Book Review - Wall of Death Carnival Motordromes

Wall of Death Motordromes is a US publication and is 127 pages of reproduced images on the subject. The book is available in the UK at a slightly expensive import price from Amazon and I am sure several other more worthy booksellers.

Carnival Motordromes is in a series of publications called 'Images of America' from Arcadia Publishing and it does what it says; there is not a great deal of text, just a collection of evocative images of Walls of Death, not just in the States but worldwide.

An interesting book to have if you are interested in the subject, there are a few images you may have seen before but a lot of them were fresh to me. The text is brief and leaves you wanting to find out more about the characters involved, it's a rich subject. One word of warning if buying on line there is a short postcard album of the same title that is easy to get confused with the full book.

The Abbins and their globe of death

The Abbins were a French Globe of Death act. Seemingly they were long term sponsored by Monet et Goyon for their bikes and had various sponsors for parts: in the case of this postcard by Brampton chains. Maurice Abbin toured his Globe extensively and certainly came over to the UK. Postcards were distributed as publicity for the act and for the sponsors.

The Abbins Globe of Death postcard.

Wall of Death BSA

Great photo from the fifties or sixties of a wall of death bike and rider. The guy looks comfortable with the bike so it would be a good guess that he was a wall rider. Anyone out there recognise him?

Rigid framed BSA A7s were the post war British bike of choice for the wall after an Indian. They seem to have been used at several different walls, notably with Tornado Smith at Southend and at Margate. I've seen pictures with the BSA logo painted on to the wall itself so presumably BSA were sponsoring walls at one time.

Any further info on the picture gratefully received.

BSA A7 Wall of Death bike.

Early French Wall of Death acts

A small collection of French daredevils. The early years saw a good deal of experimentation before the Wall of Death was generally decided upon as the best way forward. The big advantage of the Wall for the showman being of course that it is easy to control spectators. An ideal sideshow, there is something fantastic and raucous going on inside that cannot be seen from the out. Performers can exit the Wall, come out front, and set up a ballyhoo to encourage punters in.

The motorcycle sideshow developed naturally enough from bicycle shows, check the Vintage Bicycle blog for a couple of good examples. The snag with the bicycle stunt shows was that space was needed to gain velocity to perform the loop stunt. Bicycle walls existed but the energy needed to remain on the wall means that even the fittest can only stay up for a few laps. The coming of powered two wheelers enabled a whole new range of shows.

Equally interesting (at least for a nerd like me!) is the development of terminology. The early French shows had a penchant for using 'Infernal' rather than 'Of Death' and it took some time to standardise 'Wall' and 'Globe' as the norm. Check the captions below for enlightenment....

The Sckramson's Troupe must surely have been one of the
earliest Wall acts. I would date the bikes as c1903/4.
Apparently the Sckramsons were creators of the 'Ronde
Infernale' (which can be translated as 'The Infernal Dance' or
 'Round' or indeed 'Ronde' itself does appear in the English dictionary.
Here the Sckramsons are on the 'Circle of Death' which was a
bowl at something like 70 degrees rather than a full perpendicular
Wall. Note that they had sponsorship from Michelin.

Walson and Antonio on the Wall with their Monet Goyons.

Lucien, Louisette and Robert Altis
with 'The 'Infernal Ball'.

Nothing more of a caption on this one than
'Basket of Death'.

The Abbins' 'Infernal Lattice'. Sponsored
by both Monet Goyon motorcycles and
Hutchinson Tyres.

Madgray and Klinger on the Wall.

Mlle Louisette and Pilar, 'The Kings of the Stayers' A nice
twist on the Wall act.