Remembering the Fairview lion tamer 

By Aubrey Malone 

Bill Stephens was born just over 100 years ago.

Most animal trainers work in circuses but in the 1950s Stephens kept his lions and lionesses in a shed on waste ground at the back of his house in Fairview.  

A fearsome individual, he sometimes fed them by putting meat in his mouth and letting them pull it from him.  

He was also in the habit of putting his head into their mouths.

One day in 1951 a lioness escaped as Stephens was feeding him, running riot through Fairview and scaring the daylights out of everyone who happened to see him.   

In the film “Fortune’s Wheel,” legendary Fairview banjo and double bass player Bill Whelan recounted hearing about the incident when he was growing up.

Some years ago he attended a local history lecture in Marino library with a man called Joe Lee and Stephens’ niece Lorraine Kennedy.

It was about the incident.   

The three of them got an idea of making a film about it. That film became “Fortune’s Wheel.” Joe directed it.

Bill appears in it, talking about how the incident became such a big part of his childhood when he was known as “Worried Man.”

It’s a fascinating film and available to order online. “We had our own safari in Marino,” he says, “for a day anyway.”   

The lion escaping from Stephens’ backyard on Merville Avenue was the most exciting thing that ever happened in Fairview.

It became news all over the world.

Everyone agreed that it was like something from the movies.

Amazingly, the local cinema had just shown a film called Jungle Stampede.    

People doing their shopping gaped in horror as the lioness attacked a petrol pump attendant called Andrew Massey who was pumping up the tyre of a car at the time.

Stephens had to pull her off him.

The lioness later ran into a house and attacked a child.

Again Stephens came to the rescue, bravely chasing the lioness onto the street.   

Children scrambled onto walls for a view of her.

The police were called.

By now Stephens had cornered her in the field behind his house. He was trying to coax her back into her cage.

He pleaded with the police not to shoot her but then the children started screaming and the lioness became excited, biting Stephens on the shoulder.  

At this point he knew she had to be shot. She’d got the taste of blood so was no good to him in his circus act. She was then shot.    

The story became news all over the world.

Stephens was suddenly famous and thought of ways he might capitalise on that.

He wanted to get into an American circus with his beautiful wife Mai, who came from East Wall.

Mai had married him as a teenager.

He wanted to get work for both of them in American circuses.

That was where the big money was, and even more fame.   

In the following years  Stephens became more and more daring in his escapades. He eventually  bought a dangerous lion, Pasha, from Dublin zoo.

He kept him in the St. Margaret’s area of Finglas where the people from Fossetts circus wintered. 

He invited some circus talent scouts from America to watch him training Pashsa.    

They arrived in Ireland in 1953. Stephens had been invited to the wedding of Herta Fossett at the time.

He bought a new suit for the occasion. He was anxious to impress the talent scouts so he put on the suit.

But Pasha didn’t recognise his smell with the strange clothes on him. It was a bad mistake.    

Pasha refused to come out of his cage for Stephens so he couldn’t show the scouts how he went about training him.

He felt all his work getting them to Ireland would be for nothing unless he could get Pasha out of the cage.    

In a panic he went in for him. When he did, Pasha went for his jugular and mauled him to death.

He died instantly. He was only 29.    

The idea of a circus trainer losing his life because he bought a suit to go to a wedding of a circus member was the final irony in a life beset with ironies.

A man who was excited by danger was finally undone by it.