Ellen Blight

Ellen Eliza Blight (1833–1850), also known as Helen Bright, was an English lion tamer, known as "The Lion Queen", who was killed by a tiger while working in her uncle George Wombwell's menagerie, aged 17. Her shocking death made her a media sensation.

Early life Her father was John Blight (sometimes Bright), a bugler and bandleader in Wombwell's menagerie, and her mother was Elizabeth, sister of George Wombwell. She appeared as "The Lion Queen" in 1849, after a famous lion tamer Eleanor Chapman Sanger, who performed before Queen Victoria on 28 October 1847 at Windsor Castle, left George Wombwell's menagerie to join George Sanger’s travelling variety show.

Death On the evening of 11 January 1850 the George Wombwell's menagerie was at Chatham. A group of officers asked Bright to perform for them after the public show. She entered a cage which contained both a lion and a tiger, and touched the tiger's nose with her whip. It jumped at her and caught her dress, making her fall to the ground where it clawed her leg and then her throat. She was pulled out of the cage unconscious and attended by a doctor but died within a few minutes, in front of her parents and one of her brothers.

At the inquest, held in the Golden Lion hotel in Chatham, it was reported that the tiger "[held] her furiously by the neck, inserting the teeth of the upper jaw in her chin and closing his mouth, inflicting frightful injury in the throat by his fangs."