Laugh, Clown, Laugh — For Your Baby Will Live!

By Joan Powell, August 1956

(Edited & enhanced with the verified Cairoli anecdote)

Children knew Jimmy Buchanon as the clown who never smiled. Behind the comic paint and the melancholy face was a man longing desperately for a child of his own. Then, at last, the baby came — and the doctor said she would die.

Around the circus ring, the children watched the rough and tumble of the clowns. When the little man in the baggy trousers pulled his sad face, they shouted, “Laugh, Jimmy, laugh!” But they knew he never would. For years, Jimmy had kept the tradition of the deadpan clown. What the crowds didn’t know was that, for five heartbreaking years, the sadness wasn’t all an act.

While he had been making children laugh, Jimmy had been aching inside — longing for a child to hold, a child of his own. Now, at last, the heartbreak was ending. As he tumbled around the ring, Jimmy looked across at his wife Cathy, who sat holding their nine-week-old daughter, Josephine Gayle— the child they had been told they would never have.#

A Miracle Begins

Baby  Josephine was born three months ago, but her miraculous story began six months earlier, on a December night, when Jimmy performed at the Royal Gala in Blackpool.

The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Princess Margaret watched from the Royal Box. But inside, Jimmy did not know whether to laugh or cry. Cathy had been told she was expecting a child — “but it won’t live,” the doctor warned.
“If you were 22, we might help,” he said. “But at 42, your health cannot stand it.”

Every night at the Blackpool Tower Circus, Jimmy put on his make-up knowing that Cathy, already a semi-invalid, was carrying a strain that could cost her life. For ten weeks she lay in the Victoria Hospital, suffering from dangerous toxaemia.

Then, on May 10, by Caesarean section, tiny Josephine Gayle came into the world.

“She was such a poorly baby,” Jimmy says, gazing at his daughter. “She weighed only 2 pounds. Between the matinee and evening show I went to see her in the hospital. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She lay in the incubator, almost lifeless — like a tiny celluloid doll.”

The One Time He Smiled in the Ring

Although Jimmy was famous for never cracking a smile in the ring, there was one moment when the deadpan tradition slipped. In the middle of a performance, Charlie Cairoli leaned across to him and quietly whispered that his wife had just given birth. For the first and only time in his circus career, Jimmy’s solemn expression broke — he grinned from ear to ear, his joy overwhelming the character he had maintained so faithfully.

Hanging in the Balance

For weeks, the lives of both Cathy and the baby hung by a thread.
The other circus clowns — Charlie Cairoi Paul, and Jimmy Scott — scarcely dared ask for news. They knew that at home, the brand-new carrycot and pram Jimmy had proudly bought lay untouched.

On May 25, Cathy was allowed home, but the baby remained in hospital. Josephine chances were better, but she was still too weak to leave the incubator.

At their home in Westmorland Avenue, Cathy began knitting baby clothes. Jimmy dared to dream again of a child of his own among the thousands of laughing children who had watched him perform for 11 years.

Home at Last

And on June 30 — their fifth wedding anniversary — baby Josephine finally came home.

She soon visited her first circus, the sawdust-and-tinsel world where her father had spent a lifetime making children laugh. She was still tiny; her head fitted into the palm of his hand, and she drank only as much milk as a one-week-old. When she cried, it was the soft mew of a kitten.

Most of the time she slept in the garden, watched over by Oscar and Soda, two former circus dogs.

Between three circus performances a day, Jimmy had only a couple of hours with his daughter, which he spent in an armchair — a homely, beaming man in white clown shoes, forgetting his deadpan role as he tried to coax a smile from Josephine.

“Clowns are very gentle people,” Cathy says quietly. “They have a knack with babies.”

It was Jimmy who gave Josephine her first bottle when she finally reached 5 lb 10 oz. He still changes her nappies and helps with the washing when Cathy must rest. In his pocket, wrapped carefully in cotton wool, he carries the honorary membership badge of the Big Top Circus Fans — sent to Josephine six weeks after her birth, waiting for the day she is big enough to wear it.

Doctors call Josephine a miracle baby. She had only one chance in ninety-two of surviving.

Winning His Bet

“He was an orphan at seven,” Cathy says. “He’s had no family of his own. So I suppose he loves children all the more. Clowns are great family men at heart, and Jimmy always wanted children he could entertain away from the ring.”

There has been extra horseplay in the circus ring since Josephine came home. Three times a day, Jimmy is ducked in a minute tub by clowns Charlie Crowley and Jimmy Scott. Three times a day Charlie tries new tricks, itching powder, and pranks to make Jimmy smile.

“I’ve had a bet with him for seven years that I’ll make him smile,” says Cairoli. “It’s a joke between us clowns — we often make bets like this. I think one day soon I may win. You see, Jimmy is such a happy man now.”