DARWEN chemist James Hustwit had an unusual case when the fair came to town in the late 1800s.

He had the job of patching up Frank Wilson, who had been mauled and clawed by a very large and decidedly nasty lion.

A packed audience on the town’s market fairground gasped in horror as the animal, known as Wallace, suddenly turned and attacked him.

The Darwen News reported the following day: “It caught hold of him by the legs, making an attempt to force him to the ground.

“The greatest terror spread amongst the spectators but Lorenzo — Frank had elected a few years earlier to assume a rather more charismatic name — acted with great coolness and courage.

“He remained standing, by a desperate effort, and then commenced to fight with the beast, eventually making it relax its hold.”

Although Lorenzo the lion tamer was quite badly injured, he concluded his performance and “on emerging at the close was received with loud applause.”

Mr Hustwit, who worked in a shop in the town centre must have been in the audience and he attended to the wounds made by the lion's claws and found them to be “of a serious character.”

In the late Victorian era menageries were part of the attractions of travelling fairs. Initially it had been quite enough for crowds to just look at the strange creatures but gradually they became performers. Now and again they became rather fed-up with the role.

As Lorenzo later explained to the reporter: “My only chance of life was remaining on my feet. If I had gone down the other lions would have sprung upon me.”

He added that Wallace had been threatening on several occasions. He was “very cunning and dangerous.”

Lorenzo's brush with death, that evening in 1891, was one of several close shaves.

A few months earlier he had been putting a pack of six wolves through their paces when one of them “jumped on him and started to worry him,” said one report. “Attendants outside the cage beat back the other five and Lorenzo had a desperate battle with his foe.

“Although badly bitten about the hands he succeeded in beating it off and finished the performance.” Bravo!

There was even more horror to come a few months later in Wales. This time, two of the lions in Sedgwick's menagerie — Lorenzo had married his daughter — decided on a spot of fresh air and escaped into the crowded audience.

Reported the local paper: “People were terror-stricken and quite a panic prevailed, but fortunately no-one was injured and the audience left as quickly as they were able.”

And the report concluded: “The lions were not got back into their cages until eight hours had elapsed.”

l Frank Wilson became one of the leading celebrities of the era and survived several maulings. He died at the fairground in 1911, not from being eaten by one of the fully-grown Abyssinian black-maned, jungle-bred lions he sparred with, but from a chill he caught while attending the funeral of showman and circus proprietor George Sanger.

l Wallace was a popular name for a performing lion.

The first lion born in captivity in the UK — in Edinburgh in 1812– was given the name. And, of course, the lion that “ett our Albert” was another Wallace.