Nero the Runaway Elephant in Chicago, Illinois, 1912

Very early on the morning of August 20, 1912, the telephone rang at the Englewood police station in Chicago, Illinois. “Help! There’s an elephant loose!” the caller yelled. The desk sergeant, who liked a joke, did not believe it. “You don’t say!” he answered. “Is it pink?” Then he hung up. Seeing a pink elephant was an old joke about seeing things that aren’t really there. But the phone kept ringing. About a dozen neighbors called, and they all wanted to know what the police were good for. There really was an elephant loose in Englewood, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

1912 Day Book article Elephant Rips Things Up and Routs Police, about Nero the elephant loose in Chicago

How Nero got out

The elephant’s name was Nero. A Chicago paper called The Day Book had fun describing him as “a delicate little elephant weighing slightly over six tons.” That is about as heavy as three cars today. Nero belonged to a traveling show, and he was tied to a stake under its tent at Loomis and Fifty-ninth streets. “But the stake didn’t worry Nero a bit when that stroll idea came over him,” The Day Book said. “He took it with him.”

The Atlanta Georgian heard from his keepers why he left. They said Nero got angry because “they didn’t get up and take him a drink of water when he trumpeted for it.” A few minutes later, they heard him break his chains and stomp off into the dark.

A walk through Englewood

Nero’s first stop was a city shed full of oil and street lamps at Sixtieth and Justine streets. He knocked it over with a crash. Neighbors came to their doors “wearing pajamas and peevish looks,” which means grumpy faces. Then they turned right around, went back inside, locked their doors and called the police.

Next Nero found a lamp post. “Nero never had seen a light tree so close before,” The Day Book joked, “so he coiled his trunk around it and pulled it up by the roots to see what made it shine so.” He scattered a fence all over the block in about 60 seconds. Then he tried to squeeze between two cottages on Loomis Street, but “the alley between the cottages was not built for elephants.” So he blamed a back porch, picked it up with his trunk and threw it 40 feet away.

Two officers and a tree

The desk sergeant finally sent out two patrolmen, James Nelligan and Patrick Rooney. “Go get that elephant and bring it in,” he told them. The officers walked right up to Nero with their clubs ready. “Nice elephant,” said Rooney, who kept a dog at home.

Nero raised his trunk and let out a loud bellow. “Rooney and Nelligan did not wait to see what Nero wanted,” the paper said. “They went around to the next block and climbed a tree.” Nero followed them and reached up with his trunk, but the two officers had climbed very high. Nero pulled a few branches off the tree “just to show what he could do if he felt like it, and then went on his happy and earthquaky way.”

The great patrol wagon chase

Next came the patrol wagon, the police wagon used to carry officers and prisoners. It rolled up behind Nero with Sergeant William F. Egan on board. “Halt!” Egan yelled. The Day Book reported that “Nero halted never a halt.” The wagon’s bell was clanging loudly, and the noise seemed to annoy him. Nero turned around, let out a shrill trumpet and charged straight at the wagon.

Sergeant Egan gave the driver a quick order: “Drive, darn you!” He added a stronger word that the paper printed with letters left out. The wagon raced away with Nero right behind it. After chasing it for six blocks, Nero “got disgusted” and wandered down a side street. Meanwhile, people all over the neighborhood called the police “to find out where the earthquake was.”

Found in a turnip field

About an hour later, Nero’s keeper found him at Sixty-third and Justine streets. The runaway elephant was calmly munching in a turnip field. The keeper gave Nero a slap for making such a fuss. Then, The Day Book said, “Nero hung his head and followed the keeper home quite peaceably.”

Every paper told it a little differently

The story spread all over the country, and the details changed as it went. A news service story in the Daily Gate City of Keokuk, Iowa, said Nero went for a walk and got lost. In that version, when Nero saw the officers’ uniforms, he thought they were his keepers, and “trumpeting joyfully he started toward them.” The police ran anyway.

1912 Daily Gate City headline Elephant on a Spree Was Glad to Return, Nero Got Lost and Could Not Locate the Circus Tent and Home

That story had a different ending, too. When the wagon raced past the tent, a woman from the show ran into the street and shook her finger at the galloping elephant. “Naughty boy, come here this minute,” she cried, and Nero followed her inside. The Atlanta Georgian said three keepers caught him in a dead-end alley. All the papers agreed on one thing: in the end, Nero went home without a fight.

By the numbers

6 tons: Nero’s weight, “slightly over,” said The Day Book
About 12 phone calls before the police believed it
40 feet: how far Nero threw a back porch
6 blocks: the patrol wagon chase
1 hour: how long until his keeper found him in the turnip field

Nero spent one wild morning as the boss of Englewood. The Day Book said his walk would be “long and painfully remembered” by the people who lived there. For Nero, it ended with a snack of turnips and a quiet walk home.

Sources

The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois): August 20, 1912, page 27 and page 28 (“Elephant Rips Things Up and Routs Police”).
The Daily Gate City (Keokuk, Iowa): August 20, 1912, page 1 (“Elephant on a Spree Was Glad to Return,” United Press).
The Atlanta Georgian (Atlanta, Georgia): August 20, 1912, page 11 (“Patrol Wagon Chases Pachyderm. Elephant on Rampage”).
All newspaper images: Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Published 1912, public domain.
Cover: “Hattie” the elephant and Bill Snyder, Bain News Service, about 1910 to 1915, Library of Congress, no known restrictions. Hattie was a different elephant, shown with her keeper.