Speaker 1: Just a quick note before we begin. In order to
Speaker 1: best honor the stories of the people you will meet here,
Speaker 1: this episode features some sensitive material and language about racially
Speaker 1: motivated violence. Listener discretion is advised. It's possible that giving
Speaker 1: someone a hand had never been such a bad idea.
Speaker 1: On that April morning of John Hicks Jr. Was hard
Speaker 1: at work at the New York Hospital. As one version
Speaker 1: of the story goes, he leaned out the window and
Speaker 1: waved to some boys playing below. But it wasn't his
Speaker 1: hand that he gestured with. Instead, he was holding an
Speaker 1: entire severed arm, freshly dislodged from its corpse, which lay
Speaker 1: flayed open nearby. The boys climbed up to the window
Speaker 1: on a ladder. Once inside, they had questions, and Hick,
Speaker 1: no pun intended, was armed with answers. Ever, the trickster
Speaker 1: Hicks tease that the limb belonged to one of the
Speaker 1: boys mothers, and if that wasn't bad enough. What Hicks
Speaker 1: didn't know was this the boy's mother had in fact
Speaker 1: recently died. The boy ran off to tell his father,
Speaker 1: who was working as a mason nearby. According to some accounts,
Speaker 1: the grieving father was alarmed. He rushed off to his
Speaker 1: wife's grave, and sure enough, when they opened her coffin,
Speaker 1: her body was gone. He went back and told his
Speaker 1: co workers about what happened and about the medical student
Speaker 1: who had claimed to be the perpetrator. The group of
Speaker 1: workers quickly formed into a mob and marched off towards
Speaker 1: the hospital. Once there, they rushed the doors and the
Speaker 1: rioting began. They poured into the building, smashing anatomical specimens
Speaker 1: as they went. They came upon cowering medical students, hanging
Speaker 1: corpses and boiling kettles full of bodies. News of the
Speaker 1: rabble made its way the mayor, who ordered doctors and
Speaker 1: medical students to be held in jail for their own protection.
Speaker 1: The mob eventually dispersed for the day and things settled down,
Speaker 1: but people continue to talk about what they had seen
Speaker 1: at the hospital that evening, and by the next morning,
Speaker 1: unrest and anger about the use of robbed bodies for
Speaker 1: anatomical lessons spread like wildfire. The mob once again assembled
Speaker 1: and spread throughout the city, looking not only for other
Speaker 1: bodies that had been snatched, but also for doctors and
Speaker 1: medical students themselves. Estimates placed the size of the crowd
Speaker 1: and about five thousand, with rioters attacking the jail and
Speaker 1: yelling for the doctors to be handed over. The city
Speaker 1: deployed a militia to squash the uprising, but left and
Speaker 1: estimated twenty people dead. Knowledge of the human body and
Speaker 1: how to treat its ailments requires well bodies, and the
Speaker 1: study of bodies is of course not a neutral pursuit.
Speaker 1: It's deeply entwined with pre existing convictions of the value
Speaker 1: of such bodies. In some places, body snatching was illegal,
Speaker 1: but only as a misdemeanor, while in most the possession
Speaker 1: of stolen bodies was not actually a crime. Other places
Speaker 1: had nothing on the books at all, and in any case,
Speaker 1: there were only so many corpses to be had, far
Speaker 1: fewer than needed for training, which led many medical students
Speaker 1: to take their education into their own hands and acquire
Speaker 1: cadavers by other more nefarious means. This was a situation
Speaker 1: that was bound to spark backlash and even violence, but
Speaker 1: for some time no one had ever felt the need
Speaker 1: to do anything about it. So why now, Well, it
Speaker 1: seems that it all has to do with what kind
Speaker 1: of bodies were taken and from where the outrage was fueled,
Speaker 1: not simply by the fact that graves had been desecrated
Speaker 1: and bodies stolen and dissected, but the fact that wealthy
Speaker 1: people were also being snatched. You see, as long as
Speaker 1: they were the corpses of black or indigenous people, or
Speaker 1: of people of poor European in stock, no one seemed
Speaker 1: to care. It's not clear what happened to the bodies
Speaker 1: of those left dead in the riot's wake. It's lost
Speaker 1: to history whether they were able to remain in their
Speaker 1: graves or if they too ended up under the knife.
Speaker 1: But what is clear is just how pervasive the underlying
Speaker 1: attitude of whose body was worth what was becoming, and
Speaker 1: sadly it would only get worse. I'm Aaron Manky and
Speaker 1: welcome to the side show. There was a scent of
Speaker 1: low tide and opportunity in the air, and the merchants
Speaker 1: of South Streets liked it that way. In eight thirty five,
Speaker 1: the seaport on the southernmost part of Manhattan was hopping.
Speaker 1: On any given day, there might be a thousand ships,
Speaker 1: all bobbing like ducklings, waiting to unload their wares, and
Speaker 1: just steps from the box were rows of shops, their
Speaker 1: doors swinging in constant motion as money came, and goods
Speaker 1: went p t Barnum leaned against the counter of his
Speaker 1: grocery store. He tugged at his collar and dabbed at
Speaker 1: his brow with a handkerchief. The sea breeze did little
Speaker 1: to mitigate the humid, damp shop interior. It could feel
Speaker 1: cavernous at times, Stacked high with burlap sacks and novelties
Speaker 1: of all kinds, it had been a tough winter. After
Speaker 1: leaving Bethel with his wife Charity and daughter Caroline, they,
Speaker 1: like so many others, had made their way to the
Speaker 1: big city. But work didn't come quickly, and neither did
Speaker 1: the debts that customers back in Connecticut owed him. When
Speaker 1: that money did finally come, Barnum began to breathe a
Speaker 1: little bit easier. He opened a boarding house and soon
Speaker 1: after bought equity in a local grocery store. It was here,
Speaker 1: in his claustrophobic mercantile kingdom that Barnum's life took a turn.
Speaker 1: What happened next became the subject of a lifelong, ever
Speaker 1: shifting narrative. Like many goods stories, it all began with
Speaker 1: someone at the front door, and we can imagine that
Speaker 1: with a flip of his wrist. Barnum quickly folded his
Speaker 1: handkerchief and tucked it away as Coley Bartram walked into
Speaker 1: the shop. Coley Bartram was an acquaintance of Barnum, but
Speaker 1: he didn't come to buy anything that day. No, Bartram
Speaker 1: was here with other business matters in mind. Barnum's reputation
Speaker 1: as a wily businessman had preceded him, and Coley was
Speaker 1: here to talk about a sale at this very moment.
Speaker 1: He told Barnum there was a woman traveling the East
Speaker 1: coast who might be of great interest to him. Reaching
Speaker 1: into his pocket, Bartram unfolded an advertisement from the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Inquirer Joyce. Heth it read a Negress aged one hundred
Speaker 1: sixty one years who formerly belonged to the father of
Speaker 1: General Washington. General Washington as in President George Washington. He
Speaker 1: went on to tell the tale that for almost a
Speaker 1: hundred years she had lived with a family in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, the family retained her original bill
Speaker 1: of sale, signed by none other than George Washington's old
Speaker 1: dad himself. In fact, Coley went on she had been
Speaker 1: little George's nursemaid, raising him from infancy and into his
Speaker 1: role as founding father. And now she had alighted out
Speaker 1: on tour, but of course not on her own. You see,
Speaker 1: Joyce Heth was on the human curiosity circuit, a form
Speaker 1: of entertainment popular in the days before Netflix. Because of that,
Speaker 1: she had managers. And one of those managers included one
Speaker 1: of Coley's former business partners. And this business partner and
Speaker 1: I tinerant showman by the name of R. W. Lindsay,
Speaker 1: was eager to sell his act, his act being the living, breathing,
Speaker 1: elderly Joyce Heth. Now, if this sounds gross, well that's
Speaker 1: because it is. What we're talking about here is, in
Speaker 1: effect human trafficking, the selling of a black body from
Speaker 1: one set of white hands to another. If you are
Speaker 1: under the impression that the North had an enlightened position
Speaker 1: on owning people, well you'd best think again. The year before,
Speaker 1: New York City had been torn apart by anti abolition riots.
Speaker 1: It took days for the military to squash the upheaval.
Speaker 1: In their wake, the rioters left destruction of homes, businesses,
Speaker 1: and churches. The mob tortured, raped, burned, and lynched folks
Speaker 1: of African descent and demanded their deportation. This horrific violence
Speaker 1: took place in the blocks surrounding Barnum's grocery. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about someone being the product of their environment,
Speaker 1: this was the water he was swimming in. It's easy
Speaker 1: to imagine Collie not suffering from too many moral quandaries.
Speaker 1: When he offered to put Barnum in touch with our
Speaker 1: w Lindsay, Barnum took the bait. He would later write
Speaker 1: in his biography that the prospect of Joyce made him
Speaker 1: considerably excited. He immediately decided that he would close up
Speaker 1: shop and head down to Philadelphia. Ever since his first
Speaker 1: taste at the showman life, he'd been hankering for another act,
Speaker 1: one that was much more permanent. Joyce Heath held a
Speaker 1: court befitting her age. She was a community elder, after all,
Speaker 1: with many decades and roads behind her, But the true
Speaker 1: story of her life and the story that she spun
Speaker 1: for her audience were not one and the same. In fact,
Speaker 1: the tale she told was an outright yarn. Joyce's brown
Speaker 1: and wrinkled face looked utterly ancient. She had no eyes, sights,
Speaker 1: and no teeth, but she still retained a charisma that
Speaker 1: outsized her small frame. One of the first lies that
Speaker 1: the papers told about her was that she was a
Speaker 1: century and a half old. The second lie was that
Speaker 1: she had raised George Washington. Although the man had died
Speaker 1: decades earlier, Washington still loomed large in America's collective imagination.
Speaker 1: He was a man made of myth in a country
Speaker 1: so enamored with their own homegrown demigod, it's not hard
Speaker 1: to understand why Joyce's audience wanted so badly to believe her.
Speaker 1: For a woman so small, oh black, and so enslaved,
Speaker 1: it seemed almost unthinkable that she could make a name
Speaker 1: for herself out of proximity to celebrity, but she did so.
Speaker 1: She sat there in her rocker, her pipe smoke curling
Speaker 1: around her head. From there she reached across to the past,
Speaker 1: directly linking herself to one of the greatest legends in
Speaker 1: the American experiment. Scholars don't know about her early life,
Speaker 1: but it's thought that Joyce was originally enslaved by a
Speaker 1: man who had cross paths with Washington, although frankly, it's
Speaker 1: believed this connection amounted to nothing more than a bit
Speaker 1: of braggadocious spirit on the part of her owner. Joyce
Speaker 1: was then sent to live on a tobacco farm in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: From there she came under the ownership of a fellow
Speaker 1: named John S. Bowling. Historians believe that John got into
Speaker 1: cahoots with our W Lindsay. But it's here that her
Speaker 1: story gets hazy. But what we do know is that
Speaker 1: she went on the road with the latter. Newspaper advertisements
Speaker 1: announced her impending arrivals, her stature growing with every run
Speaker 1: of the printing press. Her appearances were announced as early
Speaker 1: as January of eighteen thirty five, touting her as one
Speaker 1: of the greatest natural curiosities ever exhibited. When Barnum finally
Speaker 1: arrived in Philadelphia, Joyce Heth was in full form, entertaining
Speaker 1: a crowd, singing old church hymns and telling stories of
Speaker 1: Little Georgie. What happened next is a bit murky, but
Speaker 1: undeniably exploitative. We don't know what Barnum really thought about
Speaker 1: Joyce at that moment. In some ways, he's one of
Speaker 1: history's most unreliable narrators. He was a master of story craft,
Speaker 1: after all, spinning spectacular fictions from bare threads of fact.
Speaker 1: You see over his life he published various editions of
Speaker 1: his own autobiography, and in these different versions across the ages,
Speaker 1: his account of the Joyce Helf affair evolved. There's a
Speaker 1: fair case to be made that Barnum didn't really believe
Speaker 1: that Joyce was one d sixty one years old. In fact,
Speaker 1: he may have believed that not a lot of people
Speaker 1: did either. It's possible that he, like those in Joyce's audience,
Speaker 1: so badly wanted to believe the story she told. This
Speaker 1: willingness to be duped was part of the human psyche
Speaker 1: that Barnum loved to manipulate, So in order to make
Speaker 1: her case more convincing, it's possible that he took it
Speaker 1: upon himself to remake her in his own design. And
Speaker 1: because of all of this, we can't know for sure
Speaker 1: who he understood Joyce heth to be. But what we
Speaker 1: can be certain of is this he believed that she
Speaker 1: was going to make him a lot of money, so
Speaker 1: he bought her, or at least he bought some of
Speaker 1: the rights to her. Scholars have debated for years about
Speaker 1: the wording of the contract that he signed. Did he
Speaker 1: now own her or was he just leasing her from
Speaker 1: our w technicalities aside a better question to ask might be,
Speaker 1: this doesn't matter if the end result is the same.
Speaker 1: America was created on the backs of enslaved people, and
Speaker 1: now Barnum had chosen to continue at legacy. P T.
Speaker 1: Barnum and his newly acquired sidekick, Levi Lyman arranged to
Speaker 1: have private meetings with the press, teasing them with the
Speaker 1: promise of exclusive access to Joyce. But the men had
Speaker 1: an ulterior motive. This wasn't a pr stunt, but a
Speaker 1: paid endeavor on the part of the journalist to suddenly
Speaker 1: miraculously turn any of their critics into believers. Any media
Speaker 1: scholar would tell you that this also was a pretty
Speaker 1: dubious move. Joyce became a kind of analog click bait
Speaker 1: that drove profits into the hands of her keepers and
Speaker 1: newspaper publishers alike. To this end, Barnum was honing his
Speaker 1: skills as a master manipulator. In New York, Joyce put
Speaker 1: on a convincing show. She went on to Providence and
Speaker 1: then to Boston, with a mix of Manhattan and Albany
Speaker 1: in between. Newspapers likened her to an Egyptian mummy and
Speaker 1: spoke of her skeletal frame. Others claimed that she wasn't
Speaker 1: really an enslaved person at all, but rather a puppet
Speaker 1: made of whalebone, rubber and springs. Then, in the winter
Speaker 1: of eighteen thirty six, she grew sick. To recuperate, she
Speaker 1: was sent to Bethel, Connecticut, to the home of Barnum's brother,
Speaker 1: and he also sent along a nurse to keep a
Speaker 1: watchful eye on her, someone to protect his most valuable asset. Sadly,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't help. Joyce passed away on February of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, but whether or not she would rest in
Speaker 1: peace is an entirely different story. Joyce Heath's live performances
Speaker 1: made P. T. Barnum the talk of the town, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't about to let her death put an end
Speaker 1: to that. On February eighteen thirty six, just six days
Speaker 1: after her death, Barnum packed about spectators into a makeshift
Speaker 1: operating theater in New York City. He invited the public
Speaker 1: and some very prominent news paper editors as well. You see,
Speaker 1: the Penny papers, which had for several months been writing
Speaker 1: about Joyce extensively, immediately clamored for an autopsy after she died.
Speaker 1: They saw her potential scientific value, particularly as part of
Speaker 1: the broader science of inquiring into racial difference. So when
Speaker 1: The New York Sun ran an article announcing Joyce's passing,
Speaker 1: it included the question whether, for the sake of science,
Speaker 1: would not a post mortem examination of this aged person
Speaker 1: be of use. After all, the black market for corpses
Speaker 1: was robust, and medical curiosities, as they termed them back then,
Speaker 1: commanded top dollar. The New York Sun then quickly published
Speaker 1: another article objecting to the autopsy, but not for the
Speaker 1: reasons you might assume. No, the writer wasn't concerned with
Speaker 1: retaining Joyce's individual dignity, but rather wanted to respect her
Speaker 1: due to her connection to George Washington. Because of her
Speaker 1: association to a name so seemingly immortal, some papers argue
Speaker 1: that she should be spared the indecency that a public
Speaker 1: autopsy would bring. But even though a heated debate formed
Speaker 1: around it, none of it mattered to Barnum. He intended
Speaker 1: to capitalize on all of it, and he did so
Speaker 1: in spades. Barnum quickly contacted Dr David Rogers, a pre
Speaker 1: eminent surgeon who had already expressed a desire to conduct
Speaker 1: an autopsy after Heath died. Dr Rogers, it seems, had
Speaker 1: been quite skeptical about who Joyce really was. He visited
Speaker 1: her and had conducted a physical exam and found no
Speaker 1: signs of what would be expected had the person been
Speaker 1: the age that she claimed to be. Roger skepticism was noteworthy.
Speaker 1: The fact that Barnum hired him to do the autopsy
Speaker 1: not only gave the whole spectacle some degree of credibility,
Speaker 1: but also turned skepticism into a major draw for the event.
Speaker 1: He was manipulating all sides to his own advantage. The
Speaker 1: procedure kicked off at noon in an operating theater next
Speaker 1: door to what would later in fact become Barnum's Great
Speaker 1: American Museum. Heth body had been placed in a mahogany coffin,
Speaker 1: all eyes stared down, and next craned for the best angle.
Speaker 1: We can hear the hush fall over the audience, and
Speaker 1: it's easy to imagine how small she looked in death,
Speaker 1: her body still just a tool used by others in
Speaker 1: their relentless pursuit of profit. Dr Rogers split Joyce apart,
Speaker 1: narrating to his audience as he went, explaining his incisions
Speaker 1: and what things he was looking for in determining the
Speaker 1: authenticity of Barnum's claims, he proceeded to thoroughly examine her chest, cavity, liver, heart, skull,
Speaker 1: and other areas where telltale signs of an ancient life
Speaker 1: might be found. Yet he found nothing indicating such old age.
Speaker 1: In fact, he decided that she probably couldn't have been
Speaker 1: more than seventy five years old. Barnum later claimed that
Speaker 1: the doctor pulled him aside and said what a shame
Speaker 1: it was that he had been tricked. Yes, you heard
Speaker 1: that right. Poor Barnum was the victim. At least that's
Speaker 1: what some of the papers reported, and Barnum led them
Speaker 1: to believe it, just in case any of his customers
Speaker 1: might call foul. Later. Meanwhile, he had Lynman plant a
Speaker 1: different story in the New York Herald, one that claimed
Speaker 1: that Joyce Heath was still alive and that the autopsy
Speaker 1: had in fact been done on an entirely different woman,
Speaker 1: an impostor. Months later. Levi would laugh when confronted about
Speaker 1: this lie, and would proceed to tell one last story
Speaker 1: with the assurance that this one was the truth. He
Speaker 1: swore that Barnum had found Joyce in Kentucky, pulled her
Speaker 1: teeth out and taught her how to tell stories about
Speaker 1: George Washington. Levi's version would go on to haunt Barnum
Speaker 1: until the end of his days, one that could never
Speaker 1: be erased, even by the abolitionist causes he took up
Speaker 1: later in life. The public autopsy of Joyce Heath became
Speaker 1: a spectacle through the media firestorm that ensued. Various penny
Speaker 1: press publications who were always at war with one another,
Speaker 1: published competing countrydicting stories while each purported to reveal the truth,
Speaker 1: and people couldn't look away. As the old saying goes,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as bad publicity. The story of
Speaker 1: Joyce he and P. T. Barnum is a complicated one,
Speaker 1: even for Barnum himself. On one side, it was through
Speaker 1: exhibiting her that Barnum found his calling as a showman.
Speaker 1: In a lot of ways, she helped to launch him
Speaker 1: into stardom. During the exhibits hey day, thousands of visitors
Speaker 1: paid money to stare, to touch, to question, and to
Speaker 1: marvel at a human being as though she was a
Speaker 1: circus attraction or a painting in a museum. But there
Speaker 1: were also those who questioned the morality of how they
Speaker 1: participated in this act, how they were complicit in their spectating.
Speaker 1: You see, entertainment, it is never quite a neutral entity,
Speaker 1: and in the case of Joyce Heth, the fears, biases,
Speaker 1: and prejudices of those in the Antebellum North came to
Speaker 1: the foreground. In later years, the idea of being a
Speaker 1: Northern slave owner became much more socially repugnant. As time
Speaker 1: went on, Barnum tried progressively harder. It seems to put
Speaker 1: some considerable distance between himself and this episode from his past,
Speaker 1: so we see that his hand was heavy in the
Speaker 1: making of Heth. But scholars have also posed another question,
Speaker 1: what if Joyce hath story had actually been created by her?
Speaker 1: Because it's typically the powerful ones who hold the pencils
Speaker 1: and write the narratives. We don't have a complete understanding
Speaker 1: today of who she was, but one can wonder this
Speaker 1: was she the author of her own gaff, actively fooling
Speaker 1: the willing naive white audiences and white press. Could it
Speaker 1: possibly have been Joyce and not Barnum nor his predecessors
Speaker 1: who invent did this particular humbug? And if she was
Speaker 1: behind it, then it certainly paints a powerful image for
Speaker 1: us a black woman living in a time when people
Speaker 1: like her were at the bottom of the social letter
Speaker 1: becoming the author of her own story. Now that's an
Speaker 1: ending I can get behind. As I mentioned before, the
Speaker 1: story of Joyce Heth is a complicated one, and I
Speaker 1: know some of the details can be hard to stomach,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless they are important to tell because they shed
Speaker 1: light on how we understand the world we live in.
Speaker 1: And because of that, we've set aside one more example,
Speaker 1: and if you stick around through our brief sponsor break,
Speaker 1: my co producer Robin Miniter will tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to get business done, the city tavern
Speaker 1: was the place to be, and Henry Moss knew this well.
Speaker 1: Taverns played an important role in the lives of early Americans.
Speaker 1: It was a place to find the news, to test
Speaker 1: out ideas, and to be entertained. Being able to get
Speaker 1: a stiff drink certainly didn't hurt either. The Philadelphia air
Speaker 1: was heavy and full of possibilities. The July day that
Speaker 1: Henry went into town, it was and America was on
Speaker 1: the brink of a new century, and for over twenty
Speaker 1: years the city had been at the center of a
Speaker 1: growing nation it was a time when America was trying
Speaker 1: to forge its own identity. The personalities who determined what
Speaker 1: unalienable rights were and who those rights belonged to, still
Speaker 1: walked these streets. Their ancestors had im graded here, trafficking
Speaker 1: people from the African continent and desecrating indigenous communities. And
Speaker 1: along the way, these people were able to install themselves
Speaker 1: as a ruling class in this new nation, and it
Speaker 1: behooved them to retain this power at all costs. So
Speaker 1: when the faces of these men came to see Henriett
Speaker 1: the tavern that day, he smiled at them and to himself.
Speaker 1: Not a great deal is known about him beyond his
Speaker 1: exhibit persona. Most of what we know specifically concerned his body,
Speaker 1: which of course became his legend. You see, he wanted
Speaker 1: to be looked at. Advertisements were planted in newspapers. He
Speaker 1: was called a curiosity. The printing presses likened his celebrity
Speaker 1: to that of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. And when President
Speaker 1: George Washington stopped by, we can imagine that Henry nodded
Speaker 1: in his direction, knowing he was holding court for American royalty.
Speaker 1: And on these occasions he would roll up his sleeves,
Speaker 1: unbuttoned his shirt, and show the crowd his spots across
Speaker 1: his skin were splattered pink patches, little islands of pale
Speaker 1: spreading across his body like constellations, and the onlookers tried
Speaker 1: to find meaning in their shapes. You see, Henry was
Speaker 1: a free black man with videlago, a condition which causes
Speaker 1: skin cells to lose their pigment. He invited gawkers to
Speaker 1: come touch him for themselves and witness how as he
Speaker 1: told them, he was turning white through his own design.
Speaker 1: He became a walking war shark test for a new
Speaker 1: American anxiety. As Henry spoke to the crowd, he was
Speaker 1: sure to answer any questions that they had about him.
Speaker 1: He claimed to have been born entirely black, and as
Speaker 1: he got older, according to one paper, his natural color
Speaker 1: began to rub off. The paper went on to say
Speaker 1: that he had become white and was as fair as
Speaker 1: any white person, save a few patches of melanin that remained.
Speaker 1: What at this all mean, the audience wondered, If our
Speaker 1: skin can shape shift, and can this change happen with
Speaker 1: our proximity to different kinds of people? Does it have
Speaker 1: to do with our living environment and maybe the tasks
Speaker 1: we engage with. And if a black man could morph
Speaker 1: into a white one, does that mean an Anglo countryman
Speaker 1: could likewise turn dark? And if one turns dark, does
Speaker 1: that mean that one could also regress and do savagery.
Speaker 1: These people inhabited a world that was beginning to understand
Speaker 1: a social hierarchy contrived from arbitrary groupings, one based on
Speaker 1: skin color, and one that was on the brink of
Speaker 1: becoming the new world order. Soon, the American Philosophical Society
Speaker 1: decided that he was to be more than just an oddity.
Speaker 1: He would become an object of scientific study. They poked him,
Speaker 1: needled him, rub solvents on his skin to see if
Speaker 1: they could expedite his metamorphosis. This was a dangerous turn
Speaker 1: in his story, as the field of philosophy these curious
Speaker 1: minds inhabited would go on to evolve into a burgeoning
Speaker 1: field of anatomy, and anatomy as we know then began
Speaker 1: to dovetail with the world of exhibitionism, trying to say
Speaker 1: the appetite of the ever curious, paying public. Henry would
Speaker 1: move on from the taverns of Philadelphia and continuous travels
Speaker 1: In fact, he traveled all over the Eastern seaboard, but
Speaker 1: at some point history lost track of him. It's fair
Speaker 1: to say that Henry gave us a distinct prototype that
Speaker 1: would go on to evolve into the American Sideshow. He
Speaker 1: created a story, placed himself on the center stage and
Speaker 1: tapped into the fears of his countrymen, fears that asked
Speaker 1: audience members to look on, to examine, but to remain
Speaker 1: flushed with relief that it wasn't them on stage. But
Speaker 1: what Henry also suggested was something alarming. It wasn't them
Speaker 1: on stage then, but his acts suggested that this reality
Speaker 1: might someday change. And with that he would take a
Speaker 1: bow and thank his audience, Fastening his buttons and smoothing
Speaker 1: his sleeves, he would take his leave, his pocket heavy
Speaker 1: with coins and a smile on his lips as he
Speaker 1: walked out of town. After all, for him, it was
Speaker 1: all in a day's work. Sideshow was written by Robin Miniter,
Speaker 1: with production, narration and audio editing by me Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1: Research for the series was done by Robin Minater, Taylor Haggerdorn,
Speaker 1: and Sam Alberty. Grim and Mild Presents was created in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. You can learn more about
Speaker 1: this show and everything else going on from Grim and
Speaker 1: mild over at grim and mild dot com, and, as always,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening.