Rossa Matilda Richter (7 April 1860 – 8 December 1937), who used the stage name Zazel, was an English aerialist and actress who became known as the first human cannonball at the age of 17. She began performing at a very young age, practicing aerial stunts like tightrope walking in an old London church. She took up ballet, gymnastics, and trapeze by the time she was 6 and, at 12, went on tour with a travelling acrobat troupe. In 1877, she was the first person to be fired out of a cannon, in front of a large crowd at the Royal Aquarium.
Journalists and the public voiced concerns for her safety from the time of her earliest appearances as Zazel. She was named by a lawmaker as one of the reasons for proposed legislation in England to prevent dangerous acrobatic stunts, leading her to take the show to the United States. She toured Europe and North America with circuses including Barnum & Bailey, executing tightrope, trapeze, and high dive routines in addition to the human cannonball. Throughout her career, she suffered several accidents and injuries, the most serious of which largely ended her career in 1891.
During time off from the circus, she started an opera company with her husband and took singing roles in some of its productions. She also volunteered time writing and holding exhibitions to promote the life-saving potential for safety nets.
Early life Richter was born in London in 1860 to a father from Dresden and a mother from Birmingham. Her father, Ernst Karl Richter, was a well known talent agent who supplied performers and animals to circuses and other productions. Her mother, Susanne Richter, was a dancer in a circus. She was the second of at least four children. As a child, she was taught how to fall before she was taught how to perform, practising in an old condemned church in London, where her wire stretched from the chancel down through the nave to the gallery, and her nets spread below.
She began her performance career at the age of four or five, playing one of Cinderella's sisters in a pantomime at the Raglan Music Hall. She was only filling in for another child who had fallen ill, but according to the New York Clipper, "she filled the role so well that she became a favorite" and gave a series of additional performances at the Drury Lane theatre. She received ballet lessons from a respected instructor and subsequently took up gymnastics, learning from teachers named Stergenbach and the Levanti brothers. She also became active as a trapeze artist from the time she was six years old, performing for the first time at Garrick Theatre in Whitechapel. She became known for a "leap-for-life" stunt on the trapeze which she performed throughout her career. During some of these early performances, she used the stage name La Petite Lulu.
When she was twelve, she joined a travelling Japanese or Siamese acrobat troupe, with whom she honed her balancing skills that she would rely upon throughout her circus career. They travelled to put on shows in Dublin, Marseille, and Toulouse. Although she was English, a contemporary article in the Clipper said "she was known as the only Japanese girl that ever visited Europe, and received many medals as rewards for her daring and skill." During the show in Toulouse, she suffered the first of many accidents during a performance, falling during a trapeze act. Her injury was severe enough that it took her away from performing for a short time. According to her father, it was because he would not sanction further performances. Richter returned home to London in 1873.
Human cannonball at the Royal Aquarium
The human cannonball act was conceived by William Leonard Hunt, a Canadian daredevil who went by the name "The Great Farini." He was known both for his own high wire performances, such as when he crossed Niagara Falls, and for the high-profile performers he managed. Before Richter, Farini's best known act was his adopted son Samuel Wasgate. Starting in 1870, Farini dressed him in women's clothing and began advertising performances for "The Beautiful Lulu the girl Aerialist and Circassian Catapultist." The Lulu act was very successful and became known for stunts which involved Wasgate being launched by catapult, either into a net or up to a trapeze. It was not until a serious accident sent him to the hospital that his true identity became known. Lulu's catapult act led Farini to conceive of a cannon-based act. In 1871, years before its first public display, he filed a patent in the US for "certain new and useful Apparatus for Projecting Persons and Articles into or through the Air." When the Royal Aquarium in London hired him to improve its profitability, he did so through spectacular acts like the human cannonball.
Ernst Richter was familiar with Farini and, years prior, had sworn that he "should never have a dog of mine, much less a daughter, for his dangerous performances." He added, "What, indeed, would the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say to Farini firing off even a donkey from a cannon?" Suzanne Richter was not so protective, however, and Ernst said she misled him into signing an agreement that he believed would be with one of his friends, not Farini, and would only have Rossa singing and dancing.
In April 1877, the 17-year-old Richter became known in Europe as the first human cannonball, performing as "Zazel, the Beautiful Human Cannonball," although Hunt's son "Lulu" had been performing the human cannonball act since 1873. The Mackay Mercury wrote that the event "hurled her from the jaws of death into the arms of fame." She was fired out of a spring-style cannon, before travelling through the air and landing in a net. Accounts of the event vary on the distance she traveled, citing between and . The cannon used rubber springs to limit the distance she would travel. Although Farini had filed another patent in England in 1875 (and in the US in 1879) for an "adaptation [of the cannon] so as to use explosives as a means for releasing the catch," he was already using a gunpowder-based explosion for effect during the show.
Most sources, including the Guinness Book of World Records, cite Richter as the first human cannonball. However, the claim has been contested by others who claim that "The Australian Marvels," Ella Zuila and George Loyal, performed the act a few years earlier. Zuila and Loyal were hired by Adam Forepaugh, an American circus owner who learned that his rival, Barnum, might bring Richter to North America. The duo were a featured attraction in Forepaugh's circus and drew comparisons to Richter for their similar aerial stunts. Their cannonball stunts differed somewhat in that rather than being fired from a cannon into a net, Loyal was projected from the cannon and caught by Zuila, who would be hanging upside down with her knees over the bar of a trapeze.
Richter was featured at the Aquarium for an extended period of time, performing sometimes twice in a day and often to a full room of people. A single performance could draw tens of thousands. Farini also took her to perform at other venues in western Europe. Louis Cooke wrote in The Billboard that "the breathless silence that always preceded the act while it was being prepared only added to its intensity, and the graceful bow of the young lady who had the temerity and muscular strength to withstand the shock and presence of mind to guide her flight never failed to receive a round of rapturous applause." After seeing it multiple times, a writer for The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News wrote a gushing review of the act in the 26 May 1877 issue. It praised "her unhesitating confidence, the graceful ease and swiftness of her motions, together with her placidly smiling face, [which] destroy all sense of fear for her safety in the minds of the audience, and enable them to enjoy the spectacle of her extraordinary agility, strength, and seemingly terribly daring feats, with none but pleasurable, although strongly excited sensations." The author went on to describe the mix of anxiety and delight an audience member should expect to experience, and noted that Richter counted among her fans future king Edward VII, who reportedly attended two of her shows when he was Prince of Wales.
Music often accompanied her performances. At the Aquarium, musical director Charles Dubois composed waltzes for her, which featured prominently in some of the show's advertising. Farini also wrote a song, "Zazel," which was sung by George Leybourne and published by Musical Bouquet.
The human cannonball was not her only act. She began performing a high dive at around the same time, also at the Aquarium. For that stunt, she would make repeated jumps from a raised platform into a net, gradually increasing the distance until she reached a peak of . The West Australian wrote that she would start atop the proscenium arch, fall into the net, then pop up to smile at the audience. She also walked the tightrope, increasing the difficulty by sometimes forgoing the standard balancing pole. She would also include tricks such as running, standing on one foot, putting baskets on her feet, lying down or sitting on the wire, and spinning around while holding it with her knees. The Era wrote that the dive was "astounding" and that "she is wonderfully clever and graceful" on the tightrope.
Accidents and public response
Once the human cannonball act started and became popular, people began protesting the perceived danger of the show and tried unsuccessfully to have it stopped. Concerned complaints made their way to the Home Secretary, Richard Assheton Cross, who told the Aquarium's manager, Wybrow Robertson, that he would be accountable should an accident befall Richter. In response, Robertson invited Cross to be fired out of the cannon himself.
Richter's first human cannonball accident was at the Aquarium, followed by another in Portsmouth in 1879, where the net used to catch her was rotten due to wear and she fell through. Though she did not break any bones, her condition was serious enough that she could not perform the next day. The Citizen wrote about the outrage expressed at the apparently sloppy safety checks that had missed the poor condition of the net: "If the public demands such sickening exhibitions ... then most certainly it is the bounden duty of those in authority to see that the precaution is a reality, and not a farce." The Graphic insisted, "When will the Home Secretary be made to see the necessity of putting some restraint upon the suicidal sensational acrobatic feats, which are now, to our shame, be it said, so popular?" An 1880 issue of The Orchestra likewise scolded audiences, saying that these acts "prove the morbid taste of the public who delight in such exhibitions."