Ellen Blight


Ellen Eliza Blight was an English lion tamer, known as "The Lion Queen", who was killed by a tiger while working in her uncle George Wombwell's menagerie, aged 17.
Her father was John Blight or Bright, a bugler and bandleader in Wombwell's menagerie, and her mother was Elizabeth, sister of George Wombwell. She appeared as "The Lion Queen" in 1849, and performed before Queen Victoria. On the evening of 11 January 1850 the menagerie was at Chatham and a group of naval officers asked Bright to perform for them after the public show. She entered a cage which contained both a lion and a tiger, and touched the tiger's nose with her whip. It jumped at her and caught her dress, making her fall to the ground where it clawed her leg and then her throat. She was pulled out of the cage unconscious and attended by a doctor but died within a few minutes, in front of her parents and one of her brothers. At the inquest, held in the Golden Lion hotel in Chatham, it was reported that the tiger " her furiously by the neck, inserting the teeth of the upper jaw in her chin and closing his mouth, inflicting frightful injury in the throat by his fangs." Her death was reported in national and local newspapers including the Rochester, Chatham and Strood Gazette and the Dover Chronicle.
Blight was buried in Coventry where she shares a grave with her cousin William Wombwell, who had been killed by an elephant the previous year while working at Coventry Show Fair with a different menagerie. The tiger lived and was exhibited by Wombwell as "the animal which killed The Lion Queen".
A Staffordshire pottery figurine was produced, showing Blight with the lion and the tiger, although the tiger was sometimes painted spotted, as a leopard. An example is held in the National Portrait Gallery, as part of the Art Fund Popular Portraits Collection, and another in Rochester Guildhall Museum in Kent. The piece is high and bears the title "Death of the Lion Queen" on its base.