This powerful large car was an entirely appropriate mount for the driver in our Snapshot, the German-born strongman William Pagel, born in 1878. Christened Frederich Wilhelm August Pagel, he was the second of eight children. As a lad he left Germany to become a sailor, but soon settled in Australia and at the age of nineteen, already tall and well-built, was working in a restaurant, peeling potatoes, washing dishes and, most importantly, acting as a bouncer. Around 1902, Wilhelm joined the Worth Brothers Circus in Australia as a strongman. In February of 1905 he sailed to Durban, South Africa, where he set up at agricultural shows, topping the bill as a strongman and also highly respected as an animal trainer, presenting a thrilling lion-taming act. His signature feat was to carry a 1,050-pound horse, slung below him, up two vertical eighteen-foot ladders placed side by side – doing this up to ten times a day.
Pagel married a small woman thirteen years older than himself, Mary Dingdale, born in 1865 in Leeds – no doubt the passenger in our picture. Mrs. Pagel died in December 1939 at the age of seventy-four but Pagel was still performing with lions in 1948 at seventy years of age and died that same year.
Image courtesy of The Richard Roberts Archive: www.richardrobertsarchive.org.uk
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