britain’s glorious empire was sustained with cold steel. The Egyptian Campaign, the Fall of Khartoum, the Zulu War, the Sudan Campaign; for the price of sixpence you could see them all fought twice daily.
In an era when few people ventured beyond the nearest market town, Sanger’s touring circus was a glimpse into another world, an exotic, thrilling place full of strangeness and wild animals, of colour and glitter, music and movement – all for a day or two, and then it was gone, leaving only yellow grass.
Lord George took his mighty show on the road every year at the end of February, and for nine months it roamed the country, covering over 2,000 miles and visiting around 200 towns, giving two shows a day every day except Sunday. He boasted that there was not a town or village with over a hundred people in the United Kingdom he hadn’t visited. There was hardly a wall anywhere in the country that at some time or another did not have a Sanger’s poster on it blazoned: SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, TWICE DAILY.
Nowhere was Lord George received with more enthusiasm than in his birthplace, Newbury.
His parents James and Sarah settled there because James had relatives in the fruit and vegetable trade. James rented a small house on Wharf Road, near to the market square where the stocks still stood. Through the winter the couple earned a living shuttling back and forth to London, dealing in fish and fruit, which they sold from a stall every Thursday in the marketplace. For the rest of the year they were travelling show people, James carrying his penny peepshow on his back while Sarah sold toffee apples from a tray for a halfpenny each.
George, their seventh child, was at the age of five a fairground spieler and by his early teens was running a one-man travelling show. During his life on the road he endured great hardship and was at the receiving end of some of the worst prejudices Victorian society could muster, lumped together with vagabonds, gypsies and Jews. He became a magician, married a lion tamer, reinvented himself as a circus proprietor and his name was soon known in every corner of the British Isles. Just as PT Barnum ruled the world of popular entertainment in America, for more than half a century, Sanger was the biggest brand in British show business.
Every one of Lord George’s returns was fêted as though royalty had arrived. The band struck up ‘Home, Sweet Home’ as George and his wife made their entrance into town riding cream-coloured horses. Every occupant of the local workhouse received free tickets to his show and for those who couldn’t attend he sent gifts; free tobacco for the old men of the town, and for the ladies a pound of tea, sweets and other small luxuries.
To mark Queen Victoria’s passing, in 1903 George gifted his birthplace a statue, erected at his direction on the spot his father’s stall had once occupied, and where George and his siblings once sold fish and fruit. On 24 June 1903, thousands turned out in Newbury’s marketplace to see unveiling of a rust-brown terracotta likeness of the late Queen, standing on a tall plinth guarded by four recumbent lions and a mysterious second female figure called Fame, grasping a wreath of laurel and gazing up at the monarch. The latter, an afterthought by the donor, delayed the unveiling by twelve months.
In 1905, his 80th year, the nation’s favourite showman decided to retire. On the 28th November 1911 he died violently in his home in North London. A coroner would rule that he was battered to death with a hatchet by an insane employee. The old man’s death, a few weeks short of his 86th birthday, was considered one of the most callous murders in the English criminal calendar and mage global headlines.
In Newbury, the flag on the municipal building was lowered to half-mast as a wreath was placed in the Market Place in memory of the town’s most celebrated son. The press coverage the following day was worthy of a state funeral.
The story of his death was well known at the time. It reads like a popular crime thriller: a crazed, merciless killer, a famous victim, a desperate manhunt through North London and a sensational ending. The details were widely reported but were never properly tested in a criminal court, but like so much of Lord George’s life, nothing was quite what it seemed.
Using previously unpublished archive material including original evidence, witness statements and police documents, true crime writer Karl Shaw has reconstructed the events leading to his death. His book tells, for the very first time, the compelling true story behind the brutal crime that appalled and mystified Edwardian England.
The Killing of Lord George: A Tale of Murder and Deceit in Edwardian England is published by Icon Books on September 1. Hardback, £20, ISBN: 9781785788468, Icon Books
Visit https://www.newburytoday.co.uk/news/showman-sangers-triumphant-return-9183979/ to see when Newbury paid tribute to Lord George with street theatre piece Carnival of the Animals in 2018, when exotic paraded from Northbrook Street to the Market Place, with live music and dancing drawing the crowds, organised by the Corn Exchange and 101.
