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Speaker 1: Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This shout
Speaker 1: out up you, Chuck, Priyan, Jerry, and this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. You introd as if you were asleep
Speaker 1: and I just walked by and poked you with a
Speaker 1: bold cube and that's your first thing you do is
Speaker 1: you wake up and just go, hey, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: How are you, sir man. I'm feeling fine, Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: feeling fine. That's a Simpsons reference from what the Shining One?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Shooting Classic. It's a good one. Um.
Speaker 1: So a couple of quick matters of business, a little
Speaker 1: c o A. At the beginning, we're talking about freak shows,
Speaker 1: and we will be saying freaks and things like that.
Speaker 1: That is obviously an antiquated term, um, but a lot
Speaker 1: of there are a lot of quotes in here and
Speaker 1: a lot of references to uh, freaks and midgets and
Speaker 1: pin heads and all these awful terms that they used
Speaker 1: to call these people that had, you know, physical deformities
Speaker 1: and maladies. Um, so it's not us speaking. This is
Speaker 1: a historic in historical context, Like we get the insensitivity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. We're not We're not being insensitive. Here's uh
Speaker 1: and we want to shout out if you. We used
Speaker 1: a couple of house Stoff how stuff it works, How
Speaker 1: stuff Works articles, as well as one from History Magazine
Speaker 1: by Laura Grande Priceonomics Zachary Crockett wrote one and who
Speaker 1: I have to say, I'm a fan of that dude's work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a good artic prisonomics these and some really
Speaker 1: interesting articles, agreed. And then one from human Marvels dot com,
Speaker 1: which is just a good website by j tithonus now
Speaker 1: announced right p E D in a U D. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's a tough one. Now, yeah, I assume the D
Speaker 1: is silent or maybe not. Maybe it's ped now pay
Speaker 1: node node huh freaky and a couple of other places
Speaker 1: we visited. So and everyone kind of says the same thing.
Speaker 1: But it's a nice, well rounded thing. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they I mean, we're talking about the history of
Speaker 1: freak shows and there's only you know, one history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: certain things happen, and we found we found very quickly
Speaker 1: that like you can't extract um freak shows from P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum or vice versa. No, like they they they are
Speaker 1: inextricably bound. But freak shows, um, you know Barnum was
Speaker 1: working in the nineteenth century. But the concept of freak shows,
Speaker 1: which um is basically someone who is a human curiosity,
Speaker 1: and that could be someone who was born with a
Speaker 1: genetic deformity, of physical deformity um, some sort of mental
Speaker 1: incapacity um, or some people have turned themselves into human curiosity,
Speaker 1: say through the wonder of tattooing or um learning to
Speaker 1: swallow swords or something like yeah, or like these days
Speaker 1: body modification like the gym Rose show or there's one
Speaker 1: in Coney Island still that does a like a traditional show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: side show by the Seashore also a great song by
Speaker 1: Luna Nice, one of my favorite bands. Um. So, the
Speaker 1: the whole concept of this of having a human curiosity
Speaker 1: and um basically charging gawkers to look at it, it
Speaker 1: dates back quite a way, is um. Well, actually not
Speaker 1: that far the sixteenth century. That's pretty far, I guess so.
Speaker 1: But you would think like, well, the Greeks or the
Speaker 1: Romans did this, but apparently no everybody was fairly Um,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, everybody just kind of steered clear
Speaker 1: of human curiosities to that point. Yeah, I think people
Speaker 1: feared them, right. They were locked away mainly because they
Speaker 1: thought it was some evil curse or punishment from God.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't someone you wanted to consort with. Else
Speaker 1: you might bring back, bring down the wrath of God
Speaker 1: upon yourself. That's right. But like you said, in the
Speaker 1: late fifteen, hundreds of people started to say, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm curious about, um, someone with hair growing all
Speaker 1: over their face. I'm curious about the human curiosity exactly.
Speaker 1: And I know I don't Chuck, I want to say,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's coincidence that about this time, science
Speaker 1: was starting to spread throughout Europe. So the idea that um,
Speaker 1: this was God's breath was was taking a bit of
Speaker 1: a back seat to uh, this is a human condition
Speaker 1: of some sort, yes, but not so far down the
Speaker 1: road of science, to where there was this intermediate period
Speaker 1: where they were got Dad, And as we'll find out later,
Speaker 1: science would eventually take part in ending the sideshows right
Speaker 1: created them and it ended them. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: neat good way to look at it. Uh so one
Speaker 1: of the first UM viewings or one of the first
Speaker 1: people put on display and you know this is also
Speaker 1: going to be well, we'll get into it later, but
Speaker 1: the morality of this is very up and down with
Speaker 1: exploiting people and these people that would normally be locked
Speaker 1: away actually having super lucrative careers long lasting made them
Speaker 1: rich well. Plus also, UM, I think one of the authors,
Speaker 1: I think it was Crockett points out that, UM, there
Speaker 1: early on, if you were in a freak show, there
Speaker 1: was a good chance that um, you had been abandoned
Speaker 1: by your parents, became a ward of the state and
Speaker 1: adopted by somebody who just ruthlessly exploited you and maybe
Speaker 1: barely took care of you. But one thing you can
Speaker 1: definitely say to his credit, as Barnum came into it
Speaker 1: and basically normalized or created an industry out of freak
Speaker 1: shows or four freak shows, UM, conditions definitely changed and
Speaker 1: the exploitation seems to have less in some way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that with the big names like Norman and Barnum,
Speaker 1: I think they were all manner of minor side shows
Speaker 1: that probably didn't treat them as well. Uh, And usually
Speaker 1: Barnum and Norman bought their curiosities from those minor side shows,
Speaker 1: lesser show exactly. So we're tking about Tom Norman out
Speaker 1: of England. Yeah, they were basically counterparts. Yeah, and what
Speaker 1: we'll get into them back to one of the earliest
Speaker 1: um quote unquote freaks was a man named Lazarus Colorado
Speaker 1: not Colorado, who was a conjoined twin. He had a brother, Johannes,
Speaker 1: who was upside down on his chest and technically it
Speaker 1: was a parasitic twin to Lazarus. Oh, not conjoined twins.
Speaker 1: They were conjoined. But Johannes like didn't eat, okay, he
Speaker 1: um he could, He didn't speak, he never opened his eyes,
Speaker 1: and apparently the only way you could get a physical
Speaker 1: reaction out of him was if you rubbed his chest.
Speaker 1: That would make him squirm like quaide and total recall
Speaker 1: very much got you. So. Uh. He went on tour,
Speaker 1: performed before King Charles the First in the early sixteen forties.
Speaker 1: But it was not a big deal. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: super lucrative. Side shows weren't really a thing at that point. No,
Speaker 1: but this guy was saying, Uh, you guys are gonna
Speaker 1: ostracize me. Well, I'm going to charge you to look
Speaker 1: at me then, and I'm going to support myself and
Speaker 1: my brother doing this. Yeah, he did it himself. It's
Speaker 1: not clear whether he worked with a manager or not
Speaker 1: or a promoter, but he definitely um made his own
Speaker 1: choice to go do this, Yes, exactly. And he was
Speaker 1: apparently an otherwise handsome man. That's how everyone described him,
Speaker 1: which I think probably for the court Um or Europe
Speaker 1: who who came and looked at him, uh, probably just
Speaker 1: made it even more mind boggling, you know. But he's
Speaker 1: a good guy right right, you know. Uh, P T.
Speaker 1: Barnum and I think we should do in a whole
Speaker 1: podcast on PT Barnam at some point to really close
Speaker 1: out the circus suite. Well, then we shouldn't mention him
Speaker 1: again in the show. No Barnum as as a teenager, Uh,
Speaker 1: he always had a penchant for making money. He was
Speaker 1: one of those magnets sort of weird ways. Uh. He
Speaker 1: ran his own lottery as a teenager um in Connecticut
Speaker 1: and he said, here's what I'll do. I can just
Speaker 1: sell these tickets. I'll give out prizes in varying levels
Speaker 1: from dollars on down to like CS and U yeah
Speaker 1: and um. But it was very well thought out for
Speaker 1: a teenager. He wasn't just like just one prize. He
Speaker 1: spread it out so he would entice people to play more. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he actually made a lot of money from it
Speaker 1: until they outlawed the lottery. He was making like eleven
Speaker 1: grand in today's dollars a week as a teenager. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen not bad. But then Connecticut and the rest of
Speaker 1: the country said no more lotteries for now. Um, we'll
Speaker 1: bring that back up later though, don't you worry, TB
Speaker 1: C and Um. He had to find other ways to
Speaker 1: make work, moved to New York City and in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, UM, he had You know, England is where
Speaker 1: a lot of this started. We'll talk about Norman in
Speaker 1: a second, but he got his queue from England, said
Speaker 1: here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna buy a person.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy my first freak uh, this blind paralyzed
Speaker 1: slave woman. And this is a hallmark of freak shows,
Speaker 1: as I'm gonna make up a story about her that's
Speaker 1: sensational and crazy, like a Ripley's believe it or not
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, and Embarnum in particular was well
Speaker 1: known for just taking these things to the nth degree, like, sure,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna buy that, but he could sell it
Speaker 1: in such a way that people believed it because they
Speaker 1: were exponentially dumber back then. Uh. He the story for
Speaker 1: her was that she was a hundred and sixty years old,
Speaker 1: was George Washington's nurse. Uh and you can pay to
Speaker 1: see her, when in fact she was only eighty years old.
Speaker 1: She was half that age. Yeah, and her name was
Speaker 1: Joyce Heath, and she was just an old lady right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was an old slave woman who was paralyzed and
Speaker 1: blind and was being exploited by p. T. Barnum in
Speaker 1: the year before her death. So she dies um, but
Speaker 1: before then, like as he's touting her as this hundred
Speaker 1: and six year old former nurse made to George Washington. Um,
Speaker 1: that gets an initial reaction and then ticket sales drop,
Speaker 1: and then PiZZ Barnum did something quite smart. He wrote
Speaker 1: an anonymous letter to a Boston newspaper and accused himself
Speaker 1: of being a fraud and saying that the the hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty year old woman was a fake that she
Speaker 1: was actually a machine, a robot made of whale skin
Speaker 1: and it and ticket sales went right through the roof again. Man,
Speaker 1: what a guy. There should be a good movie about him.
Speaker 1: I can't believe there's not, like a modern one. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there is, you know, surely, like the what's the one?
Speaker 1: The Greatest Show on Earth was a movie? Right, and
Speaker 1: Griffith movie or something. Yeah, that's what I mean. But
Speaker 1: like Tom Cruise should play him, yeah, and should be
Speaker 1: directed by Michael Bay Russell Crowe should No, not Russell Crowe. Well,
Speaker 1: how about who could play p. T. Barnum? You know
Speaker 1: who who? He would be good at it, but it'd
Speaker 1: just be so him. Sam Rockwell, oh totally, he could
Speaker 1: play anything. So I'd rather see somebody even broader playing him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard research look ahead, Gina. Who would end up
Speaker 1: playing him is freaking Hugh Jackman. And yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: he can do cartwheels. Yeah, what were you gonna say? Somebody?
Speaker 1: It might have been during the Bill Gates interview, were
Speaker 1: something yesterday that somebody said that no, it was unseen it.
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks is the most trusted person in America. Like
Speaker 1: for some poll found that like the most trusted person
Speaker 1: in America is Tom Hanks. Were we on the list?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Sure you got it dressed on.
Speaker 1: We're not even Also rans were never rans? Alright. So
Speaker 1: he purchased that woman what was her name, joyce heth
Speaker 1: j O I C E H E T H for
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars and he made about that every week,
Speaker 1: um from exploiting her. I imagined that she got very
Speaker 1: little of that. Yeah, although you can't necessarily say that
Speaker 1: I didn't see what she was paid, she was very
Speaker 1: likely paid. And I'm she was probably fairly well taken
Speaker 1: care of, especially considering um that she probably just And
Speaker 1: this is based on how Barnum treated other people later
Speaker 1: in a documented manner. But um he I don't want
Speaker 1: to say he rescued her from slavery because she went
Speaker 1: from being a slave to being owned by somebody who
Speaker 1: exhibited her. Um. But it's not a guarantee or a
Speaker 1: given that her situation got worse after she she was
Speaker 1: purchased by Barnum. Right, does that make sense? Man? That
Speaker 1: felt like a minefield? I was talking about slavery, human exploitation.
Speaker 1: A blind woman who was also paralyzed. Good, good, luck
Speaker 1: sir um his first big hoax after that or uh, well,
Speaker 1: actually I guess it wasn't a hoax aside from the
Speaker 1: made up story. But um, he had a real hoax.
Speaker 1: That was a hoax. Well I hope sure, um, but
Speaker 1: this was a hoax in two because it was nothing
Speaker 1: about it was real. He was promoting something called the
Speaker 1: Fiji Mermaid, which was basically rogue taxidermy as all it was.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it was. It was a creature with
Speaker 1: a head of a monkey and the tail of a
Speaker 1: fish that he bought from Japanese sailors. Well he didn't.
Speaker 1: He got it from a sailor who bought it from right,
Speaker 1: and actually it was Japanese fisherman. Yeah, and he well,
Speaker 1: what's the difference. Well, they're like traditional they didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: go to see they were like islanders and this is
Speaker 1: like traditional art for them, folk art. So not a
Speaker 1: sailor but fisherman. Right, that's that entry one oh one.
Speaker 1: Sorry it's so fixated on things. Yeah. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: leased it um for twelve fifty a week twelve dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty cents um from from the owners have said
Speaker 1: rogue taxidermy and he tried, he purnt up pamphlets and
Speaker 1: tried to convince everyone it was some real thing. So
Speaker 1: he he actually had a um A partner named Levi
Speaker 1: what was Levi's name? He's definitely an overlooked guy, Levi Lyman.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine like being P. T. Barnum's partner, Like
Speaker 1: you'd never be in the spotlight a right, So Levi
Speaker 1: Lyman posed as a English doctor, a scientist who was
Speaker 1: in possession of this mermaid, and UM P. T. Barnum
Speaker 1: very publicly was trying to get his hands on the mermaid,
Speaker 1: and this guy was very publicly resisting him because there
Speaker 1: was a man of science and this was the real deal.
Speaker 1: And it helps just convince everybody, including the newspapers, that
Speaker 1: like this is the genuine article, just Rubes Nation, a
Speaker 1: world of Rubes. It seems like he ended up opening
Speaker 1: up a museum on Broadway in New York City, UM,
Speaker 1: eighteen forties, you know, sort of you know, like a
Speaker 1: Ripley's Believe it or not kind of thing. Curiosities and
Speaker 1: weird things. Yeah, that's those his stock in trade. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we should talk about his counterpart in England,
Speaker 1: UM Tom Norman. Yeah, Tommy Norman, Tommy Norman. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was named the Silver King and Barnum actually gave him
Speaker 1: that name apparently after meeting him, and he said, boy,
Speaker 1: what a huge silver showy silver watch you have there.
Speaker 1: You're the Silver King. He goes, I am the Sill King.
Speaker 1: I've been waiting my whole life for somebody to notice exactly.
Speaker 1: So he was doing the same thing in England. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he he actually um, he toured with Joseph Merrick
Speaker 1: the Elephant Man. Yeah, and he got um castigated by
Speaker 1: a lot of people saying, you're exploiting this guy John
Speaker 1: Merrick and h is it John or Joseph? What I
Speaker 1: say John? Yeah? And it's like an ongoing thing. Oh
Speaker 1: is it yeah, I can't remember if it's well, let's
Speaker 1: find out. No, it's Joseph for sure. Had just misspoke. Um.
Speaker 1: He was attacked in specifically in a memoir by Dr
Speaker 1: Frederick Treeves uh called The Elephant Man and other Reminiscences. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he shot back and he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I haven't mistreated Merrick, haven't abused him. Uh. He wasn't
Speaker 1: forced to do anything. And he said, in fact, the
Speaker 1: big majority of showmen are in the habit of treating
Speaker 1: their novelties as human beings and in a large number
Speaker 1: of cases as one of their own, not like beasts. Right.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, the morality battle was being waged
Speaker 1: even back then. Yeah. And I mean if you you
Speaker 1: think about um, this time when people would go look
Speaker 1: at people who had physical deformities and pay for it
Speaker 1: and just look at him just standing there, you think, well,
Speaker 1: the whole world was pretty evil and a moral at
Speaker 1: the time not necessarily true. There's a, um, a lot
Speaker 1: of people who railed against this stuff, like Frederick Treeve's
Speaker 1: who was um. He was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, right,
Speaker 1: isn't that him? Yeah? He was in The Elephant Man
Speaker 1: the movie? Was he actually Marrick's doctor? Dn't yeh man?
Speaker 1: That movie? Yeah? David Lynch god one of the best ever. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there was an historian who at the time,
Speaker 1: I think in like the eighteen sixties he wrote. His
Speaker 1: name was Henry Mayhew and in eighteen sixty when he
Speaker 1: was British, he wrote that that these freak shows were
Speaker 1: nothing more than human degradation. And he said something that
Speaker 1: stuck out to meet Chuck. He said that the men
Speaker 1: who preside over these infamous places, know too well the
Speaker 1: failings of their audience. And I think he really hit
Speaker 1: the nail on the head by he wasn't accusing the
Speaker 1: showman because I think he understood that most of these
Speaker 1: people were just under contract, and he wasn't accusing the people,
Speaker 1: the actual human curiosities, the freaks themselves. He was rightly
Speaker 1: placing the blame for all this on the observers, the gawkers.
Speaker 1: Like if there wasn't a market for it, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing it. Yeah, Like you're the one who is
Speaker 1: having the moral failing. Who's paying to go see this
Speaker 1: person who may or may not be exploited you don't know,
Speaker 1: And uh, it's really on you audience. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: Uh it's a lot of foresight for back then, I
Speaker 1: thought so too. So it's not like the point was.
Speaker 1: It's not like everybody was just going along with this.
Speaker 1: People have had a problem with it basically the whole
Speaker 1: time freak shows were around. All right, well, let's take
Speaker 1: a break and we'll talk a little bit more about um,
Speaker 1: the evolution of the side show. Right after this, we're back.
Speaker 1: I brought my pencil. What's up? Oh right, on man.
Speaker 1: I didn't get that at first, do you. I'm impressed
Speaker 1: that you did get it nice. Uh. That was from
Speaker 1: Van Halen's popular song Hot for Teacher from and we
Speaker 1: are now nineteen eighties DJs. Uh. So the side shows
Speaker 1: became a legitimate thing, a big way to make money.
Speaker 1: There were different kinds. Um. There was one called a
Speaker 1: tin in one show, which I believed the sides side
Speaker 1: show by the sea shore is today you did it
Speaker 1: through my missing tooth. Uh. And that is when you
Speaker 1: have ten people on display on a platform at once
Speaker 1: and people just walk by and look at them. It's
Speaker 1: not like a performance. It's just there's a bearded lady,
Speaker 1: there's the dog faced boy, there's the tattooed man, and
Speaker 1: they're all of the standing there. That's a tin and one. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had things, and this was all too to drum
Speaker 1: up more money. They would advertise something as an adults
Speaker 1: only or a man only even performance. Right. Well, the
Speaker 1: men only performance frequently had a stripper you know, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: or stuff that they thought that we're just like a
Speaker 1: woman shouldn't see or children shouldn't see. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was as much of that as if it
Speaker 1: was to just trump up like, oh my god, it's
Speaker 1: so bad that a woman can't see lay her eyes
Speaker 1: upon it. Um, I think it's all part of the show. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's my feeling. At least. One of the things that
Speaker 1: they displayed were something called a pickled punk, which is awful,
Speaker 1: especially when you find out what it is. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: basically a an abnormal fetus in a formalbe hyde in
Speaker 1: a jar. And you could go by and look at
Speaker 1: pickled punks and gawk at them for money. It's it's awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what people did, like on Saturday night in Kansas.
Speaker 1: So um, the the usually this this side shows of
Speaker 1: the freak shows. At first, they were you would be
Speaker 1: some enterprising entrepreneur in some small town and you would
Speaker 1: notice that a little youngster had um a third leg, okay,
Speaker 1: and you your thought was, I can really make some
Speaker 1: money with this kid. So you go to their parents
Speaker 1: and you'd say, I will give you of all of
Speaker 1: the earnings of your child if you let me take
Speaker 1: him on the road, and he will stay in the
Speaker 1: finest hotels and we're the best clothes as exactly, and uh,
Speaker 1: the he will become famous in the world, will love him, h,
Speaker 1: just let me handle it. I'm going to be as
Speaker 1: manager from now on. And the parents would very frequently,
Speaker 1: especially if they were poor, would say, that's great. Do
Speaker 1: that give me some money upfront though, by the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially because a lot of times some of these people
Speaker 1: were a burden on their family because of their health condition,
Speaker 1: so they were happy to be rid of them. That's
Speaker 1: all very sad, okay. So that's how that's how it
Speaker 1: definitely started out. And then and it went on like
Speaker 1: that um for a very long time as well. But
Speaker 1: once borne him and not a Norman and some of
Speaker 1: the other guys, the big guys came around, they would
Speaker 1: just basically keep an eye out for that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: or they would be approached by these guys who would
Speaker 1: essentially be middleman kind of like um, somebody who discovered
Speaker 1: a boy band selling their contract to a bigger record company.
Speaker 1: But this was with human curiosity, people with the third lagger,
Speaker 1: hyper trichosis or what have you. UM. And then Barnum
Speaker 1: would take him and would would just take whatever exaggerated
Speaker 1: origin story that they came with and just throw it
Speaker 1: out and come up with one ten times more uh.
Speaker 1: And after his uh George Washington's nurse made Joyce heth died,
Speaker 1: who was not George Washington's right. He started looking around
Speaker 1: for his next collaborator, if you could call him that, um,
Speaker 1: and he found out that he had a distant cousin,
Speaker 1: a fifth cousin UM named Charles Stratton, who had stopped
Speaker 1: growing when he was about two years old. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: he never completely stopped. He grew very slowly. He made
Speaker 1: it to like just over three feet I think by
Speaker 1: the time his death. Yeah. He died at forty five
Speaker 1: of a stroke and he was three point three five
Speaker 1: ft tall. Um, but grew so slowly. I mean you
Speaker 1: know he was He was General Tom Thumb, very famously
Speaker 1: renamed General Tom Thumb by his half fifth twice removed cousin.
Speaker 1: Uh pt what does that stand for? Even Paul Thomas
Speaker 1: Anderson bon uh So he said, you know what this
Speaker 1: is great. Um, you were a small person and you're
Speaker 1: cute as the dickens, So let me dress you up
Speaker 1: in little adult suits and you're my new sidekick. Yeah
Speaker 1: that he He collaborated with the kid's dad and said, let's, um,
Speaker 1: let's make some money. Uh and he um he taught
Speaker 1: him how to sing and dance, pretend he was Napoleon,
Speaker 1: He did impressions Cupid, he played Cupid sometimes, and then
Speaker 1: he told everybody that this little five year old kid
Speaker 1: was actually eleven, which made it all the more astounding
Speaker 1: that he was that small, which he didn't even need
Speaker 1: to do, you know. And then for about the next
Speaker 1: like fifteen or so years, Um turned Tom Thumb into
Speaker 1: what was essentially the first international celebrity. Oh was he
Speaker 1: the first international celebrity? Pretty much? Tom Thumb was a sensation.
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria was a huge fan, met met with him
Speaker 1: twice to at least twice um. She apparently was really
Speaker 1: big into side shows, but Tom Thumb was her favorite.
Speaker 1: Um and he. They made so much money off of
Speaker 1: their first European tour that um Barnum bought his museum
Speaker 1: with the proceeds. Is there anything grosser than the Queen
Speaker 1: of England laughing at a small person imitating Napoleon for money.
Speaker 1: She may have even known Napoleon at the time, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she. That probably made it all the funnier
Speaker 1: to her. Unbelievable. So, but he was. He was a
Speaker 1: rich dude. He was paid uh in today's dollars Tom Thumb.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, over four thousand dollars a week and retired
Speaker 1: and lived the high life in New York City. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know he didn't feel like he was exploited. No,
Speaker 1: he he actually got married. I saw that he had children,
Speaker 1: but I could I only saw that one place. I
Speaker 1: didn't see it anywhere else. But he he was married
Speaker 1: and actually, um, right after the marriage was brought to
Speaker 1: the White House to hang out with Abraham Lincoln and
Speaker 1: Mrs Lincoln. Yeah, he had twenty people at his funeral.
Speaker 1: He he was again, he was a very big deal.
Speaker 1: And from what I understand, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: he shed his persona. He was just Charles Stratton, uber wealthy, uh,
Speaker 1: some little person um. And when he was doing his show,
Speaker 1: he was Tom Thumb who would dress up as Napoleon
Speaker 1: or whatever and take your money. But um, he he
Speaker 1: and P. T. Barnum together really made a ton of cash.
Speaker 1: Tom Thumb was a little better at managing his cash
Speaker 1: than Barnum was, because Barnum fell in hard times. A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize this, but he made some
Speaker 1: actually really bad investments over over time too. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: invested a lot of his money initially back into his business,
Speaker 1: which was smart, right, and but a lot of times
Speaker 1: he would be like this is gonna be a hit
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be a hit. He didn't have the
Speaker 1: Midas touch necessarily, and he fell on hard times more
Speaker 1: than once. One of the times Um Tom Thumb or
Speaker 1: Charles Stratton bailed him out. Oh really, I get the
Speaker 1: feeling Barnum didn't know when to leave well enough alone,
Speaker 1: you know, like he had a big, thriving business and
Speaker 1: he just kept wanting to push it further and further.
Speaker 1: Hugh Jackman, I'm telling you. Uh So, now we will
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of people, um, who are afflicted
Speaker 1: with something. Uh. Well, they were micro cephalic, which means
Speaker 1: that they have a cone shaped head smaller than normal
Speaker 1: shaped head as well. Yes, if you've ever if you're
Speaker 1: a Howard Stern fan, then you know beetlejuice, he has
Speaker 1: his condition. Um. And they used to call them pinheads
Speaker 1: back in the day, awful term. Uh. And there were
Speaker 1: a couple of notable I'm not even gonna keep saying that,
Speaker 1: but a couple of notable people that performed um in
Speaker 1: these freak shows. One was Zip William Henry Johnson renamed
Speaker 1: Zip to z I P. He's from New Jersey, born
Speaker 1: to newly freed slaves and uh. When Barnum found him,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, I'm gonna do gonna make up
Speaker 1: the story that you were found during a guerrilla expedition
Speaker 1: near the Gambia River. I'm gonna shave your head except
Speaker 1: for a little ponytailed tuft on top, and address you
Speaker 1: in a suit of fur. And you get up on
Speaker 1: that stage and grunt like an animal. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: paid a dollar a day at first to not talk
Speaker 1: to grunt and I guess to play the violin really badly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't get was he paid a dollar a day
Speaker 1: to start? Okay? I thought that might have been part
Speaker 1: of the story that he was in fact paid a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a day. Later he became a very popular
Speaker 1: um uh freak. I guess. Yeah. The thing is is
Speaker 1: um he Uh. William Henry Johnson was probably not microcephalic
Speaker 1: at all. Um he micro cephal microsophilic is totally different microcephalic.
Speaker 1: Um he. Actually they think now that he had just
Speaker 1: like a slightly abnormally shaped head that was exaggerated by
Speaker 1: the haircut that they gave him and that he actually
Speaker 1: had no diminished mental faculties once what what at all?
Speaker 1: And he was just pretending the whole time, and not
Speaker 1: only fooling crowds, but he was also fooling promoters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's one of the hallmarks of that condition. Is
Speaker 1: I believe that usually it's accompanied by cognitive stunted cognitive development. Ye,
Speaker 1: usually very severe, but not in his case. He was
Speaker 1: super smart and when he died said we fooled them all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was his sister and his deathbed. They're also married.
Speaker 1: Not true. So he made a lot of money too,
Speaker 1: he did. He apparently retired with millions UM a millionaire,
Speaker 1: so he's not the only UM Again. Pinhead is what
Speaker 1: this specific type of freak was called. Man, I can't
Speaker 1: believe I just said that. This feels so wrong. I know, um,
Speaker 1: but there's a very side show performer and Chuck. Another
Speaker 1: very famous side show performer who was also I guess
Speaker 1: technically in the Under the Umbrella Pinhead, who actually was
Speaker 1: UM Micro's cephilic was Schlitze. Yes, Schlitze is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite people of all time. Yes, let's see, they
Speaker 1: don't know for sure his real name, but Um, they
Speaker 1: believe it's Simon Metz born in nineteen and one of
Speaker 1: the Bronx. And Um, by all accounts from everyone who
Speaker 1: ever met Schlitze, everyone loved Schlitze. And he was a
Speaker 1: ray of sunshine and a nice, sweet carrying, kind hearted man. Yes,
Speaker 1: loved life. Anything that you would take for granted. Um,
Speaker 1: Schlitze probably enjoyed the heck out of and Um. He
Speaker 1: was very frequently built as a woman. Um. I think
Speaker 1: he was bill as an Aztec warrior at first, and
Speaker 1: then maybe even an Aztec woman. But he wore dresses
Speaker 1: all the time because he was incontinent, and this just
Speaker 1: made it the whole thing easier. Um, So he was
Speaker 1: bill as a woman for a very long time, and
Speaker 1: including in the movie, Um Freaks, the Todd Browning movie
Speaker 1: from Schlitze was in that and Schlitze actually has like
Speaker 1: this big scene that's like has he has a whole
Speaker 1: speaking like a dialogue section, But to this day no
Speaker 1: one has any clue what he says. Yeah, should we
Speaker 1: talk about Freaks a now or take a break and
Speaker 1: then talk about it. Let's take a break, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, So the movie Freaks, Uh, I've seen it,
Speaker 1: have you I saw it for the first time this
Speaker 1: morning when most people see it. Uh. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two pre code film. Uh. There was a
Speaker 1: time between when um, they started making movies to four
Speaker 1: when the motion picture production code kicked in. Uh yeah
Speaker 1: and properly called the Hayese code. UM. For five years
Speaker 1: there you could do whatever you wanted, I guess. And
Speaker 1: uh that's when this director named Todd Browning made a
Speaker 1: movie called Freaks about sideshow performers. And this guy was
Speaker 1: he actually ran away that the director actually ran away
Speaker 1: and joined the carnival when he was sixteen and worked
Speaker 1: as a carnival barker and even uh participated in stunts
Speaker 1: and he was he's a circus guy. And he had
Speaker 1: a lot of um side show performers as friends. And
Speaker 1: you can tell in the movie that that's he's like,
Speaker 1: that's who he's whose side he's on, that's who that
Speaker 1: they're the heroes of the story with the protagonists antagonists
Speaker 1: or normals or whatever. Um and uh it's a really
Speaker 1: morally fraud movie these days. But if you just step
Speaker 1: back and and think of it as like this guy
Speaker 1: having an affinity for sideshow performers and giving them a
Speaker 1: shot at at stardom, being on the big screen for
Speaker 1: what they are, for who they are, for what they
Speaker 1: can do. Um. Then it's a really kind of a
Speaker 1: heart growing tale. Heart growing, yeah, in a very weird way.
Speaker 1: It's it's wrenching the watch. When's the last time you
Speaker 1: saw a college They spent a long time. Just see
Speaker 1: it again, all right, we'll check it out like it's
Speaker 1: it's tough to watch his gut wrenching. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of um, well, let's just talk about some
Speaker 1: of the performers in the movie. Um. One of them
Speaker 1: who stands out is Johnny eck John Eckhart Jr. Who
Speaker 1: was a twin and he was born with a condition. Uh.
Speaker 1: Everyone said that he was cut off at the waist. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not exactly true. We actually had um unusable underdeveloped legs
Speaker 1: that you never saw, but it appeared as though he
Speaker 1: didn't have anything from the torso down. And as from
Speaker 1: a young kid, I believe he was even walking on
Speaker 1: his hands before his twin brother was even standing. So
Speaker 1: he was very advanced in a lot of ways. A
Speaker 1: very smart guy. He's a painter. Uh yeah, very accomplished.
Speaker 1: The magician. Um, and you had a great personality too,
Speaker 1: you could tell. Yeah, and apparently he was good buddies
Speaker 1: with um Browning, and Browning always wanted him around and
Speaker 1: by his side and was like, you know, you need
Speaker 1: to come sit with me by the camera and almost
Speaker 1: like his Uh. I don't know if he like could
Speaker 1: consider him a co director, but he always wanted him nearby.
Speaker 1: Pretty neat Uh. Daisy and Violet Hilton, Yeah, can joined twins, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which they called Siamese twins back in the day. Um,
Speaker 1: thanks to Chang and Yang bunker right. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: actually uh some of the first super famous. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were from a Siamese fishing village and that's where the
Speaker 1: term came from. Yeah, Siam was what we now called Thailand.
Speaker 1: That's right, uh and Chang and Ing we're born in
Speaker 1: nineteen I'm sorry, eighteen eleven. And they actually performed on
Speaker 1: their own for many years, made a ton of money,
Speaker 1: They got married, had kids, moved to North Carolina of
Speaker 1: all places, and um that well actually interestingly, Daisy and
Speaker 1: Violet ended up in North Carolina too, Oh yeah, but
Speaker 1: under much much worse conditions. Yeah, but um to finish
Speaker 1: with Chang and Ang, they eventually lost their money. They
Speaker 1: were millionaires Losser Dough and then we'd worked for in
Speaker 1: him later on in life. But I get the impression
Speaker 1: that they did it kind of like at their leisure
Speaker 1: almost and ended up reamassing another fortune interest from working
Speaker 1: with Barnum. Yeah, and they fathered twenty one children between them,
Speaker 1: married to Paris sisters and can join. Each had a house.
Speaker 1: Then they would spend three days at one house, three
Speaker 1: days at the next house. Um and yeah, they had
Speaker 1: twenty one kids. Pretty amazing. So Daisy and Violet Hilton,
Speaker 1: they were known as Simeon twins back then. Of course, Uh,
Speaker 1: we don't use that German anymore, but I mean I
Speaker 1: remember that term when I was a kid. So it's
Speaker 1: definitely like held on for way too long. Remember Ronnie
Speaker 1: and Dinnie Galleon. Yeah, are they still with us? Let's
Speaker 1: find out. Well, you're you're checking that. I'll continue. Um,
Speaker 1: I believe that. Uh that Browning spotted Daisy and Violet
Speaker 1: and said, you guys are great, You're pretty, you can sing.
Speaker 1: You'll be a big part of my movie. And they
Speaker 1: they had been performers all along. Um. By eighteen, they
Speaker 1: were ontour with Bob Hope as part of his dance
Speaker 1: troup and made quite a bit of money. Um. But
Speaker 1: sadly their story into North Carolina because they made an
Speaker 1: appearance in at a midnight showing of Freaks at a
Speaker 1: drive in and their manager ditched them and this party
Speaker 1: don't get they had no way to leave North Carolina,
Speaker 1: so they just stayed there. Yeah, they had to get
Speaker 1: a job. That just seems odd to me. If you
Speaker 1: don't have any money and knowing to call to ask
Speaker 1: for money, you go get a job at a grocery
Speaker 1: store and I hope that you can eventually die there.
Speaker 1: It seems like they would have gotten enough money to
Speaker 1: leave and go back to wherever they live. Well, they
Speaker 1: died in Charlotte, North Carolina of the Hong Kong flu.
Speaker 1: What is that? It was a flu epidemic. She's that
Speaker 1: originated in Hong Kong. But it's a different world back then,
Speaker 1: Siamese twins died to Hong Kong flu. None of that
Speaker 1: seems politically correct to know. It doesn't who else was
Speaker 1: in Freaks? Uh, let's see, Um, there were a pair
Speaker 1: of little people named Harry and Daisy Earls, and they
Speaker 1: played Hans and frieda right, and Hans is like the
Speaker 1: ring master of the side show and um Frida. In
Speaker 1: real life, Daisy was known as the midget may West. Um.
Speaker 1: And in the movie they're engaged, but actually in real
Speaker 1: life they were a brother and sister. Yeah. And they
Speaker 1: were in the Wizard of Oz even as munchkins. And
Speaker 1: we're in a bunch of movies with Laurel and Hardy
Speaker 1: as well, So lifelong performers. So the the whole this
Speaker 1: whole movie. And again, um, we kind of we didn't
Speaker 1: finish with the schlitz Schlitzy was in it too and
Speaker 1: had this whole big speaking part. Um. It was just
Speaker 1: adorable in the movie. You could like Schlittsi's personality just
Speaker 1: shines right through the movie. Very likable. Yeah, and um
Speaker 1: Schlitze was actually uh adopted that no one had any
Speaker 1: idea who Schlitzy's biological family was. They were not around.
Speaker 1: So the um, the people he performed with and worked for,
Speaker 1: actually took care of him. And when his adopted father died,
Speaker 1: his father's daughter, biological daughter said hey, schlitzee, Um, I'm
Speaker 1: going to commit you to an asylum in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: And that's where Schlitzy was until one day just by
Speaker 1: total chance. Chuck. Uh. Another circus performer, I think a
Speaker 1: sword swallower right named Bill Bill you're schlitz Yeah, what
Speaker 1: are you doing here? You look so sad, And Schlitzy
Speaker 1: was like, I remember you, let's go. So Bill Unk
Speaker 1: intervened and got Schlitzy out of the institution, and uh
Speaker 1: he got to live out his days hanging out in
Speaker 1: the park being recogniz eyes by passers by. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: lived near MacArthur Park in downtown l A. And uh
Speaker 1: lived all the way up until at age seventy one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know you gotta see Schlitze. You should see freaks.
Speaker 1: But even if you don't see freaks, like, look up
Speaker 1: Schlitzy's part A, it'll probably make you want to see freaks.
Speaker 1: So Chuck, Um, the Freak Show is well. Some people
Speaker 1: say that it's still around and that it's just on
Speaker 1: TV in the form of reality shows. Like basically that
Speaker 1: same sentiment and everything still has found all over television. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exploiting uh people like uh, exploiting obesity and exploiting dwarf
Speaker 1: is um and uh, yeah it's on television now. Um.
Speaker 1: But the actual side show itself, Um, it's well, it
Speaker 1: went away in a lot of ways, at least as
Speaker 1: far as like a traveling side show went. And it
Speaker 1: went away with the rise of UM the rights for
Speaker 1: the disabled. That that that movement that came along in
Speaker 1: the starting in about the like late nineteenth century, early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and then really gaining steam by about the
Speaker 1: time Freaks came around the movie. Yeah, there were a
Speaker 1: few things that kind of killed it, UM, but one's definitely,
Speaker 1: like you said, science invented it and killed it as
Speaker 1: And here's something that is sort of reprehensible that I
Speaker 1: found out. There's a lot of these uh uh side
Speaker 1: shows would try and keep doctors away from the people
Speaker 1: because they thought, I don't want a doctor coming in
Speaker 1: here and saying that the dog faced boy actually has hypertrichosis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because and it's a condition where you have hair all
Speaker 1: over your face, because everybody he was a cave caveman, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Did you know? Actually there was another there was a
Speaker 1: woman UM named Julia Pastrana, and she had hypertrichosis too,
Speaker 1: and she ended up marrying her manager. They were married,
Speaker 1: they had a baby together, and she died during childbirth
Speaker 1: and and the baby was born still born, and her
Speaker 1: husband manager, who ostensibly loved her, said show must go on.
Speaker 1: So he mummified his wife and they're still born baby,
Speaker 1: and then took him around to display them in the
Speaker 1: side show as ever unbelievable. So uh again, doctors would
Speaker 1: come along and start explaining these things, and that helped
Speaker 1: kill the side show. The rise of television and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, at home entertainment meant people weren't going out
Speaker 1: to places like sideshows anymore. Yeah, they could stay in
Speaker 1: their house and watch television. And apparently you could still
Speaker 1: find sideshows like the American Horror Story. Was it freak
Speaker 1: Show last season or whatever. I don't watch that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: um it was setting I think the fifties, and I
Speaker 1: think at that time you could still see, you know,
Speaker 1: traveling sideshows here there, but they were pretty broken down
Speaker 1: by that point. They were pretty much gone. But by
Speaker 1: the sixties there was a girl named Carol Browning and
Speaker 1: she I all I could find is that she had
Speaker 1: deformed arms and legs. I don't know what that means,
Speaker 1: but that was the description that was given given of her.
Speaker 1: But she went to a side show and when she
Speaker 1: visited the carnival in North Carolina. I think she lived
Speaker 1: in Charlotte. No Rawleigh and Carol, what is it with
Speaker 1: North Carolina? That's where things beginning in with with sideshows. Well, Carol,
Speaker 1: Carol Grant I think was her name. Carol wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to the Agricultural Commission, and the Agricultural Commission is
Speaker 1: in charge of side shows at the time, at least
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, and said this is wrong, like, this
Speaker 1: is beyond wrong. I'm I'm offended by this and this
Speaker 1: this should not be allowed to happen. And she actually
Speaker 1: sparked a national conversation about whether side shows should be
Speaker 1: allowed to be around, even if performers wanted to be
Speaker 1: a part of them. And that was the final death
Speaker 1: knell that conversation. But a lot of people came out
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you know what these people, you guys
Speaker 1: call them freaks, but you also empty your pockets to them,
Speaker 1: and they're wealthy, they enjoy the acclaim, they enjoy the money,
Speaker 1: and um, it's actually you who has the problem. And
Speaker 1: it didn't have much of an effect. Sideshows went away,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the sideshow performers ended up going
Speaker 1: from being pretty wealthy or well paid or having a
Speaker 1: steady income to um being broke and ending up like
Speaker 1: being abandoned by their managers like Daisy and Violet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tricky ground. It is. It's pretty much sad
Speaker 1: all the way through except for some success stories. And
Speaker 1: that makes the whole thing so morally ambiguous if you
Speaker 1: think about it, Like, it's just so easy to look
Speaker 1: from here and be like you named your movie freaks
Speaker 1: or you you you charge people to look at the
Speaker 1: elephant man. But what about those people who say, I'm
Speaker 1: cool with this, I'm signing on for this. This is
Speaker 1: making a lot of very wealthy. I'm happy. I've I've
Speaker 1: had all sorts of opportunities that weren't open to me before,
Speaker 1: and I love what I do. What do you do
Speaker 1: about that? Like, you can't condemn it. It's not an
Speaker 1: easy black and white thing to to deal with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called a moral ambiguity. You said it that There
Speaker 1: have always been them, them, those them moral ambiguity. There
Speaker 1: always will be. Uh, you got anything else? No, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about sideshows, freaks, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, you can type those words into the search
Speaker 1: part how stuffworks dot Com. And since I said search
Speaker 1: parts not for listener mail. Hey, before listener mail, what
Speaker 1: about Ronnie and Donnie? Oh yeah, Ronnie and Donnie are alive. Awesome.
Speaker 1: They are sixty four years old as of past October
Speaker 1: I think twenty one, and they are the world's longest
Speaker 1: living conjoined twins. They're adorable too, they're oh hi ends right, yeah,
Speaker 1: very nice. What what documentary did we see on them
Speaker 1: or something? I can't remember, but we've we talked about
Speaker 1: him a lot over the years, So that's that's great news.
Speaker 1: But they're they're still at it all right, So listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one, uh quick feedback on the
Speaker 1: Bill Gates podcast. That is quick turnaround. Hey, guys, my
Speaker 1: name is Brendan Cologne announced like Cologne, and I'm a
Speaker 1: PhD student at Habba Medical School in Pamelas Silver's lab
Speaker 1: working on artificial photosynthesis. Shoutout Pamelas Silver. How about that.
Speaker 1: I'm a long time fan of the show and wanted
Speaker 1: to say what you guys did? You did? You did
Speaker 1: a great job covering renewable energy with Phil Gates. During
Speaker 1: the episode, there was a question about the current limitations
Speaker 1: of artificial photosynthetic systems at present, the biggest issues are scalability,
Speaker 1: he cost energy in producing the building materials, and the
Speaker 1: efficient extraction of produced rules. Uh. These are standard engineering hurdles,
Speaker 1: but like Mr Gates said, we can call them Bill
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't think you can, Brendon, we can,
Speaker 1: but we can. Uh. These are standard engineering hurdles, but
Speaker 1: like Mr Gates said, the final product needs to be viable. Specifically,
Speaker 1: such a product would need to harvest in store more
Speaker 1: energy in the short term than what was required to
Speaker 1: build it makes sense and do so on the cheap. Uh. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: biotechnology and photo voltaic technology is advancing at a breakneck pace,
Speaker 1: so the future of this technology looks bright. As new
Speaker 1: biochemistries are discovered, more products will be available for production,
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Speaker 1: individualized production chemicals on demand. I hope this helps. Feel
Speaker 1: free to reach out. Cheers Brendon, Thanks Brendon. Yeah, Brendon
Speaker 1: Cologne pronounced cologne. That's right. Uh. If you are an
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