By Arthur Andrews
Photos courtesy of Heaton History Group
The opening of the North Shields Cycling Grounds at the junction of Hawkeys Lane and Cleveland Road took place on the evening of Wednesday 1st July, 1885. It became the home of the North Shields Bicycle Club for many years. Later, the grounds went on to become Appleby Park, the former home of North Shields AFC and now a residential estate. The cycle ground was described in The Shields Daily Gazette as being ‘the best five-lap track in the world.’ Little did they know then that the cycling ground would become the temporary home of ‘Mexican Joe’s Wild West Exhibition’ in April and May of 1891, as part of his tour around the UK and Europe. This show was in direct competition with the more well known ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’, also on tour at the time.
An Extended Visit
Mexican Joe’s stay in North Shields was to be for one week, commencing on Monday 27th April, 1891. However, his show was so popular that the stay was extended an additional three days, finishing on Wednesday 6th May, 1891, before moving on to Ashington.
Further information was given in another advert the following Saturday, the show’s opening night. It was explained that first of all Mexican Joe would tell the story of his life and introduce his famous company of “cowboys, hunters and red Indians; also the old Tombstone coach. The Indians will give their Ghost Chant, and Old Uncle Sam, an ex-slave, will sing camp meeting songs.” It went on to say that it was expected that everyone entering the site would give “a small amount for the Indian Mission in Dakota.”
Tombstone, Arizona was a frontier boom town in the 1880s due to the many silver and gold deposits in the vicinity and was the site of the famous ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’ in 1881. Had a genuine stagecoach from there been shipped to the UK? Would anybody know? So-called ‘ghost chants’ and dances were part of rituals in some Native American cultures, designed to protect the indigenous peoples and ward off colonialism. They became widely known in the 1880s and popularised by the Wild West shows of Buffalo Bill and others. While genuine native Americans took part in many of the shows and they generally seem to have been well treated, on the other hand they were stereotyped in the shows, as aggressors and impediments to civilisation. In the late nineteenth century, people of the USA, Europe and, in this case, North Shields, were being exposed to a somewhat one-sided view of very recent history.
Nevertheless, the shows were incredibly popular entertainment. ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’ was the most famous and had included The Town Moor and North Shields for one day, in 1904, amongst its stopping places. ‘Mexican Joe’s Western Wilds’ was not quite as well known. However, that Spring, it had already performed in Sunderland for a week and Heaton for a day, generating huge excitement as the 30 or so strong company arrived in town.
Mexican Joe
It turns out that Mexican Joe was in fact (Colonel) Joseph Shelley, who seems to have been born around 1845 in Georgia, USA. A Sunderland Daily Echo reporter described the Colonel as “a man of about middle height, strongly made, with a bronzed, careworn, but kindly face, and singularly modest about his own exploits”. He reported that Shelley had written an autobiography according to which he had fought for the Confederates in the American Civil War and been disowned by his father, who was a staunch Unionist. Later, he said, he “went out West” and served for five years with the Texas Rangers, before becoming a scout and seeing a lot of Indian fighting. Shelley reported that he had been captured and tortured but managed to escape. He said his home had been destroyed in his absence and his wife and children murdered. His last active service was said to have been in 1883, when he claimed to have assisted in the capture of Geronimo. He said that in 1887 he was brought over from Arizona to appear in the 1887 Jubilee International Exhibition in Liverpool, an event which celebrated Queen Victoria’s 50 years on the throne.
Palace Sensation
There are other contemporary press reports concerning Shelley, including one in a January 1888 issue of the ‘The Illustrated Police News’, one of the earliest British tabloid newspapers. The paper had a reputation for sensationalism and xenophobia, to be magnified by the unsolved ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders, which took place later that year. (In fact, two of Shelley’s troupe ‘Colorado Charley’ and Richard Chester Dare were one-time suspects in the case. It was thought by many at the time that the murders were too brutal to have been carried out by an Englishman and so the movements of the travelling shows and in particular the native Americans in their casts were carefully examined.) It is this context that one should read the account of threats and an apparent attempted murder of Mexican Joe at the Albert Palace in Battersea, London by ‘Red Indians’, which was described in graphic detail. The Albert Palace was a large iron and glass building, like the 1851 Crystal Palace. It was used for concerts, exhibitions, pet shows and the like. Famously, Arthur Lazenby Liberty, founder of Liberty’s, held an ‘Indian Village’ there at which Indian singers, dancers, jugglers, snake charmers and others demonstrated their skills. Perhaps that show’s success influenced Shelley. It should also be mentioned that by this time (1888), only three years after it opened, the Palace was struggling financially. Perhaps, there is no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to selling show seats. Nevertheless that story was its final hurrah. Soon after Mexican Joe’s residency, the Albert Palace closed permanently.
Disappearing Act
There was North-East press coverage too – a letter to the ‘Shields Daily News’ from W H Drayton, the ‘Mexican Joe Wild West Show’ secretary, just over a week after the ensemble left Heaton. It concerned a 12-year-old boy from Bill Quay who apparently had run away to join the show. The letter writer, who, on the 1891 census form, was described as a theatrical manager and was lodging in Jarrow, said that the boy had pleaded with Mexican Joe to let him stay, explaining through sobs that he had no home, no friends and no money and that his sick aunt could no longer afford to keep him. The lad was allowed to stay and work for his keep but eventually his father had turned up to reclaim his son. Perhaps in this case, bad publicity regarding the missing boy had to be addressed. We have no way of verifying which of the details printed by newspapers of the time is true: Shelley was a showman, prone to exaggeration, half-truths and even lies. However, we have been able to look at official records from around the time of his appearance in North Shields.
The 1891 census was conducted on 5th April 1891, just a few weeks before Mexican Joe’s Wild West Show appeared in North Shields. Joseph Shelley, aged 47, a ‘show proprietor’ from Georgia and Ada Shelley, aged 17 and from Kansas, ‘rider in show’, were lodging in Jarrow at the home of William Richardson, a shipyard labourer described as a ‘widower’ and his three children, all of whom were at school. Joseph and Ada are both described on the census form as ‘married’ but we have found no official records to confirm this to be the case. There were other members of the troupe lodging elsewhere in Jarrow. The next record found dates from 19th November, 1897, when Colonel Joe Shelley placed an advertisement in ‘The Sheffield Independent’ and several other regional newspapers.
However, there is nothing to indicate that anything came of this venture (except that Shelley likely acquired a collection of postage stamps). Certainly, he was back in Jarrow at the time of the 1901 census. On 31st March, 1901, Joseph Shelley (recorded as being 55 although this doesn’t quite tally with his stated age in 1891) and now described as a ‘phrenologist’, was a boarder along with Florence Shelley (28), born in London. Again, both Joseph and Florence are described as ‘married’. They were lodging at the home of Daniel Short, a ‘silver and gold repairer’ and his wife, Frances. There are three other boarders, Edward Hooker, also a ‘phrenologist’, and his wife Mary Ann, along with Ole Parker, an engine fitter from Norway. (Phrenology was a pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.)
The End of the Show
Mexican Joe’s Wild West Show was advertised for the last time in the ‘Bray and Dublin Herald’ on 1 June 1901, promoting a short, Irish tour of Ginnett’s Circus, incorporating the Wild West Show. After this, the whereabouts of the Shelleys is unknown. However, it is possible that they may have moved to Bradford to live with Florence’s sister, Ada, and her husband, with Joseph pursuing his career as a ‘phrenologist’. Their next confirmed appearance in the records is in 1910, when they appear on the SS Baltic’s passenger list, as Colonel Joseph B Shelley and his wife Florence. Florence’s sister Ada’s address in Bradford is cited. The ship left Liverpool on 12 November and arrived in New York nine days later. After this the trail runs cold until a notice appeared in the ‘California Death Index 1905-1939’ for a Joseph B Shelly, aged 65, who had died on 11 October 1911 in Los Angeles. It should be said that there are two other Joseph Shelley deaths in 1915 and 1920 but it is the middle initial,’B’, along with the birth date, that seemingly confirms it to be ‘Mexican Joe’, even though the last ‘e’ in his surname is missing. Florence seems to have returned to the UK where she married Reginald Norfolk (23), a butcher, in Bradford, on 22nd October, 1913, and died on 10 February, 1939, in Harrogate, leaving £1023 between her husband Reginald and Albert Wilman, her brother.
A Great Showman
As we have already stated, some of Mexican Joe’s tales of his experiences in the USA must be taken with a pinch of salt because, when all was said and done, he was a showman. This is not to take away from the fact that the problems and logistics of keeping the show on the road in the late 1800s must have been quite a challenge. Without the extensive British railway system, it would have been extremely difficult. (We know that Buffalo Bill and his show travelled by rail using three special trains.) This made it possible for ‘Mexican Joe’s Wild West Exhibition’ to become a colourful part of the rich history of North Shields.
