User:Rhododendrites/Lizzie Davene

Lizzie Davene was an American circus performer who performed with her family, the Davene Troupe.

In 1881 the Davene Troupe was performing with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, with Lizzie featured in a catapult act. Twice each day she lay down atop the spring-based catapult and was launched in the air, doing flips in the air as she traveled about 75 feet into a net. During a May 3, 1881 engagement in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the timing of her mid-air flips was off and she landed in the net head-first. According to The Billboard, when she called out for help she said "I cannot move hand or foot." She was taken to the hospital and found to be tetraplegic. Rather than cancel the shows, her niece, Lucy Davene, took her place in the catapult through the end of the engagement. Lizzie died from her injuries the following week.

According to The Billboard, it helped to spark "much bitter criticism against the use of the catapult acts" in 1881. A day after her burial, The Philadelphia Times strongly condemned catapult acts. The mayor of Philadelphia, also the president of the Society to Protect Children from Cruelty, declared that those responsible should be charged with involuntary manslaughter. It did not happen, as Lizzie was an adult, but the circus was subject to harsh criticism by the press and public, which also cast scrutiny on Lucy, still a minor, who did not suffer an accident in the catapult but who was seriously injured in a trapeze accident the previous year.

According to The New York Times, although there were no formal services, her burial ceremony was "crowded with members of the Barnum circus and representatives of the guild of gymnasts." She was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.