Macarte Sisters
The Macarte Sisters were a trapeze and high wire act of the late 19th and early 20th-centuries noted for their feats of strength during their performance.
Performing his act in Bolton in 1872 he was attacked by the lions but despite his attempts to fight them off was dragged away and killed.
On the 1891 British census Henry and Regina Macarte and their three oldest daughters were all listed as 'Theatrical Professionals'.
[8] Of their tour of the United States between 1897 and 1899 the St Louis Post Dispatch wrote:
Their Remarkable Work as Equilibrists and Acrobats - Thay Are Young and Single Nearly every patron of vaudeville has seen and admired the three Sisters Macarte, the pocket Junos who perform marvelous feets [sic] on the slack wire.
The striking similarity in the faces and figures of the trio has been commented on frequently and many people are curious to know how it happened that three girls so much alike in physique should be grouped together as professional gymnasts.
That they really are sisters no one who has seen them need be told, but it is not until one gets close to them and talks to them that one realizes that the similarity between them is not as great physically as it appears to be mentally.
A Post-Dispatch reporter, who had talked to the sisters and had obtained their measurements and had been astonished to find them so much smaller than they appeared from the auditorium of Forest Park Highlands, asked several persons to give an estimate of their height.
Her eyes are light gray and her hair, like her sisters', is dark brown and of luxuriant growth.
In that position all three make music on mandolin and guitar, or if it be night, Adelaide does a fire dance on the wire.
The breadth that is noticeable in the lower part of their faces is owing neither to the osseous formation nor to fleshy tissue; it is simply big tough muscles.
They are English and French and can run back nearly 200 years through a line of ancestral acrobats.
Their grandmother was Madame Macarte, a world-renowned French bare-back and circus performer.
Formed in December 1911, the group was structured along the lines of the Grand Order of Water Rats, the membership of which was and is restricted to men in the entertainment industry.
[13] Between 1910 in Canada[14] and 1912 in Britain the Macarte Sisters were performing in a Japanese-style act billed as 'The Land of the Lotus', including at the London Pavilion - the costumes of which at least were influenced by the operetta The Mikado.
However, various press reports state that the sisters removed their kimono straight after the opening musical number.
In late 1912 and early 1913 the Sisters were touring Australia where their act was described as "unique, and as graceful as it is clever".
