Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's
Speaker 1: out there floating in the ether like the omniscient green goddess,
Speaker 1: salad dressing that she is. This is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Why do you work on that, buddy? That is off
Speaker 1: the cuff? Don't you know me? By now? Off the dome?
Speaker 1: As they say, I don't see that. I say off
Speaker 1: the cuff. It's not cool enough to say off the dome.
Speaker 1: But you're shirtless, so there is no cuff. That's that
Speaker 1: is true? Man, I hadn't thought about all this. Maybe
Speaker 1: I should changed off the dome. Speaking of domes, Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what were you gonna say? I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about Thunderdome? Were you really? I'm always this close to
Speaker 1: talking about Thunderdome? Yeah. I guess that's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: way to be, isn't it. Sure? So who's who? Chuck?
Speaker 1: Am I master or blaster? And are you master or blaster?
Speaker 1: Are we both blaster and both master? I'm not sure
Speaker 1: who was who? But I would prefer to ride around
Speaker 1: on your shoulders. That's fine. I prefer to be a
Speaker 1: giant shirtless man wearing nothing but a leather daddy across
Speaker 1: belt across my chest, which I guess I could probably
Speaker 1: do that anyway. You know, why not, I'm Tina Turner.
Speaker 1: Oh so you're Tina Turner writing on blasters shoulders? Yes,
Speaker 1: what happened to master? Uh? That was? That was? We
Speaker 1: don't like to talk about it. Two men entered, that's
Speaker 1: all I'll say. Okay, he was suffocated by Tina Turner
Speaker 1: sitting on him. That's right. So UM, obviously, Chuck, we're
Speaker 1: talking about one of the most in my opinion, admirable,
Speaker 1: brave human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. UM,
Speaker 1: and a man named Joseph Merrick, who a lot of
Speaker 1: people UM no of his John Merrick incorrectly, but probably know.
Speaker 1: I'm even better as the elephant man. That's right. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know we have to use those words because that's
Speaker 1: how he was referred to. Um. We'll get into the
Speaker 1: reasons why, but we're gonna call him Joseph Merrick mainly
Speaker 1: because that's the man's name, and we don't like to
Speaker 1: to call somebody by their sideshow name. It's a rule here, sure, no,
Speaker 1: but it should be noted that um, he was uh
Speaker 1: And it's really I think a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: don't realize this, but he um was an active, willing
Speaker 1: and initiating participant, founding member, you could say, of his
Speaker 1: own sideshow act. Um. So he was fully on board
Speaker 1: with the idea of being called the elephant man um,
Speaker 1: which is just another facet of this extremely complex person,
Speaker 1: you know who. I think it's painted with a very
Speaker 1: simple brush sometimes. But the great thing is is a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you when you look into a
Speaker 1: widely misunderstood, wildly oversimplified person, you very frequently find that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like really terrible stuff to them,
Speaker 1: Like they you know, like, um, they were fine with
Speaker 1: with hitting women. They thought that that was like a
Speaker 1: totally fine thing to do, like Sean Connery, right, and instead, Um,
Speaker 1: when you look into Joseph Merrick, you find, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: like he was even he was an even better person
Speaker 1: than I I dared hope, you know, like he was
Speaker 1: a really great guy who went through just hell on
Speaker 1: Earth in the twenty seven years that he was alive. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: you may have heard of the story of the Elephant
Speaker 1: Man from UM a few things in pop culture, namely
Speaker 1: the David Lynch movie UM or perhaps the various Broadway
Speaker 1: shows UM. I watched a few of those, like clips
Speaker 1: from a few of those. He's been played by David Bowie,
Speaker 1: Billy Crudup, recently by Bradley Cooper, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of Bradley Cooper said that the movie caused him to
Speaker 1: want to become an actor, so it's actually pretty apropos
Speaker 1: that he played him. Eventually, Well, we can all thank
Speaker 1: Joseph Merrick for Bradley Cooper's success, That's right. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of curious because I was like, did
Speaker 1: they undergo prosthetics? Like how do they pull this off?
Speaker 1: But UM, I'm sure you looked at some of the clips.
Speaker 1: No one does that. When you play Joseph Merrick. You
Speaker 1: just embodied the man. You um, sort of contort your
Speaker 1: body in certain ways and you just sort of play
Speaker 1: the person. And I think that's a good way to
Speaker 1: go about it, rather than just you know, throwing some
Speaker 1: uh some big mask over David Bowie or something like that. Right. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just kind of contorted their body, they altered their
Speaker 1: speech and just affected they like they Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it was a good way to go to And apparently
Speaker 1: I don't remember the guy's name, but the guy the
Speaker 1: first guy to play Joseph Merrick in the stage version
Speaker 1: and when that came out and I think seventy nine
Speaker 1: or eighty, Um, he he was the one who started
Speaker 1: that trend and really kind of came up with this
Speaker 1: this embodiment that everybody else has has kind of followed
Speaker 1: suit with afterwards. And I don't know, I didn't catch it.
Speaker 1: Did you say Mark Hamill was one of the people
Speaker 1: who played him, Yeah, Luke Skywalker he uh yeah, he
Speaker 1: used the force, he did. So there's something really weird
Speaker 1: that happened in the late seventies, and I am not
Speaker 1: quite sure what it was. But in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: the stage play based on Joseph Merritt came out. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, David Lynch released the Just the legendary film,
Speaker 1: one of the best films ever made about um Joseph Merrick.
Speaker 1: And then there was a definitive book that was written
Speaker 1: as well by a pair of authors. Um, one of
Speaker 1: whom I believe was like a doctor who had like
Speaker 1: all this great research, but his writing was a little
Speaker 1: over the top, so they assigned a ghostwriter with him,
Speaker 1: and they basically wrote the definitive book on Joseph Merrick's life,
Speaker 1: UM and medical condition. And all three of these projects
Speaker 1: happened independently, like one wasn't adapted from the other or
Speaker 1: anything like that, and they all came out at around
Speaker 1: the same time, which is really strange in and of itself.
Speaker 1: But it's even stranger to think that all of this
Speaker 1: happened um centered on a character who had been largely
Speaker 1: forgotten by this time, you know, like there was really
Speaker 1: only two surviving um pieces of literature about him, about
Speaker 1: Joseph Merrick, the man um that that that anyone was
Speaker 1: aware of, and they had been written in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: But then suddenly, for some reason in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: three different projects started up about Joseph American kind of
Speaker 1: made him a icon for humanity that is still, you know,
Speaker 1: lasting today. Yeah. I think the seventies spawned Disco Fever
Speaker 1: and Elephant man Fever. Sorry, and they were both rather
Speaker 1: unlikely considering uh, both Disco and Joseph Merrick were born
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, specifically in England on August five,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two. So I meant to look it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's Is it Leicestershire like the
Speaker 1: sauce Leicester Lester Lester? Right, yeah, you have that last time.
Speaker 1: It's just Lester from what I understand. Okay, So he
Speaker 1: was born in Leicester, England, on August five, eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: And UM, we'll talk a little bit about what they
Speaker 1: are pretty sure his condition was. But being eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: two at the time, Um, after he started developing, um,
Speaker 1: some very strange symptoms at the age of five, doctors
Speaker 1: back then we're pretty flummixed. Yeah, yes, yeah, So. UM.
Speaker 1: The reason why is, we'll see, is because they think
Speaker 1: he's one of maybe a hundred people in the entire
Speaker 1: history of the world, or at least as far as
Speaker 1: people have been writing stuff like this down on um,
Speaker 1: to have this condition that he had. So it's not
Speaker 1: like he started developing strangely and they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what's going on, this is what's
Speaker 1: to be expected. Instead, just a little by little his
Speaker 1: body started taking on these odd differing forms. Um. And
Speaker 1: like you said, I think it was around the age
Speaker 1: of five that he really started to to show that
Speaker 1: he was going to be rather different. Yeah, it was five.
Speaker 1: His father Joseph and his mother Mary Jane noticed he
Speaker 1: had swollen lips, and then a lump started to form
Speaker 1: on his forehead. His skin started to kind of get
Speaker 1: loose and rough. Um, And this was just sort of
Speaker 1: the beginning. His face became spongy, his jaw started to deform,
Speaker 1: his speech was impaired. Um. The right side of his
Speaker 1: body was, or at least upper body was a little
Speaker 1: more or I guess a lot more affected, because it
Speaker 1: seemed like his left arm in hand stayed kind of
Speaker 1: as is, but the right side arm became sort of
Speaker 1: like this giant fin right. So. Um. The the thing
Speaker 1: that I guess kind of gave him the moniker the
Speaker 1: elephant man was growth that started protruding from from what
Speaker 1: I saw beneath his upper lip. So the way that
Speaker 1: I read that, Chuck, is that like when you pull
Speaker 1: your your top lip up, that part of your gums
Speaker 1: right there above your teeth, that he had like a
Speaker 1: growth start that started there and it got pretty big.
Speaker 1: I think it got up to about eight inches long,
Speaker 1: and that I guess you would just look at it
Speaker 1: and be like wow, that looks a lot like an
Speaker 1: elephant's trunk. This this strange growth that's growing up from
Speaker 1: under this poor man's top lip um, and he later
Speaker 1: had it removed so it doesn't show up in any
Speaker 1: photographs of him. But that supposedly is um one of
Speaker 1: the places where the idea that he was an elephant
Speaker 1: man came from. Yeah. So as far as his family goes,
Speaker 1: he had a couple of younger siblings. It seems like
Speaker 1: both of them passed away. William Arthur Um succumbed to
Speaker 1: smallpox and Marian Eliza. It just says on her death
Speaker 1: certificate that she was crippled from birth with an unknown ailment.
Speaker 1: And he Um he went to school like he Like
Speaker 1: I said, it didn't start happening un till he was five,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't so severe right away that he couldn't
Speaker 1: go to school like any other kid would his age. Um,
Speaker 1: things really took a turn though, when his mom died
Speaker 1: when he was eleven years old. Things went really bad
Speaker 1: for him. Yeah, so there's like a few things that
Speaker 1: you should know about his mom. So his his mom
Speaker 1: was vilified by his biographer, who also would turn out
Speaker 1: to be a surgeon. Um who will talk about later.
Speaker 1: Frederick Treeve's um as as a terrible woman who abandoned him,
Speaker 1: and um, that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Um Joseph recalled his mom is a
Speaker 1: very saintly sweet woman who was basically his only friend.
Speaker 1: Because when you're you know, starting around five and uh
Speaker 1: you and you, you are having trouble keeping up with
Speaker 1: other kids. Something else happened in when he was five
Speaker 1: two Chuck, he injured, He felt really hard and injured
Speaker 1: his hip, and that injury became infected, so he became
Speaker 1: um what at the time they would have called lame
Speaker 1: or crippled in his I believe his left leg. So
Speaker 1: he had trouble walking from the age of five. In
Speaker 1: addition to his genetic condition, um that was making him
Speaker 1: look more and more different. So he became further and
Speaker 1: further alienated from his friends. I saw a quote that
Speaker 1: said that he was becoming a lonely, introspective child, increasingly
Speaker 1: dependent on his mother for company. And luckily, his mother
Speaker 1: seems to have been a very sweet woman who, again
Speaker 1: in the vertacular, was crippled. That's how she was described.
Speaker 1: So we have no idea in what way, But today
Speaker 1: you would describe her as without the use of say
Speaker 1: one or more of her limbs. So they had like
Speaker 1: that kind of connection. But she also was very protective
Speaker 1: of Joseph two. So when she died it was more
Speaker 1: than him just losing his mother at age eleven. It
Speaker 1: was him losing like his best friend, his his main companion,
Speaker 1: um and the source of like basically anything good in
Speaker 1: his life was was taken from him at a very
Speaker 1: young age. Yeah, his father remarried and by all accounts
Speaker 1: his father and stepmother were not very kind to him
Speaker 1: at all. They were emotionally abusive, uh could be physically abusive. Um.
Speaker 1: He left school at age thirteen, which is um about
Speaker 1: when kids left school back then, and got a job
Speaker 1: at a cigar factory and Um worked there for a
Speaker 1: couple of years until his left arm got to the
Speaker 1: point in hand such that he couldn't do the job anymore.
Speaker 1: So at that point he got what they called a
Speaker 1: hawker's license in order to help his dad, who had
Speaker 1: a couple of small businesses. But he helped his dad
Speaker 1: sell stuff from his hab a dashery in England there
Speaker 1: and then eventually went to work at the Lester Union workhouse. Uh.
Speaker 1: He ran away from home a couple of times. It
Speaker 1: was just a really bad scene and eventually landed with
Speaker 1: his uncle, who was a barber named Charles, and he
Speaker 1: was a good guy and he um, he felt bad
Speaker 1: for what Joseph was going through and sort of his
Speaker 1: home life, so he took him in and that ended
Speaker 1: up being um, after a couple of really bad years
Speaker 1: with his dad and stepmother, a really nice place to
Speaker 1: be for a little while. Yeah, stepmother was just pretty evil.
Speaker 1: She she um. She was the one that made him
Speaker 1: drop out of school at thirteen and go get a job.
Speaker 1: And when he was hawking stuff from his father's shop,
Speaker 1: if he didn't come home with uh, you know, enough money, um,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't give him a full meal. I guess she'd
Speaker 1: give him enough food to sustain him, but she if
Speaker 1: he couldn't pay for the meal that she had on
Speaker 1: offer with the proceeds from what he sold that day,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't give him that meal. And then his father
Speaker 1: would frequently beat him too, So it's no wonder that
Speaker 1: he he tried to run away, but then his father
Speaker 1: would go get him and bring him back home. So
Speaker 1: he had a terrible life. And yeah, luckily he had
Speaker 1: the uncle named Charles who who took him in for
Speaker 1: a little while. But even he was like, I can't
Speaker 1: support you anymore, kid, because after a little while, very sadly,
Speaker 1: Joseph actually had his hawker's license revoked because he was
Speaker 1: deemed a menace to the community because he was scaring
Speaker 1: people when he was going door to door trying to
Speaker 1: sell stuff. His appearance scared people and there were enough
Speaker 1: complaints that the city revoked his license. So at the
Speaker 1: at the end, by the time he was seventeen, he
Speaker 1: had no choice but to go to the Union Workhouse,
Speaker 1: which is a poorhouse. It's what Dickens described in Oliver
Speaker 1: Twist and some of his other stories, where you went
Speaker 1: there if you were either unable or unwilling to support
Speaker 1: yourself through honest work, and they would put you to
Speaker 1: work and it was basically like a prison for poor people. Um,
Speaker 1: they'd fee you and they give you a bed, but
Speaker 1: it was a very cruel place to live. And that's
Speaker 1: where he spent a little while, I think five years um,
Speaker 1: because he had no other choice, and then finally chuck
Speaker 1: out at one point towards the end of his stay
Speaker 1: at the union workhouse. He said, you know what, there's
Speaker 1: an alternative for me, and I'm going to take it.
Speaker 1: And we should probably take a break now and uh,
Speaker 1: maybe come back and talk a little bit about his
Speaker 1: this mystery illness that he had that we now sort
Speaker 1: of understand. Yea, So he referred to himself as the
Speaker 1: elephant boy and then the elephant man. Um. This was
Speaker 1: a moniker that was uh, he he sort of embraced.
Speaker 1: But he thought his whole life that he was this
Speaker 1: way because of something called maternal impression, which was still
Speaker 1: a common belief back then, which was that something could
Speaker 1: happen to a mother while pregnant that would affect the baby.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say, you know, she drank or
Speaker 1: smoked and had a literal, um literal effect on the
Speaker 1: development of the of the baby. Um. What they meant
Speaker 1: was she was knocked over by an elephant when she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, and that is what caused his illness. And
Speaker 1: he believed that his whole life and the whole notion
Speaker 1: of maternal impression obviously something in the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds was um, it's kind of crazy to
Speaker 1: think about now, but they actually thought that in utero
Speaker 1: it could have an effect like that. Yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, but it also kind of makes sense. Don't
Speaker 1: you think that if he started to basically grow, what
Speaker 1: you'd be like that looks like an elephant's trunk. Your
Speaker 1: mom was knocked over and almost stomped by an elephant
Speaker 1: once when she was pregnant with you. We have no
Speaker 1: idea what genetics are yet. I mean, you could see somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, making sense of it that way. Maybe. I
Speaker 1: guess it's hard to kind of put my head in
Speaker 1: that mindset back then. But um, what we now think,
Speaker 1: and what doctors now think, is that he had either
Speaker 1: UH a case of neurofibro mitosis or UH and or
Speaker 1: something called proteo syndrome. And it really seems like proteo syndrome,
Speaker 1: as rare as it is, is probably what he suffered from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. Experts in neurofibromatosis have categorically ruled that
Speaker 1: out is what he had, because with neurofibromatosis you have
Speaker 1: all sorts of tumors that actually grow on your nerve tissue,
Speaker 1: so your nerve endings, your spine, brain, and he may
Speaker 1: have had those, so it's possible he did have a
Speaker 1: case of that, but like you said, it's much likelier
Speaker 1: as proteus syndrome, which is characterized by basically an overgrowth
Speaker 1: of tissue of bone of organs even um and and
Speaker 1: I looked into this. So it has a genetic basis,
Speaker 1: as I kind of mentioned a couple of times, Chuck,
Speaker 1: But it's based on this idea of mosaicism, which is
Speaker 1: where you end up after you're conceived in your cells
Speaker 1: start dividing um. At some point, there's a mutation that
Speaker 1: occurs and your cells start dividing differently in in that
Speaker 1: they have two different sets of chromosomes. So you have
Speaker 1: two different sets of cells with different sets of chromosomes,
Speaker 1: and they start doing their own thing and in building
Speaker 1: a human body, but it becomes incoherent. Whereas it would
Speaker 1: if they were uniform and all the cells shared the
Speaker 1: same set of of DNA or the same gene set um,
Speaker 1: they would build a coherent human But in this case
Speaker 1: it's incoherent. And it's kind of like if you gave
Speaker 1: two different building plans to two different construction companies and
Speaker 1: told them to build on the same site at the
Speaker 1: same time and just ignore each other. That's what you
Speaker 1: would produce. But in this case, it's not a building,
Speaker 1: it's a human body. Yeah, I've heard of mosaic downs
Speaker 1: is the only time I've heard that used, and I
Speaker 1: think it's sort of similar in that case. But as
Speaker 1: far as proteosyndrome goes UM, it's progressive UM. Your body
Speaker 1: could be covered with um tumors, either benign or malignant. UM.
Speaker 1: It can malform blood vessels, you can have skin lesions,
Speaker 1: you can have blood clotting which results in all kinds
Speaker 1: of problems like deep vein thrombosis or maybe pulmonary embolism.
Speaker 1: It can affect basically any kind of tissue from fat
Speaker 1: to skin to your central nervous system. It's really depends
Speaker 1: on the patient UM and who's afflicted how it can
Speaker 1: affect you. And uh, it usually I mean his was
Speaker 1: onset pretty late. If it started, I guess outwardly at
Speaker 1: least at five years old, because it typically starts anywhere
Speaker 1: from six months to eighteen months of age. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's another thing about neurofibromatosis is that it um.
Speaker 1: It usually starts at like the get it's onset is
Speaker 1: at birth or before birth, so that's another reason another
Speaker 1: strike against it. So UM, so it's pretty clear they
Speaker 1: think that that he he had proteus syndrome. And it's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty recent thing, like I think it was
Speaker 1: first described in ninety nine and they said there's probably
Speaker 1: about two hundred people who have ever appeared in the
Speaker 1: medical literature that had it. And then some other reviewers
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven did another survey of of the
Speaker 1: medical literature and paired it down to basically one people
Speaker 1: in the history of medicine whoever had proteus syndrome. And
Speaker 1: the thing is is Joseph Merrick may have had the
Speaker 1: most pronounced advanced case of proteus syndrome ever of anybody. Um.
Speaker 1: He he had basically every every symptom you can possibly have.
Speaker 1: But the big problems that he suffered from where like
Speaker 1: you said, his his right hand was was UM, he
Speaker 1: couldn't use it because it had kind of fused into
Speaker 1: a fin like appendage. UM. He had joints that he
Speaker 1: couldn't move because the bones had had overgrown. He couldn't
Speaker 1: hear out of his right ear because his skull had overgrown.
Speaker 1: And actually, if you see pictures of his skull today. Um,
Speaker 1: he's it's just huge and massive, and apparently it weighed
Speaker 1: something like twenty pounds and got to something like three
Speaker 1: ft in circumference, which is about a foot and circumference
Speaker 1: more than the average human man's head. Um. So it
Speaker 1: was just enormous. And all it was was he had
Speaker 1: cells that were that didn't know when to stop growing,
Speaker 1: whether it was bone or tissue or skin or whatever.
Speaker 1: He also had problems inside of his mouth with bony
Speaker 1: growths too, which affected his speech. Yeah. He um, he
Speaker 1: couldn't sleep laying down. Uh, he had to sleep. I
Speaker 1: think one of his associates later in life he he
Speaker 1: liked to draw a curtain around himself when he slept.
Speaker 1: But one of his associates, um, kind of peeked in
Speaker 1: one night and saw that he slept sitting up with
Speaker 1: his knees drawn into his chest, with his head resting
Speaker 1: forward on his knees. So if you can imagine like
Speaker 1: sleeping like that every night of your life. Because his
Speaker 1: head was so strong and so big that he would
Speaker 1: risk waking up with a broken neck and it affected
Speaker 1: his breathing. Um. I just I wonder if the late
Speaker 1: seventies when they first described proteo syndrome with that coincided
Speaker 1: with the interest in Merrick's story. Maybe we solved it.
Speaker 1: That's weird. Yeah, that would be weird. But I haven't
Speaker 1: seen anybody mentioned that. It's almost like he just you're
Speaker 1: in the zeitgeists somehow around then. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: get it. But yeah, maybe that was it. But um,
Speaker 1: but no, it couldn't be Chuck because it wasn't until
Speaker 1: night six that some geneticists said that he probably had
Speaker 1: proteus syndrome for the first time, so it would have
Speaker 1: been after that. Yeah, it's just strange. So one one
Speaker 1: thing I want to say though about about proteo syndrome
Speaker 1: and mosaicism, um mosaicism, that mutation happens after conception. So
Speaker 1: the weird cosmic irony of this whole thing is it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible that that mutation did happen around the time
Speaker 1: that his mother was pushed down in front of that elephant.
Speaker 1: It would have had nothing to do with the elephant,
Speaker 1: like she she wouldn't have been frightened into this mutation
Speaker 1: or anything. But how ironic would it be if it
Speaker 1: happened at virtually the same time you know. So, uh.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen hundreds four is when Merrick decided
Speaker 1: it was a pretty brave choice basically to take his
Speaker 1: life in his own hands and say, listen, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna um, I can't go door to door, I can't
Speaker 1: stay in this work poorhouse any longer. I want to
Speaker 1: be able to sustain myself and not just end up
Speaker 1: in some you know, dark room of a hospital living
Speaker 1: off the government. Like I want to live my life
Speaker 1: as best as I can. So he checked himself out
Speaker 1: of that workhouse and he decided to reach out to
Speaker 1: a man named Sam Tor who ran the Lester Music
Speaker 1: Hall h called the Gaiety Place of Varieties, and he
Speaker 1: started exhibiting himself as the Elephant Man, half man, half elephant,
Speaker 1: and he achieved a lot of success early on um there,
Speaker 1: and then he eventually moved to London, made even more
Speaker 1: money and was actually, I mean, we don't have real
Speaker 1: numbers on his income, but it was reportedly fairly substantial,
Speaker 1: like enough to enough to live and live well. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: although living well, I mean it's a relative term. Because
Speaker 1: when he made the move to London, he was on
Speaker 1: display in a storefront in a building that's still there today.
Speaker 1: It's now numbered two fifty nine White Chapel Road in
Speaker 1: Shadwell in London. Um, and you can go visit the
Speaker 1: store today they sell Sorry's there. From what I understand, Um,
Speaker 1: But he was he lived in an iron bed and
Speaker 1: in the back of the the store and then would
Speaker 1: come out for these performances this exhibit. But the thing
Speaker 1: is is like he was part of a side show.
Speaker 1: But he was a partner in the side show act.
Speaker 1: He he partnered with a man named Tom the Silver
Speaker 1: King Morgan, who was already a showman and Um, I
Speaker 1: guess bought out Uh Sam tores shares in Merrick's exhibition
Speaker 1: and took over for him and um when he was
Speaker 1: displaying him like like I said, they were, they were partners. Like.
Speaker 1: There was a pamphlet that you would get that I
Speaker 1: think there's still copies of in existence today with kind
Speaker 1: of a crude drawing of of Joseph Merrick on the
Speaker 1: front and like you said, it said the elephant man,
Speaker 1: half man, half elephant. Um. And part of the biography
Speaker 1: in the pamphlet was written by Joseph Merrick. It had
Speaker 1: the whole story about his mother being pushed down in
Speaker 1: front of an elephant and everything. So like a lot
Speaker 1: of people just you know, talk about how he was
Speaker 1: exploited or whatever. He was doing this for work, um,
Speaker 1: And I guess part of the rationale that he used
Speaker 1: was people stared at him anyway. Like by this time,
Speaker 1: when he went out in public, he would wear like
Speaker 1: a cloak. He had a cap with a hood that
Speaker 1: hung down from it, and he put this on so that,
Speaker 1: you know, he just looked like this mysterious shape moving
Speaker 1: through the town. But at the very least he wasn't
Speaker 1: just like um as gaulked at as he would be without,
Speaker 1: you know, wearing a hat and a hood and all that. Um.
Speaker 1: But his his rationale was that people are going to
Speaker 1: stare anyway, I might as well charge him for it.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what he did um at that storefront
Speaker 1: and in London. And it just so happened, Chuck, that
Speaker 1: that storefront was located directly across the street and still
Speaker 1: is from the London Hospital and some doctors they're caught
Speaker 1: wind of this curiosity who was on exhibit just right
Speaker 1: across the street, and they they some of them showed
Speaker 1: up to to check it out. He had at one
Speaker 1: point he met up with a surgeon who had heard
Speaker 1: about his story named Frederick Treeves, and he invited him
Speaker 1: to come in for an examination. And this is um,
Speaker 1: you know at this point in Merrik had I guess
Speaker 1: it was sort of his peak of his deformities in
Speaker 1: his troubles. At this point, his head was about thirty
Speaker 1: six inches in circumference, that right wrist was about twelve
Speaker 1: inches around, and he had those tumors all over his body.
Speaker 1: Like we said, a lot of trouble walking and talking.
Speaker 1: But when he was examined by by the doctor, he
Speaker 1: was like, you know, other than this, you're in pretty
Speaker 1: good health. Um. He ended up having a heart problem
Speaker 1: later on, but um, he said, other than that, you're
Speaker 1: in decent health. And he said, I would like to
Speaker 1: present you, if I could, to the Pathological Society of
Speaker 1: London and to come in for more exams. And it's
Speaker 1: at this point where Merrek um, I think, sort of
Speaker 1: cut the notion in his head that listen, I am
Speaker 1: getting the same feeling um of being on display in
Speaker 1: the storefront, and I don't like how it feels. I
Speaker 1: think one of his quotes was the experience made him
Speaker 1: feel like an animal in a cattle market, and he said,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go from showing myself
Speaker 1: in the storefront to being paraded around in front of
Speaker 1: a bunch of doctors for some sort of yeah, some
Speaker 1: sort of weird medical experiment. Yeah. So so Treats like
Speaker 1: very clearly identified, Um, Joseph Merrick is a really great
Speaker 1: case study that Treats could make his his name on,
Speaker 1: and ultimately he did. Um. But when he asked Joseph
Speaker 1: to come back for more tests and more displays and
Speaker 1: demonstrations in in, Joseph declined. Apparently Tribes was very upset
Speaker 1: by this, and then a lot of people say not coincidentally,
Speaker 1: but it's never been proven that he had any hand
Speaker 1: in it whatsoever. Shortly after he was rebuffed or he
Speaker 1: rebuffed Trees invitation again. Um, the elephant Man exhibit was
Speaker 1: shut down by police. London outlawed that particular exhibit. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, it makes sense because Victorian society it
Speaker 1: kind of started to come to see side shows or
Speaker 1: freak shows as they were called at the time, as
Speaker 1: really exploitive and distasteful, even ones where the person on
Speaker 1: display was a willing participant, and then other people think
Speaker 1: well it was revenged by treats. He he was kind
Speaker 1: of that kind of person potentially to do something petty
Speaker 1: like that. But however it happened his show got shut down,
Speaker 1: and he found himself pretty well off, like you said,
Speaker 1: like he had a lot of money, he just wasn't
Speaker 1: living very well. He was living in an iron bed
Speaker 1: in a cold storefront. And he said, you know, I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to go see Europe the continent, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to go try my hand in Belgium
Speaker 1: and see what they think of my exhibit. And so
Speaker 1: we moved to Belgium for a while and started up
Speaker 1: in exhibit there. Yeah, so in Belgium is where um
Speaker 1: he had some sort of ups and downs. He was
Speaker 1: ended up being robbed by a manager there who took
Speaker 1: him on and he took basically all the money that
Speaker 1: he had saved, and it was it was a good
Speaker 1: amount of money, um, you know, And that's I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of how we know that he had some
Speaker 1: uh some decent success and made a decent living back
Speaker 1: in the UK. And in eighty six he goes back
Speaker 1: to England and once he's there, he goes back to
Speaker 1: the London Hospital. They say that this is an incurable
Speaker 1: thing that you have and uh. There was a letter
Speaker 1: published in The Times from the chairman of the hospital,
Speaker 1: Francis carr Goam, that said, UM that talked about his
Speaker 1: case basic lee and said, hey, if there's if there's
Speaker 1: anyone out there that thinks they could help this man, Um,
Speaker 1: please get in touch with us. There was a big
Speaker 1: outpouring of support, mainly financial UM, which really helped Merik
Speaker 1: out because, like I said, he had his life savings
Speaker 1: taken and was definitely a hard luck case at this
Speaker 1: point financially and he was able to use that money
Speaker 1: UM basically to live on for the rest of his life. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's a story that that Um Treeves
Speaker 1: said in his memoirs. Like I said before, there's only
Speaker 1: two surviving pieces of contemporary writing about Joseph Merrick. One
Speaker 1: is the Memoirs of Frederick Trieves his his doctor the
Speaker 1: man who ended up becoming his doctor, and then the
Speaker 1: other was the pamphlet written um in part by Joseph
Speaker 1: Merrick about his life that was handed out at the
Speaker 1: side show. But in tribes Memoirs, he recounts a story
Speaker 1: that Um, Joseph was so bad off when he finally
Speaker 1: found passage back after being abandoned, beaten, robbed, in belled him.
Speaker 1: When he found passage back to UK, he couldn't even
Speaker 1: speak um with either because he was just so so
Speaker 1: shattered by the experience or because um his the bony
Speaker 1: protrusions in his mouth had progressed so much. But regardless
Speaker 1: of the police supposedly found a business card of Frederick
Speaker 1: Trieve's on him and they took Joseph to Frederick Treeves
Speaker 1: so he was kind of at least according to trus
Speaker 1: memoirs delivered by Providence, back into Tree's hands. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: at the hospital they were kind of like, look, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a really sad story, but he's an incurable
Speaker 1: there's nothing that we can do about. He's got to go.
Speaker 1: And if it hadn't have been for Francis car Gone
Speaker 1: basically turning out and saying like, hey, we don't know
Speaker 1: what a go fund me is yet, but this is
Speaker 1: basically what we're going to do. And the response that
Speaker 1: he got was just so massive that that yeah, they
Speaker 1: basically said, Okay, there's enough money here now that you
Speaker 1: can live here for the rest of your life if
Speaker 1: you want to. And one of the big things that
Speaker 1: really kicked it off, uck was a visit from Alexandra
Speaker 1: or Alexander. Yeah, Alexandra, um Princess of Wales, and the
Speaker 1: Princess of Wales title is what Princess Die or Kate
Speaker 1: Middleton have now has has now Like it's a big
Speaker 1: deal title in the royal family. So this is basically
Speaker 1: like Princess Die or Princess Kate showing up to visit
Speaker 1: him and shake his hand. And so it became very
Speaker 1: fashionable among um London's high society to visit Joseph Merrikan
Speaker 1: patronize him basically and make sure that he was supported.
Speaker 1: And it really gave the last four years of his
Speaker 1: life like this amazing boost. Like he went from real
Speaker 1: hardship and exploitation to about as cushy a life as
Speaker 1: somebody with his medical condition can have and being celebrated
Speaker 1: as a as a really interesting good person um by London,
Speaker 1: you know, the last few years of his life, which
Speaker 1: is a real silver lining to this story. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should take our last break here and talk about
Speaker 1: those last few years a little bit more after this
Speaker 1: m so uh April eleven is when Joseph Merrick finally
Speaker 1: passed on, he was twenty seven years old. They found
Speaker 1: him lying flat on his back in his bed. So, um,
Speaker 1: this article gets it super wrong. Um. From how Stuff Works?
Speaker 1: They say that that, um this They quote a historian
Speaker 1: from University of You Talk called uh Naja what is
Speaker 1: her name? Der Back and she says that it's highly
Speaker 1: likely that Merrick committed suicide. And that is almost almost
Speaker 1: almost surely incorrect. Um. He the story. The legend goes
Speaker 1: that he um, he had he wanted to always sleep
Speaker 1: like other people, flat on his back, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: because his head was too heavy and it would crush
Speaker 1: his windpipe. And that when he was discovered dead in
Speaker 1: his bed, he was flat on his back. Um, and
Speaker 1: had clearly tried to sleep like that because he wanted
Speaker 1: to be like normal people. And I think even in
Speaker 1: the David Lynch movie, that's how he dies, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. Really correct? Oh you're gonna love it, dude.
Speaker 1: It's one of the better movies ever made. I think
Speaker 1: it will be one of your favorites. I'll be very
Speaker 1: surprised if you don't absolutely love it. Um, wow, this
Speaker 1: I guess this research just spoiled it for you. Huh.
Speaker 1: I knew the story, but yeah, I've never seen it
Speaker 1: all the way through. Yeah, it's it's a good movie,
Speaker 1: but in it, I think that's how they depict his
Speaker 1: his demise as well. But if you go back and
Speaker 1: you look at the um the postmortem report or the
Speaker 1: reports from the port postmortem report, he was actually found
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day. He'd already been awakened,
Speaker 1: he had been brought lunch at like one thirty pm,
Speaker 1: and he was totally fine. But then when another doctor
Speaker 1: dropped by on his rounds to see how he was
Speaker 1: doing at three pm, he was found dead. And he
Speaker 1: was laying across his bed, and they think the way
Speaker 1: that he was laying indicated he tried to get up
Speaker 1: and either maybe he pulled a muscle or he had
Speaker 1: a heart attack or something like that happened and he slipped,
Speaker 1: and that's a big deal for him because his head
Speaker 1: weeighth twenty pounds and apparently when he went down, his
Speaker 1: head twisted just right and and twisted his vertebrae and
Speaker 1: killed him like that. So the initial um autopsy said
Speaker 1: that he died of dis disconnected or dislocated vertebrae. And
Speaker 1: apparently somebody studied his bones in the last of your
Speaker 1: years and said, actually, that's that's probably exactly how he died,
Speaker 1: based on what his his skeleton looks like still today. Wow.
Speaker 1: So after he died, Uh, they they basically took his
Speaker 1: flesh from his body. Uh, they boiled down his bones
Speaker 1: because they wanted to have those for display and for study,
Speaker 1: and they are still on display. And um, they ended
Speaker 1: up burying his very unceremoniously buried, um what was left
Speaker 1: of him, his organs and his remaining flesh and an
Speaker 1: unmarked grave. And there's a lot of speculation whether you
Speaker 1: know what kind of relationship he had with Trieves, and
Speaker 1: whether or not he really cared for him like he
Speaker 1: claimed to, or whether he was just sort of a
Speaker 1: doctor exploiting this really um sort of exceptional case. Um.
Speaker 1: The reason he's known as John Merrick is because, um,
Speaker 1: because Treeves called him that in a book, even though
Speaker 1: that wasn't his name. So, UM, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of speculation about the true nature there. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: there's another author um quoted in this house stuff works
Speaker 1: article named Joanne Vigor Mungo Vin. She's a she's a
Speaker 1: written at least one book on on Joseph Merrick. And
Speaker 1: she um actually found his grave has lost unmarked grave
Speaker 1: and confirmed that he had been buried in consecrated ground
Speaker 1: in a common grave, which apparently was common in those
Speaker 1: two in those days, like people have been buried in
Speaker 1: that grave before him, and people were buried in that
Speaker 1: grave after him. Um. But it was in consecrated ground
Speaker 1: in an actual cemetery, wasn't like tossed in a ditch
Speaker 1: like right outside the medical school or anything like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And so she made sure that he got a marker
Speaker 1: UM put up on that grave in the last I
Speaker 1: think the last couple of years she found it, and
Speaker 1: maybe two thou two nineteen, I think even as recent
Speaker 1: as that. Wow, that's pretty uh, pretty amazing. And then
Speaker 1: one other thing, Chuck, did you do you remember when
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson um famously made a bid for the Elephant
Speaker 1: Man's bones. I do, except that that did not happen.
Speaker 1: That was all just a big cooked up rumor from
Speaker 1: a man named Frank Dilio who said that Michael bid
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars and then a million dollars on the
Speaker 1: bones of the elephant man, who was someone he apparently
Speaker 1: felt very akin to and apparently that is not true,
Speaker 1: and it was just sort of like the hyperbaric chamber
Speaker 1: that that never happened. Uh, and Jackson ended up making
Speaker 1: light of it a little bit and uh and they
Speaker 1: Leave Me Alone short film by dancing with an animated
Speaker 1: version his skeleton. Yeah, so that and that's really weird.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, if you go back and search
Speaker 1: that there are like associated press articles from about it,
Speaker 1: and they they include quotes from people who work at
Speaker 1: the London Hospital Medical College who said that they had
Speaker 1: had turned down his offers. So it's it's really weird
Speaker 1: because I mean I always had heard it was made
Speaker 1: up as well. Yeah, I mean I think, um, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where they, i mean, his mom
Speaker 1: said it could have even come from ah from him
Speaker 1: as far as not actually bidding on them, but just
Speaker 1: to make up the story to get in the newspapers. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure to drive home is that Joseph Merrik didn't
Speaker 1: give up. I think that's why I was so bugged
Speaker 1: by the idea that this this historian just so Cavalier
Speaker 1: was like it was highly likely he committed suicide, even
Speaker 1: though all the evidence points to the idea that he didn't.
Speaker 1: But Joseph Merrick lived twenty seven years putting up with
Speaker 1: some of the most humiliating, disparaging, terrible treatment that any
Speaker 1: humans ever had to endure, and he did it with
Speaker 1: like grace and dignity. He like read, and he wrote poetry,
Speaker 1: and he like corresponded with people, and he had like
Speaker 1: a gentle soft heart. And you know, finally, thanks to
Speaker 1: things like you know, the stage play and David Lynch's movie,
Speaker 1: he's he's been portrayed accurately in that sense. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's great because I think that that's that
Speaker 1: will be his legacy forever as somebody who was a
Speaker 1: very admirable human being who put up with a lot
Speaker 1: more than you know, I probably could have with with
Speaker 1: dignity and grace. It's quite a story. Uh well, since
Speaker 1: Chuck said is quite a story, that means that that's
Speaker 1: it for the Elephant Man, and that it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail. I'm gonna call this the ghost story.
Speaker 1: Recently for the Halloween, we rereleased our ghost episode and
Speaker 1: where I detailed the old lady I saw on Athens
Speaker 1: in the middle of the road. And this comes from
Speaker 1: Eric King. He said, I I thought i'd share this
Speaker 1: with you guys. Uh. In the episode of Unsolved Mysteries
Speaker 1: that reminds me of this, there was a motorcyclist named
Speaker 1: Robert Davidson who was struck by lightning after pulling to
Speaker 1: the side of the road during a storm. When paramedics arrived,
Speaker 1: the situation looked grim as a crowd began to gather
Speaker 1: around the incident, A mysterious woman in a black dress
Speaker 1: holding a bible appeared just like my lady. She bypassed
Speaker 1: paramedics and began to pray over Davidson. After a few
Speaker 1: tense moments of her chanting and beating her bible in
Speaker 1: the ground, he began to show signs of life again.
Speaker 1: The woman in the black dress smiled and then disappeared
Speaker 1: amongst the crowd. Davidson wound up in a coma for
Speaker 1: two months, but came out of it with no uh
Speaker 1: no permanent injuries. Upon further investigation, it was found that
Speaker 1: the road where he was struck was near a site
Speaker 1: that was once a religious community in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: The black dress witnesses claimed, Uh, the woman was wearing
Speaker 1: a similar outfit to the one on display in a
Speaker 1: museum containing artifacts from the site. So Eric says, I
Speaker 1: think he thinks I should investigate mine a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was a similar religious site near there where
Speaker 1: I saw the woman in black. And then it's from
Speaker 1: Eric King and uh, he and his wife were big,
Speaker 1: big listeners. Well thanks a lot, Eric, that was a
Speaker 1: great one, appreciated big time. Um, Chuck, you're gonna do
Speaker 1: some research. I was actually doing so anyway the other day.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it up. Oh cool man,
Speaker 1: what do you have you found anything so far? Nothing? Okay? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to report back if you find even the
Speaker 1: slightest shred of evidence of anything. Okay, of course. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: while we wait for Chuck's report on the source and
Speaker 1: origin of his ghosts. Um, we'll leave you to it,
Speaker 1: and you can write into us to say hi, and
Speaker 1: how's it going with your research? Chuck? Write it in
Speaker 1: an email and send it off to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio for more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Is it the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,