WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: P.T. Barnum 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.920 Happy Saturday, Everybody. Petty Barnum has gotten a couple of 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:08.280 name drops on the show lately, and there is another 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:10.879 coming up this week, so we are bringing out our 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:14.760 episode on him as Today's Classic. This originally came out 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.920 on May sixteen, twenty twelve, from previous hosts of the show, 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:25.599 Sarah and Bablina enjoying Welcome to Stuff You Missed in 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:35.600 History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.320 welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.680 Chocolate Boarding, and we have a few podcast regulars who 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.440 we like to talk about. Queen Victoria, of course, seems 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.680 to pop up in the most unlikely of episodes, as 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:50.919 does Arthur Conan Doyle Lord Byron had a little run 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.160 there for a while, but Pete Barnum may have the 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.360 strangest record of all of those folks. I think if 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.680 an episode takes place in the nineteenth century, you'll often 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.280 find P. T. Barnum somewhere in it, trying to buy something, 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.479 trying to hustle someone. And once I learned a little 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.640 bit more about his life, though, those regular appearances seemed 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.280 a lot less unlikely, because in life he really was everywhere, 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:19.000 buying odds and ends off of folks, cooking up hoaxes, 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:25.240 entertaining celebrities, even running for state legislature. Today, of course 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.840 we think of P. T. Barnum as the great circus man, 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.200 the guy behind the greatest show on Earth. Along with 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:34.880 his cohort and former competitor James Bailey, the Barnum and 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.280 Bailey Circus, which eventually teamed up with Ringling brother Circus, 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.440 became the premier circus in the US. So if you've 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.480 seen one circus in the States, it's probably Ringling Brothers, 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.480 Barnum and Bailey. But while Barnum helped to make the 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.800 Three Ring Circus the massive spectacle we know today, he 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:52.640 really didn't get into the business until he was in 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:55.840 the sixties. For most of his entertainment career, Barnum ran 0:01:55.920 --> 0:02:00.520 a curiosity museum filled with wax works, fun house mirrors, 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.720 and other strange stuff like taxi jermy hybrid animals. He 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.480 also ran ten in one shows, which we'll talk about 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:09.639 a little bit more in a minute, and he managed 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.360 Menagerie's and he just really promoted everything he did, earning 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.799 the nickname the Prince of Humbug, which it's interesting to 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.160 point out here that humbug had the same meaning then 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.320 as it does today, you know, being deceitful on purpose. 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.040 But it also was the equivalent of what today we'd 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.800 call hype. And I think that's really the point to 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.840 remember when thinking about Barnum. He was a hype man. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.160 He was the prince of Humbug to the end. He 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:40.000 really was so phineas. Taylor Barnum was born July ten 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.080 in Bethel, Connecticut. His father was kind of a jack 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.079 of all trades who was a tailor, a farmer, tavern keeper, 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.639 and as a kid, p T. Barnum worked the farm, 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:52.880 but also showed his business streak pretty early. According to 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.239 his New York Times obituary, he sold homemade molasses candy 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.480 which sounds pretty good, and gingerbread, and even some sort 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.920 of moonshine he'd make called cherry rum, not quite as 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.959 appetizing as the molasses candy and gingerbread, I think. When 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.040 Barnum was fifteen, his father died, leaving him to care 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.959 for his mother and his five sisters and brothers. This 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.160 started a string of jobs and moves to get away 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.200 from manual farm work because he really disliked it. He 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.160 worked in a general store, moved to Brooklyn, and came 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.959 home to Bethel to open his own store at age eighteen. 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:29.240 Then he got married at nineteen to a local girl 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:32.760 named Charity Hallett. He published a weekly paper called The 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.880 Herald of Freedom and Dan Barry Connecticut, and was arrested 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:39.000 three times for libel gives you a little peek at 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.280 his his future career too, but it was his eighteen 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:44.800 thirty five moved back to New York City at the 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:47.840 age of twenty five that really got him into show 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:53.040 business and compared to his later insistence on family friendly entertainment, 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:57.600 his first gigs in New York were considered quite low amusements, 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:00.720 according to Timothy Gilfoyle and then Journal of the History 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:04.640 of Sexuality. He'd run minstrel shows. He'd write ads for 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.440 the Bowery Amphitheater in the very rough Five Points neighborhood, 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.480 and he would talent scout there too. He discovered acts 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.600 like William Henry Lane, who was better known later as 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:18.839 Juba Black Dancer, who broke into the all white minstrel shows. 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:23.360 But Barnum's first really big discovery was an old woman 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.719 named Joyce Heth and Heth claimed to have been born 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.560 in sixteen seventy four, which would have made her a 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:34.440 hundred and sixty one years old. But even more impressively, 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.680 she claimed to have been the nurse for the young 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.520 George Washington. She was blind and frail, but she'd smoke 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.000 a pipe and tell visitors stories about Washington as a boy. 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:49.480 To kind of authenticate these outrageous stories, Barnum presented her 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:53.040 alongside her seventeen twenty seven bill of sale to George 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:57.920 Washington's father. So no surprise probably that this was eventually 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.640 exposed as a hoax, but at certain he convinced to 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.080 Barnum that show biz was worth as a while. With 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.080 Heth and his act, he earned seven and fifty dollars 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.400 a week. So in eighteen forty one, after that first 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.080 big success with Health, Barnum decided that he wanted to 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.200 go into the museum business. Then it may be kind 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.880 of hard to understand why a hoax promoting former minstrel 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.440 show admin would want to get into museums, but David A. Norris, 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:27.880 writing in History Magazine, helped explain a little bit to 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:31.479 me how different and uncommon American museums were in the 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.880 eighteen forties from what they are today, and one of 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.599 the country's earliest museums was called Peels, and it was 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.880 in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Was established in seventeen eighty 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.040 four by Charles Wilson Peel, and visitors who were going 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.640 there could just see a real mixed bag of stuff, 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:52.480 folk clothing from around the world, a quote tiger cat, 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.599 even lava from Mount Vesuvius, or at least something billed 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:00.280 as lava from Mount Vesuvius. The first mastodon skull laton 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.680 shown in the United States was there, and there were 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.760 also plant and animal specimens from Lewis and Clark's expedition, 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.680 so anything you could imagine could be found, apparently at 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.400 Peel's museum. Another major museum in the style of Peels 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.000 was that of John Scutter, who ran his front of 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.200 five story marble building in New York City. When Scutter's 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.719 closed in one Barnum tried to buy it, but was 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.719 beat out by representatives from Peels, who paid for the 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.480 building in stock. When that stock collapse, though, Barnum wound 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.719 up being able not only to buy Scutters but quite 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:38.480 a few of Peel's exhibits too. He reopened this as 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.560 Barnum's American Museum and kept some of the flavor of 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:46.320 the old style museums, including the menagerie's tax Germy's exotic 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.280 items from around the world, But he also added another 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.920 popular element of the day, which was freak shows. Okay, 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.120 so it's time to talk a little bit about the 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.560 tradition of so called freak shows, because if we just 0:06:57.640 --> 0:06:59.599 jump right into it, it's going to seem a little 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.800 bit out of place. According to Laura Grand in History Magazine, 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:06.840 the tradition of freak shows had really been around for 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:09.600 quite some time by the time Barnum was getting into 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.200 the business, really since the early sixteen hundreds, right around 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.920 the time that many people stopped seeing major physical abnormalities 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:21.200 as some kind of divine punishment or bad omen But 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.080 in the nineteenth century, the exhibition of people with physical 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:29.480 abnormalities bearded ladies for example, or thin men, really started 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.960 to pick up. Ten and one shows would exhibit ten performers, 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.800 usually a mix of physically unusual people with folks with 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:41.320 unusual talents such as sword swallowing or fire eating. So 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.400 two of the earliest American freak show stars where Chang 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.960 and Hang can join twins the original Siamese Twins, of course, 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:53.920 and basically visitors would walk by these ten performers and 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:56.760 look at them. It's something that sounds very awkward and 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.680 uncomfortable today, but these shows were really getting very popular 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:05.040 in the nineteenth century, and Barnum's technique of combining these 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:07.640 ten and one shows and other types of freak show 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:11.200 acts with a curiosity filled museum proved to be a 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.040 major hit. Visitors would flood to his American museum, paying 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:19.720 twenty five cents for the privilege of seeing his curated 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.920 collection from around the world. He built the place as 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:27.560 admission to everything, and in addition to a sideshow type performances, 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:32.640 he staged beauty pageants, cultural exhibits, and dramatics like adaptations 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.440 of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels or those of Charles Dickens, 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:40.640 who was incidentally a visitor. So the museum was open 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.360 six days a week, fifteen hours a day. He was 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:45.640 a real modern businessman. I mean, I even think that 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.200 admission to everything sounds kind of like a slogan you 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:53.400 would hear today um. But well, many side shows at 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.520 the time featured adults only entertainment. Barnett was really big 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:01.360 on bringing the whole family, and the whole family was there, 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:05.000 though he would hustle them through the exhibits by displaying 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.440 a large sign in the back labeled egress, and so 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.440 people would wonder, what's an egress? You know, it's just 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:13.880 beyond that door I need to go see, And then 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.000 once they get there, they'd realize, oh, agres is just 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.280 another word for exit, and they'd have to pay if 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:30.440 they wanted to get back in again. The museum's first 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:34.200 big hit was the Fiji Mermaid, supposedly caught by a 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:38.280 Japanese fisherman, but this was really just a hoax personally 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.160 engineered by Barnum. It was a monkey's body sewn onto 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:44.800 a large fish tail. Other attractions over the years included 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:49.400 a giant python and electric eels, and albino Beauty, the 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:54.480 Wild Boy, who was an exceptionally hairy child, Pharaoh's Chariot Wheel, 0:09:54.760 --> 0:10:00.960 Rosa Richter, the Human Cannonball, Annie Jones, the Bearded Lady Eyes, W. Sprague, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:06.760 the American human Skeleton, kral Farini, the Missing Link, the 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.440 Wonder of the World, who was an armless man who 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.440 used his feet to do tricks like firing a pistol 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.160 or playing an instrument. In eighteen sixty one, Barnum even 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:19.920 added a white whale to his menagerie's pipes, would supply 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:24.160 it with fresh seawater, and he'd also include hoaxes of hoaxes, 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.920 like the fake version of the already fake Cardiff Giant 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.720 we discussed in our Historical Hoaxes episode from last summer. 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:36.280 After Barnum's offer to buy the real fake Giant was 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.080 turned down, he just made his own and started saying, well, 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:41.840 that one is fake, I have the real one, I think. 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:44.960 Ultimately he was sued and the judge rule, both of 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.000 your giants are fake. This is a non issue. Um. 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:52.000 Barnum himself was also something of an attraction at his museum, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:54.880 much like Madam Tussot was at her wax works. He 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:59.080 was fairly striking six two balding, He had blue eyes 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:02.200 and a giant nose in a pot belly, and was 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.960 always there, always roaming around if he wasn't out looking 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:10.120 for new curiosities to bring to it. Barnum's real name maker, though, 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.559 was his own distant cousin, Charles Stratton, and we'll talk 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:16.320 a little bit more about Stratton's life later. Maybe in 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.439 a different episode. He and Barnum went from being manager 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.319 and child performer to being business partners and lifelong friends. 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.920 But Stratton's appearance as General Tom Thumb introduced Barnum to 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:30.520 really new heights of fame. Stratton, who was a little 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:34.400 person tall when he was discovered by Barnum at age five, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.400 was trained to sing, dance, and do comic compressions. He 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:41.600 was a natural ham and an actor, and met folks 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:45.400 like Abraham Lincoln and even Queen Victoria. She is again 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:48.880 we need to start keeping a tally here. But Barnum 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:52.840 had ambitions outside of the museum, even though Tom Thumb 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:56.680 made him a huge hit in this world. According to 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.480 Encyclopedia Britannica, he wanted to be an impressar oh too, 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:04.160 and he recruited the Swedish soprano Jenny Lynn to make 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.000 that happen. She's somebody who appeared in our Hans Christian 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.800 Anderson episode. He had She was his celebrity crush. Essentially, 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.520 even though Barnum hadn't ever seen Lynn, hadn't ever heard 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.360 her sing, he blatched onto her, decided that she would 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.439 be his ticket to the real big time, and publicized 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:26.959 her as the Swedish Nightingale. He publicized her so successfully 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.600 that forty thou people were waiting for her upon her 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.640 arrival in the United States. She toured for about nine 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.160 months to sell out shows and really became one of 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.600 the earliest marketing sensations to She had all this tie 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.000 in merchandise connected to her, like a Jenny Lynn bonnet, 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:46.679 a Jenny Lynn porcelain set, all sorts of things that 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:49.679 are easy to imagine today, but we're fairly unusual at 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:53.200 the time. Barnum also got into politics. He served twice 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.720 in the Connecticut legislature and as mayor of Bridgeport, where 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.439 he was an especially strong opponent of racial discrimination and 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:04.280 and of prostitution. In eighteen forty eight, he became a teetotaler, 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.880 hiring undercover detectives to patrol his museum for anyone who 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:11.240 could be maybe sneaking in a drink, or just any 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.560 low people. He was very concerned about them potentially being 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.960 in his museum. Kind of odd considering his earlier show. 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:20.880 His career exactly when he got into real estate in 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:24.040 the eighteen fifties, he'd even have leaser's or buyers signed 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:27.280 covenants banning the use of liquor or tobacco on the property. 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.440 He even eventually made his performers swear off alcohol and 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.240 ran a temperance play at the museum for one hundred shows. 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.600 So to mark all of his achievements in life. At 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.960 this point in politics in the business world, Barnum decided 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.000 to build a palace. And you can't imagine somebody like 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.360 Barnum building a little understated house, but this really was 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.800 a palace. It was on seventeen acres in Connecticut. He 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.720 called it a Ranistan and the inspiration for the building 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.200 was Brighton's Royal Pavilion, which I saw when I was 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.600 in ninth grade, I think, and it's a can look 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.200 up a picture of it. It's pretty elaborate. Anything that 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:07.679 it's the inspiration for would be pretty elaborate to I'd imagine. 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:11.040 He entertained big names there too, people like Mark Twain, 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:16.320 Horace Greeley. But in eighteen fifty seven Barnum's luck started 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.520 to turn. The palace burned down, which started a chain 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:24.840 of misfortune that eventually drove Barnum coincidentally into the circus business. 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.280 He lost his money though through bad investments in a 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:30.000 clock of business and saw his museum burned down twice. 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.160 During the Civil War, Confederate spies had plotted to set 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.880 fires throughout New York City, including one at Barnum's. The 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.280 plot failed, with the museum burned down just a few 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:43.560 months later. Anyway, after twice rebuilding his museum and twice 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.360 losing it to fire, he switched to a menagerie, but 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.080 saw this burned down two in eighteen seventy three. That 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:54.320 same year, his wife Charity died, and two outward appearances. 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:59.960 After Charity died, Barnum waited ten months before remarrying twenty 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.000 two year old Nancy Fish, who was forty four years 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.960 younger than him. According to that Guilfoil article we mentioned earlier, 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:11.000 though he was actually remarried after only thirteen weeks and 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.160 before he had even returned home to the United States 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.840 following charities death. The whole thing was super super secret. 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.000 Nobody knew about it except the couple, and the marriage 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.880 certificate wasn't even found until nineteen four, so he really 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:29.400 took the secret to the grave. Barnum's remarriage also coincided 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.240 with his entrance into the circus world. Though he started 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:36.800 a traveling show and called it the Great Traveling World's Fair. 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:40.000 It was really bigger than most of the circuses of 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.920 the day, and Barnum would even arrange it was so big, 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:44.520 in fact, that it would have to be way on 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:48.040 the outskirts of town. So Barnum would arrange these excursion 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.640 trains so that people in cities could easily come to 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:54.080 his show. He could just shuttle them back and forth 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:56.960 and get more customers that way. In eighteen eighty he 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:01.000 merged with the Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.520 and the Grand International Allied Shows, and later became the 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.600 Barnum and Bailey Circus, better known as the Greatest Show 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.400 on Earth, which we talked about in the intro. Barnum, 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:13.480 of course, didn't invent the modern circus, but by working 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:17.080 with Bailey, he helped make it the giant, really spectacular 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:19.720 event that we know it as today, rather than the 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:23.120 sort of small time entertainment it was in the past. Exactly, 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:27.320 and Barnum's eighty two purchase of Jumbo the African Elephant 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.680 also helped to make this act a hit, really helped 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.200 to make the Barnum and Bailey Circus get off the ground. 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.200 Jumbo is another subject we're gonna say for later. He 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.640 has a pretty interesting story, but he was popular enough 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.720 that his name caught on as a term for Jumbo, 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.880 really really big um. That's just a little hint of 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:49.960 how crazy Jumbo's ultimate story is. Though, the Prince of 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:53.160 Humbug stayed devoted to self promotion to the end too. 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.960 In eighteen eighty four, he moved his autobiography into the 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.440 public domain because he was more concerned with attracting readers 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.800 than making money off of it. In at the age 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.840 of eighty one and clearly dying at this point, he 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.080 had a New York obituary published ahead of schedule so 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:12.280 that he could read it and enjoy his own hype 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.640 before he passed away. So P. T. Barnum died April 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:20.199 seven in Bridgeport, leaving most of his estate to his 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.680 sole grandson, and aside from his circus legacy, of course, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.679 I think Barnum is probably most famous for a quote 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:30.600 that he likely never said, and that's, of course, there's 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.000 a sucker born every minute. We meant to mention that 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:36.760 in the Cardiff Giant episode one quote that might suit 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:38.760 him a little better, though in one that he really 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.040 did say is that people quote appear disposed to be 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:45.880 amused even when they are conscious of being deceived. And 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.960 he got a lot of flak for some of his deceptions. 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.080 I think he was pretty frank about them in his autobiography, 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.280 but he stuck by it to a certain extent. Revised 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:59.479 some things in his in his biography, but was fairly 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.800 open a out the deceptions he had committed and how 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:05.280 he did them, and how it was all just in 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.280 good fun if you still enjoyed the show. According to 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.040 his biographer Candice Fleming, when he was asked whether he 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.520 wished he had done something more important with his life, 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.880 he said, quote, Amusement may not be the great aim 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:26.560 of life, but it gives us to our days. Thanks 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.240 so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:31.320 episode is out of the archive, if you heard an 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.040 email address or Facebook U r L or something similar 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:36.920 over the course of the show that could be obsolete now. 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.600 Our current email address is History Podcast at I heart 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.320 radio dot com. 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