‘The Circus Is Coming!’ Circus Couriers Whet Communities’ Appetites
“The circus is coming!” It was the cry of every kid who heard the news that the circus was coming to their town.
And how did they learn this news? They saw the colorful posters that covered the buildings in town and could pick up a circus courier to take home and spend hours studying and dreaming about running away to join the circus. Their imaginations took wing while reading the stories and scrutinizing the lavish illustrations encased in the courier.
Circus couriers are often misidentified as circus programs on online auction sites. A circus program was sold at the show. For more information on programs see my article titled Circus Programs: Souvenir Magazines a Colorful and Plentiful Collectible.
Circus couriers came in many formats. Generally they were booklets with as few as four pages or as many as 48 or more. Some were printed in a newspaper format. A circus courier was free and was distributed by the thousands in each town where the show was scheduled to appear. Many of the larger circuses would print a million or more couriers each year. They are easy to identify because there is an area on the courier with the show day and date along with the name of the town where the show will be appearing. The couriers were printed at the beginning of the season with that section left blank. Then it was overprinted for each town in which the circus played. That’s why you can sometimes find a courier with that area still blank.
Because the couriers were printed in such large quantities, the cost was very low–sometimes less than a penny each. In the 1890s Ringling Bros. had an eight-page courier that cost $5 per thousand or a half-cent each. When the billposters arrived to plaster the town with posters, they also distributed their bundles of couriers to every business establishment they could find. Local boys were hired to take them to every home in town. Because postal bulk rates were so low, the U.S. Postal Service was also used to mail the couriers to local residents.
Below are several examples of circus couriers:
For a more in-depth look at the history of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey see Circus Show Names and the Greatest Show Name of All Time.
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