Snake King Letterhead & Letter

Known as "The Snake King," famed author of the essential show book "Rattling Yours," W.A. King was a legendary supplier of all types of snakes for sideshow, circus and dime museums from 1907 until the late-1940s. In this letter King acknowledges an order for "two yellow bull snakes and a one fixed rattler." King regularly supplied "deadly" rattlesnakes that had been defanged, and thus made safe to handle by showmen. On the verso Dr. C.K. Clarke, of Great Dell, writes a letter to Otto Martin Locke, a Snake-King competitor, asking for the same order.