Katie Sandwina born - May 6, 1884

On this day in 1884, circus performer and strongwoman Katie Sandwina was born. Learn more about Katie in an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class at https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/the-glamorous-strongwoman.htm. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome to This Day in History Class,
where we dust off a little piece of history every day.
Today is May six nineteen. The day was May six,

(00:27):
eight four. Katie Sandwina was born Katherine Brumbach in Vienna, Austria,
to Philippe and Johanna Brumbach. Katie would go on to
become a popular strong woman who wiled her audiences with
feats like lifting horses. Katie was born into a circus family.

(00:47):
Her mom and dad were circus performers, standing at about
six ft tall and six ft six respectively. When Katie
was two years old, she was already holding handstands, so
began gymnastics training early on as a child. By the
time she was a teenager, Katie had already grown to
six ft tall and a hundred and eighty seven pounds

(01:10):
or about a hundred and eighty three centimeters and eight five.
Because she was growing to be beautiful and strong, she
became an important part of the family show as they
toured throughout Europe. In her early acts, Katie's father would
offer a hundred gold marks to anyone who could beat
her at wrestling. Nobody ever managed to beat her, but

(01:31):
she did meet the love of her life through the stunt.
When she was sixteen, a nineteen year old acrobat named
Max Hayman took on the challenge of wrestling Katie in
the hopes that he would get some publicity in cash.
She defeated him, but they soon fell in love with
each other. She even began including him in her act,
lifting him over her head with one arm and using

(01:54):
him as a rifle in a skit where she pretended
to be a soldier. A couple of years after they met,
Katie and Max were married. Max and Katie, also known
as the Lady Hercules, split from the family circus and
left Europe for the United States in the early nineteen hundreds.
Part of Katie's act was to challenge people to beat

(02:15):
her at lifting progressively heavier weights. One formidable challenger was
Eugene Sando, a famous bodybuilder. They made it up to
three d pound weights. Katie lifted the load over her head,
but Sando could only lift it to his chest. Katie
had beaten a leading strong man, and because she had,

(02:39):
perhaps out of jest or tribute, Katie changed her last
name to Sandwina. A female derivative of Sando. She added
the Great Sandwina to her list of monikers. As Katie
beefed up her strong woman act, she began amazing her
crowds by breaking iron chains, bending iron bars, juggling thirty

(03:00):
pound cannonballs, balancing a revolving merry go round with several
adults on it on her chest, acting as the foundation
of a bridge over which several people and a horsewoop pass,
and lifting a half ton cannon on her back or chest.
But for the press, just as impressive as her feet
was her beauty. One nineteen eleven article by Kate Carew

(03:24):
in the San Francisco Examiner set the following of Katie.
She is as majestic as the sphinx, as pretty as
a valentine, as sentimental as a German school girl, and
as wholesome as a great big slice of bread and butter.
She has the strength of ten ordinary men, united with
the milky satin femininity of a hundred ordinary women. And

(03:49):
she has stepped down from the dwelling place of the
gods to do strong woman stunts in the circus. Katie
toward the u s on the Orpheum Vaudeville circuit. While
she was on tour, she had a son with Max
named Theodore. She performed to act the night before Theodore
was born. In nineteen eleven, John Wrinkling signed Katie and

(04:11):
Max to the Barnum and Bailey Circus. At first, she
was part of an act called the Sanduinas, which included
other strength related performances, but once it was clear she
was the star of the show, Katie became the feature performer.
At press conferences, Physicians would take note of Katie's measurements,
and reporters would dote over her perfection and venus like beauty.

(04:35):
Outside of her circus work, she was also a suffragette.
In nineteen twelve, she became the vice president of the
Suffragette Ladies of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. In nineteen eighteen,
Katie and Max had another son named Alfred. They stayed
with Barnum and Bailey for a while, but after the
circus fell on hard times during the Great Depression, the

(04:57):
duo joined the state run Works progress at in a
Strason circus. Katie gave her last performance in the late
nineteen forties, and she retired when she was sixty four
years old. At that point, she and Max opened a
restaurant in New York where they would sometimes on her
customers request to perform strength beats. In January of nineteen

(05:18):
fifty two, Katie died of cancer. I'm Eve stiff Cote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. If you'd like to learn more
about Katie Sandwina, listen to the episode of Stuff You
Missed in History class called The Glamorous Strong Woman. If
you have any burning questions or comments, you can find

(05:39):
us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at t D I
h D Podcast. Thanks for joining me on this trip
through history. See you here, same place tomorrow. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, vis the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.