GLASGOW’S Lord Provost, John Stewart, met some notable circus acts in late 1935 when he opened the Christmas Carnival at the city’s Kelvin Hall. The circus’s attractions included the Medrano Sisters (pictured above) and Joscka, a Hungarian thoroughbred that took part in a daring trick-riding display. The carnival also had a new speedway track, upon which small, petrol-driven sports models careered around a steeply banked course, and Goliath, the world’s largest ox, which weighed in at one-and-a-half tons.

As for the Medrano Sisters... Circopedia, “The Free Encyclopedia of the International Circus”, notes: “The Swoboda sisters were all trained as circus artists, but three of them, Reserl, Wanda and Anita, became famous in the circus world for their remarkable equestrian act, known as The Medrano Sisters. They had created it under the guidance of their mother and the German circus director Adolph Fischer, and it premiered at [the leading Austrian circus] Circus Medrano-Swoboda in 1933. When the circus rested in its Viennese winter quarters, the Medrano Sisters found engagements in Europe’s most prestigious circuses and variety theaters—but tellingly, they never appeared at the Cirque Medrano in Paris... Arguably, the stellar reputation of the Medrano Sisters did much in Western Europe for that of the Medrano-Swoboda Circus, whose travels had confined it mostly in Central and Eastern Europe.”