WEBVTT - Sideshow 3: The Mother of All Humbugs 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.840 Just a quick note before we begin. In order to 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:05.520 best honor the stories of the people you will meet here, 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:09.920 this episode features some sensitive material and language about racially 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:29.040 motivated violence. Listener discretion is advised. It's possible that giving 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.960 someone a hand had never been such a bad idea. 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.680 On that April morning of John Hicks Jr. Was hard 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.840 at work at the New York Hospital. As one version 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.120 of the story goes, he leaned out the window and 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.400 waved to some boys playing below. But it wasn't his 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.440 hand that he gestured with. Instead, he was holding an 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.880 entire severed arm, freshly dislodged from its corpse, which lay 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:56.520 flayed open nearby. The boys climbed up to the window 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.920 on a ladder. Once inside, they had questions, and Hick, 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:04.480 no pun intended, was armed with answers. Ever, the trickster 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:07.240 Hicks tease that the limb belonged to one of the 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.839 boys mothers, and if that wasn't bad enough. What Hicks 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.080 didn't know was this the boy's mother had in fact 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:18.039 recently died. The boy ran off to tell his father, 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.640 who was working as a mason nearby. According to some accounts, 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.840 the grieving father was alarmed. He rushed off to his 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:28.120 wife's grave, and sure enough, when they opened her coffin, 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.160 her body was gone. He went back and told his 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:35.000 co workers about what happened and about the medical student 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:37.640 who had claimed to be the perpetrator. The group of 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.280 workers quickly formed into a mob and marched off towards 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.039 the hospital. Once there, they rushed the doors and the 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:50.680 rioting began. They poured into the building, smashing anatomical specimens 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.800 as they went. They came upon cowering medical students, hanging 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.880 corpses and boiling kettles full of bodies. News of the 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.680 rabble made its way the mayor, who ordered doctors and 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:04.960 medical students to be held in jail for their own protection. 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.480 The mob eventually dispersed for the day and things settled down, 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.440 but people continue to talk about what they had seen 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.560 at the hospital that evening, and by the next morning, 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.640 unrest and anger about the use of robbed bodies for 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:24.200 anatomical lessons spread like wildfire. The mob once again assembled 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.079 and spread throughout the city, looking not only for other 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.200 bodies that had been snatched, but also for doctors and 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:34.280 medical students themselves. Estimates placed the size of the crowd 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.840 and about five thousand, with rioters attacking the jail and 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.919 yelling for the doctors to be handed over. The city 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.200 deployed a militia to squash the uprising, but left and 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.839 estimated twenty people dead. Knowledge of the human body and 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:53.120 how to treat its ailments requires well bodies, and the 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:56.560 study of bodies is of course not a neutral pursuit. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.720 It's deeply entwined with pre existing convictions of the value 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:05.000 of such bodies. In some places, body snatching was illegal, 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.320 but only as a misdemeanor, while in most the possession 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.120 of stolen bodies was not actually a crime. Other places 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:14.960 had nothing on the books at all, and in any case, 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.000 there were only so many corpses to be had, far 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.840 fewer than needed for training, which led many medical students 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.960 to take their education into their own hands and acquire 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:29.799 cadavers by other more nefarious means. This was a situation 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:33.040 that was bound to spark backlash and even violence, but 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:35.440 for some time no one had ever felt the need 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.560 to do anything about it. So why now, Well, it 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:41.600 seems that it all has to do with what kind 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:45.720 of bodies were taken and from where the outrage was fueled, 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.720 not simply by the fact that graves had been desecrated 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:52.360 and bodies stolen and dissected, but the fact that wealthy 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.480 people were also being snatched. You see, as long as 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:58.440 they were the corpses of black or indigenous people, or 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.520 of people of poor European in stock, no one seemed 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.760 to care. It's not clear what happened to the bodies 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.760 of those left dead in the riot's wake. It's lost 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.160 to history whether they were able to remain in their 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.320 graves or if they too ended up under the knife. 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:16.839 But what is clear is just how pervasive the underlying 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:21.440 attitude of whose body was worth what was becoming, and 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:27.520 sadly it would only get worse. I'm Aaron Manky and 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:41.039 welcome to the side show. There was a scent of 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:44.600 low tide and opportunity in the air, and the merchants 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.640 of South Streets liked it that way. In eight thirty five, 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.960 the seaport on the southernmost part of Manhattan was hopping. 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.040 On any given day, there might be a thousand ships, 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:58.880 all bobbing like ducklings, waiting to unload their wares, and 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.839 just steps from the box were rows of shops, their 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:05.800 doors swinging in constant motion as money came, and goods 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.320 went p t Barnum leaned against the counter of his 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.200 grocery store. He tugged at his collar and dabbed at 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.040 his brow with a handkerchief. The sea breeze did little 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.599 to mitigate the humid, damp shop interior. It could feel 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.760 cavernous at times, Stacked high with burlap sacks and novelties 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.680 of all kinds, it had been a tough winter. After 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.440 leaving Bethel with his wife Charity and daughter Caroline, they, 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:32.600 like so many others, had made their way to the 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:36.080 big city. But work didn't come quickly, and neither did 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.440 the debts that customers back in Connecticut owed him. When 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:42.560 that money did finally come, Barnum began to breathe a 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.640 little bit easier. He opened a boarding house and soon 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:49.920 after bought equity in a local grocery store. It was here, 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.320 in his claustrophobic mercantile kingdom that Barnum's life took a turn. 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.680 What happened next became the subject of a lifelong, ever 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.520 shifting narrative. Like many goods stories, it all began with 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.080 someone at the front door, and we can imagine that 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:06.960 with a flip of his wrist. Barnum quickly folded his 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:11.080 handkerchief and tucked it away as Coley Bartram walked into 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.760 the shop. Coley Bartram was an acquaintance of Barnum, but 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.040 he didn't come to buy anything that day. No, Bartram 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.599 was here with other business matters in mind. Barnum's reputation 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.760 as a wily businessman had preceded him, and Coley was 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.320 here to talk about a sale at this very moment. 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.960 He told Barnum there was a woman traveling the East 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:33.800 coast who might be of great interest to him. Reaching 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:38.159 into his pocket, Bartram unfolded an advertisement from the Philadelphia 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:43.320 Inquirer Joyce. Heth it read a Negress aged one hundred 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.560 sixty one years who formerly belonged to the father of 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:52.599 General Washington. General Washington as in President George Washington. He 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:54.760 went on to tell the tale that for almost a 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.599 hundred years she had lived with a family in Kentucky. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.880 As the story goes, the family retained her original bill 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.040 of sale, signed by none other than George Washington's old 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.160 dad himself. In fact, Coley went on she had been 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.680 little George's nursemaid, raising him from infancy and into his 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:14.200 role as founding father. And now she had alighted out 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:18.280 on tour, but of course not on her own. You see, 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.600 Joyce Heth was on the human curiosity circuit, a form 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.640 of entertainment popular in the days before Netflix. Because of that, 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.680 she had managers. And one of those managers included one 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.600 of Coley's former business partners. And this business partner and 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.440 I tinerant showman by the name of R. W. Lindsay, 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.640 was eager to sell his act, his act being the living, breathing, 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:45.240 elderly Joyce Heth. Now, if this sounds gross, well that's 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:47.680 because it is. What we're talking about here is, in 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:50.880 effect human trafficking, the selling of a black body from 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:53.200 one set of white hands to another. If you are 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:55.960 under the impression that the North had an enlightened position 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.679 on owning people, well you'd best think again. The year before, 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.600 New York City had been torn apart by anti abolition riots. 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.720 It took days for the military to squash the upheaval. 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.560 In their wake, the rioters left destruction of homes, businesses, 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:16.119 and churches. The mob tortured, raped, burned, and lynched folks 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:21.640 of African descent and demanded their deportation. This horrific violence 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.600 took place in the blocks surrounding Barnum's grocery. So when 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.200 we talk about someone being the product of their environment, 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.600 this was the water he was swimming in. It's easy 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.199 to imagine Collie not suffering from too many moral quandaries. 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:37.640 When he offered to put Barnum in touch with our 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.960 w Lindsay, Barnum took the bait. He would later write 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.440 in his biography that the prospect of Joyce made him 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:48.440 considerably excited. He immediately decided that he would close up 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.120 shop and head down to Philadelphia. Ever since his first 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.640 taste at the showman life, he'd been hankering for another act, 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:07.360 one that was much more permanent. Joyce Heath held a 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:11.040 court befitting her age. She was a community elder, after all, 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.199 with many decades and roads behind her, But the true 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:16.559 story of her life and the story that she spun 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.560 for her audience were not one and the same. In fact, 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:24.079 the tale she told was an outright yarn. Joyce's brown 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.880 and wrinkled face looked utterly ancient. She had no eyes, sights, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:30.920 and no teeth, but she still retained a charisma that 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.080 outsized her small frame. One of the first lies that 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:36.320 the papers told about her was that she was a 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.040 century and a half old. The second lie was that 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.720 she had raised George Washington. Although the man had died 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:47.400 decades earlier, Washington still loomed large in America's collective imagination. 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.319 He was a man made of myth in a country 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.000 so enamored with their own homegrown demigod, it's not hard 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.920 to understand why Joyce's audience wanted so badly to believe her. 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.840 For a woman so small, oh black, and so enslaved, 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.800 it seemed almost unthinkable that she could make a name 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:09.679 for herself out of proximity to celebrity, but she did so. 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.920 She sat there in her rocker, her pipe smoke curling 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.320 around her head. From there she reached across to the past, 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.760 directly linking herself to one of the greatest legends in 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.480 the American experiment. Scholars don't know about her early life, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.440 but it's thought that Joyce was originally enslaved by a 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:31.240 man who had cross paths with Washington, although frankly, it's 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.760 believed this connection amounted to nothing more than a bit 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.680 of braggadocious spirit on the part of her owner. Joyce 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:41.280 was then sent to live on a tobacco farm in Louisville, Kentucky. 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.760 From there she came under the ownership of a fellow 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:48.400 named John S. Bowling. Historians believe that John got into 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.160 cahoots with our W Lindsay. But it's here that her 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:53.839 story gets hazy. But what we do know is that 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:57.839 she went on the road with the latter. Newspaper advertisements 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.839 announced her impending arrivals, her stature growing with every run 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:05.360 of the printing press. Her appearances were announced as early 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:09.400 as January of eighteen thirty five, touting her as one 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:14.600 of the greatest natural curiosities ever exhibited. When Barnum finally 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.679 arrived in Philadelphia, Joyce Heth was in full form, entertaining 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.200 a crowd, singing old church hymns and telling stories of 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:26.160 Little Georgie. What happened next is a bit murky, but 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:30.920 undeniably exploitative. We don't know what Barnum really thought about 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.600 Joyce at that moment. In some ways, he's one of 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:38.000 history's most unreliable narrators. He was a master of story craft, 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:42.080 after all, spinning spectacular fictions from bare threads of fact. 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.040 You see over his life he published various editions of 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:50.160 his own autobiography, and in these different versions across the ages, 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.800 his account of the Joyce Helf affair evolved. There's a 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.480 fair case to be made that Barnum didn't really believe 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.839 that Joyce was one d sixty one years old. In fact, 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.240 he may have believed that not a lot of people 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.360 did either. It's possible that he, like those in Joyce's audience, 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.319 so badly wanted to believe the story she told. This 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.040 willingness to be duped was part of the human psyche 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.360 that Barnum loved to manipulate, So in order to make 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:19.319 her case more convincing, it's possible that he took it 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.000 upon himself to remake her in his own design. And 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:25.520 because of all of this, we can't know for sure 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.640 who he understood Joyce heth to be. But what we 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.640 can be certain of is this he believed that she 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:34.400 was going to make him a lot of money, so 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:37.280 he bought her, or at least he bought some of 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:40.840 the rights to her. Scholars have debated for years about 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:43.720 the wording of the contract that he signed. Did he 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.559 now own her or was he just leasing her from 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.880 our w technicalities aside a better question to ask might be, 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.200 this doesn't matter if the end result is the same. 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.840 America was created on the backs of enslaved people, and 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:02.280 now Barnum had chosen to continue at legacy. P T. 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:06.040 Barnum and his newly acquired sidekick, Levi Lyman arranged to 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:08.640 have private meetings with the press, teasing them with the 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:12.319 promise of exclusive access to Joyce. But the men had 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.760 an ulterior motive. This wasn't a pr stunt, but a 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.520 paid endeavor on the part of the journalist to suddenly 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:23.680 miraculously turn any of their critics into believers. Any media 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.319 scholar would tell you that this also was a pretty 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:29.800 dubious move. Joyce became a kind of analog click bait 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:32.280 that drove profits into the hands of her keepers and 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.040 newspaper publishers alike. To this end, Barnum was honing his 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.880 skills as a master manipulator. In New York, Joyce put 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.720 on a convincing show. She went on to Providence and 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.840 then to Boston, with a mix of Manhattan and Albany 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.880 in between. Newspapers likened her to an Egyptian mummy and 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.600 spoke of her skeletal frame. Others claimed that she wasn't 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.440 really an enslaved person at all, but rather a puppet 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:02.199 made of whalebone, rubber and springs. Then, in the winter 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.120 of eighteen thirty six, she grew sick. To recuperate, she 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.080 was sent to Bethel, Connecticut, to the home of Barnum's brother, 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:11.599 and he also sent along a nurse to keep a 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:16.520 watchful eye on her, someone to protect his most valuable asset. Sadly, 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.680 it wouldn't help. Joyce passed away on February of eighteen 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:24.800 thirty six, but whether or not she would rest in 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:40.680 peace is an entirely different story. Joyce Heath's live performances 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.200 made P. T. Barnum the talk of the town, and 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:45.440 he wasn't about to let her death put an end 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:50.000 to that. On February eighteen thirty six, just six days 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:54.600 after her death, Barnum packed about spectators into a makeshift 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:58.240 operating theater in New York City. He invited the public 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.520 and some very prominent news paper editors as well. You see, 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:05.240 the Penny papers, which had for several months been writing 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:10.200 about Joyce extensively, immediately clamored for an autopsy after she died. 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.640 They saw her potential scientific value, particularly as part of 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:19.160 the broader science of inquiring into racial difference. So when 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.160 The New York Sun ran an article announcing Joyce's passing, 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.600 it included the question whether, for the sake of science, 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.440 would not a post mortem examination of this aged person 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.320 be of use. After all, the black market for corpses 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:37.120 was robust, and medical curiosities, as they termed them back then, 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:41.680 commanded top dollar. The New York Sun then quickly published 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.880 another article objecting to the autopsy, but not for the 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:48.000 reasons you might assume. No, the writer wasn't concerned with 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.960 retaining Joyce's individual dignity, but rather wanted to respect her 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.920 due to her connection to George Washington. Because of her 0:15:55.920 --> 0:16:00.000 association to a name so seemingly immortal, some papers argue 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.480 that she should be spared the indecency that a public 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.000 autopsy would bring. But even though a heated debate formed 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:09.000 around it, none of it mattered to Barnum. He intended 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.840 to capitalize on all of it, and he did so 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:17.000 in spades. Barnum quickly contacted Dr David Rogers, a pre 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.200 eminent surgeon who had already expressed a desire to conduct 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:23.880 an autopsy after Heath died. Dr Rogers, it seems, had 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.560 been quite skeptical about who Joyce really was. He visited 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.360 her and had conducted a physical exam and found no 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.320 signs of what would be expected had the person been 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.560 the age that she claimed to be. Roger skepticism was noteworthy. 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:40.520 The fact that Barnum hired him to do the autopsy 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.440 not only gave the whole spectacle some degree of credibility, 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:47.120 but also turned skepticism into a major draw for the event. 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:52.120 He was manipulating all sides to his own advantage. The 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.400 procedure kicked off at noon in an operating theater next 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.160 door to what would later in fact become Barnum's Great 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:02.240 American Museum. Heth body had been placed in a mahogany coffin, 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.159 all eyes stared down, and next craned for the best angle. 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.480 We can hear the hush fall over the audience, and 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.160 it's easy to imagine how small she looked in death, 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.600 her body still just a tool used by others in 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:20.800 their relentless pursuit of profit. Dr Rogers split Joyce apart, 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:25.160 narrating to his audience as he went, explaining his incisions 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:27.919 and what things he was looking for in determining the 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:34.919 authenticity of Barnum's claims, he proceeded to thoroughly examine her chest, cavity, liver, heart, skull, 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.520 and other areas where telltale signs of an ancient life 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.840 might be found. Yet he found nothing indicating such old age. 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.600 In fact, he decided that she probably couldn't have been 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:50.000 more than seventy five years old. Barnum later claimed that 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.560 the doctor pulled him aside and said what a shame 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.000 it was that he had been tricked. Yes, you heard 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.440 that right. Poor Barnum was the victim. At least that's 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.520 what some of the papers reported, and Barnum led them 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.200 to believe it, just in case any of his customers 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.879 might call foul. Later. Meanwhile, he had Lynman plant a 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:12.639 different story in the New York Herald, one that claimed 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:15.679 that Joyce Heath was still alive and that the autopsy 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.399 had in fact been done on an entirely different woman, 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:24.280 an impostor. Months later. Levi would laugh when confronted about 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.280 this lie, and would proceed to tell one last story 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.600 with the assurance that this one was the truth. He 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.080 swore that Barnum had found Joyce in Kentucky, pulled her 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:36.320 teeth out and taught her how to tell stories about 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:39.920 George Washington. Levi's version would go on to haunt Barnum 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.679 until the end of his days, one that could never 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:46.080 be erased, even by the abolitionist causes he took up 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:50.679 later in life. The public autopsy of Joyce Heath became 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:54.919 a spectacle through the media firestorm that ensued. Various penny 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:58.080 press publications who were always at war with one another, 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:03.439 published competing countrydicting stories while each purported to reveal the truth, 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.800 and people couldn't look away. As the old saying goes, 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:25.760 there's no such thing as bad publicity. The story of 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.680 Joyce he and P. T. Barnum is a complicated one, 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.320 even for Barnum himself. On one side, it was through 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.360 exhibiting her that Barnum found his calling as a showman. 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:37.880 In a lot of ways, she helped to launch him 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.879 into stardom. During the exhibits hey day, thousands of visitors 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.000 paid money to stare, to touch, to question, and to 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:47.720 marvel at a human being as though she was a 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.720 circus attraction or a painting in a museum. But there 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:54.159 were also those who questioned the morality of how they 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:58.520 participated in this act, how they were complicit in their spectating. 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.800 You see, entertainment, it is never quite a neutral entity, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.800 and in the case of Joyce Heth, the fears, biases, 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.359 and prejudices of those in the Antebellum North came to 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.800 the foreground. In later years, the idea of being a 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:17.840 Northern slave owner became much more socially repugnant. As time 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.240 went on, Barnum tried progressively harder. It seems to put 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:25.600 some considerable distance between himself and this episode from his past, 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:28.800 so we see that his hand was heavy in the 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.680 making of Heth. But scholars have also posed another question, 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.280 what if Joyce hath story had actually been created by her? 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:41.120 Because it's typically the powerful ones who hold the pencils 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.280 and write the narratives. We don't have a complete understanding 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.280 today of who she was, but one can wonder this 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.240 was she the author of her own gaff, actively fooling 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:55.199 the willing naive white audiences and white press. Could it 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:59.320 possibly have been Joyce and not Barnum nor his predecessors 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:03.199 who invent did this particular humbug? And if she was 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.320 behind it, then it certainly paints a powerful image for 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:09.480 us a black woman living in a time when people 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:11.960 like her were at the bottom of the social letter 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:15.959 becoming the author of her own story. Now that's an 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:35.800 ending I can get behind. As I mentioned before, the 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:39.119 story of Joyce Heth is a complicated one, and I 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:41.600 know some of the details can be hard to stomach, 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.040 but nevertheless they are important to tell because they shed 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.439 light on how we understand the world we live in. 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.440 And because of that, we've set aside one more example, 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.160 and if you stick around through our brief sponsor break, 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:58.040 my co producer Robin Miniter will tell you all about it. 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.000 If you wanted to get business done, the city tavern 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:16.080 was the place to be, and Henry Moss knew this well. 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.600 Taverns played an important role in the lives of early Americans. 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:23.280 It was a place to find the news, to test 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:26.760 out ideas, and to be entertained. Being able to get 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:31.560 a stiff drink certainly didn't hurt either. The Philadelphia air 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:34.480 was heavy and full of possibilities. The July day that 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:39.080 Henry went into town, it was and America was on 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:42.320 the brink of a new century, and for over twenty 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:44.399 years the city had been at the center of a 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:48.040 growing nation it was a time when America was trying 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:52.440 to forge its own identity. The personalities who determined what 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.680 unalienable rights were and who those rights belonged to, still 0:22:56.720 --> 0:23:01.399 walked these streets. Their ancestors had im graded here, trafficking 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:06.399 people from the African continent and desecrating indigenous communities. And 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:09.919 along the way, these people were able to install themselves 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.159 as a ruling class in this new nation, and it 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:17.719 behooved them to retain this power at all costs. So 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:20.280 when the faces of these men came to see Henriett 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:23.800 the tavern that day, he smiled at them and to himself. 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:27.199 Not a great deal is known about him beyond his 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:31.679 exhibit persona. Most of what we know specifically concerned his body, 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:36.760 which of course became his legend. You see, he wanted 0:23:36.800 --> 0:23:40.679 to be looked at. Advertisements were planted in newspapers. He 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:45.240 was called a curiosity. The printing presses likened his celebrity 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:49.160 to that of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. And when President 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.840 George Washington stopped by, we can imagine that Henry nodded 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:57.679 in his direction, knowing he was holding court for American royalty. 0:23:58.320 --> 0:24:01.080 And on these occasions he would roll up his sleeves, 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:05.200 unbuttoned his shirt, and show the crowd his spots across 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:08.760 his skin were splattered pink patches, little islands of pale 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:13.560 spreading across his body like constellations, and the onlookers tried 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:17.639 to find meaning in their shapes. You see, Henry was 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:21.240 a free black man with videlago, a condition which causes 0:24:21.280 --> 0:24:24.919 skin cells to lose their pigment. He invited gawkers to 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:28.240 come touch him for themselves and witness how as he 0:24:28.320 --> 0:24:32.720 told them, he was turning white through his own design. 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:36.119 He became a walking war shark test for a new 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:40.560 American anxiety. As Henry spoke to the crowd, he was 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:43.480 sure to answer any questions that they had about him. 0:24:43.520 --> 0:24:45.959 He claimed to have been born entirely black, and as 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.040 he got older, according to one paper, his natural color 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:52.240 began to rub off. The paper went on to say 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:54.760 that he had become white and was as fair as 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:58.520 any white person, save a few patches of melanin that remained. 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:02.400 What at this all mean, the audience wondered, If our 0:25:02.440 --> 0:25:06.280 skin can shape shift, and can this change happen with 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.919 our proximity to different kinds of people? Does it have 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:12.720 to do with our living environment and maybe the tasks 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:15.760 we engage with. And if a black man could morph 0:25:15.760 --> 0:25:19.160 into a white one, does that mean an Anglo countryman 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:23.520