How a lion tamer came to die in the North-East 150 years ago
MACCOMO the lion tamer is dead – that was the shocking news that readers of The Northern Echo were waking up to 150 years ago this week. Martini Maccomo had died in The Palatine Hotel in Sunderland and is probably the only person to be buried in the North-East with the words “lion hunter” on his headstone. Even more remarkably, one of the lions which mauled him has for generations been one of the region’s most curious museum exhibits. Maccomo was said to have been born in Angola (although he might just have been a Liverpudlian called Arthur Williams who invented a glamorous ba...
Source: thenorthernecho.co.uk