Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, Everybody. Petty Barnum has gotten a couple of
Speaker 1: name drops on the show lately, and there is another
Speaker 1: coming up this week, so we are bringing out our
Speaker 1: episode on him as Today's Classic. This originally came out
Speaker 1: on May sixteen, twenty twelve, from previous hosts of the show,
Speaker 1: Sarah and Bablina enjoying Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina
Speaker 1: Chocolate Boarding, and we have a few podcast regulars who
Speaker 1: we like to talk about. Queen Victoria, of course, seems
Speaker 1: to pop up in the most unlikely of episodes, as
Speaker 1: does Arthur Conan Doyle Lord Byron had a little run
Speaker 1: there for a while, but Pete Barnum may have the
Speaker 1: strangest record of all of those folks. I think if
Speaker 1: an episode takes place in the nineteenth century, you'll often
Speaker 1: find P. T. Barnum somewhere in it, trying to buy something,
Speaker 1: trying to hustle someone. And once I learned a little
Speaker 1: bit more about his life, though, those regular appearances seemed
Speaker 1: a lot less unlikely, because in life he really was everywhere,
Speaker 1: buying odds and ends off of folks, cooking up hoaxes,
Speaker 1: entertaining celebrities, even running for state legislature. Today, of course
Speaker 1: we think of P. T. Barnum as the great circus man,
Speaker 1: the guy behind the greatest show on Earth. Along with
Speaker 1: his cohort and former competitor James Bailey, the Barnum and
Speaker 1: Bailey Circus, which eventually teamed up with Ringling brother Circus,
Speaker 1: became the premier circus in the US. So if you've
Speaker 1: seen one circus in the States, it's probably Ringling Brothers,
Speaker 1: Barnum and Bailey. But while Barnum helped to make the
Speaker 1: Three Ring Circus the massive spectacle we know today, he
Speaker 1: really didn't get into the business until he was in
Speaker 1: the sixties. For most of his entertainment career, Barnum ran
Speaker 1: a curiosity museum filled with wax works, fun house mirrors,
Speaker 1: and other strange stuff like taxi jermy hybrid animals. He
Speaker 1: also ran ten in one shows, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit more in a minute, and he managed
Speaker 1: Menagerie's and he just really promoted everything he did, earning
Speaker 1: the nickname the Prince of Humbug, which it's interesting to
Speaker 1: point out here that humbug had the same meaning then
Speaker 1: as it does today, you know, being deceitful on purpose.
Speaker 1: But it also was the equivalent of what today we'd
Speaker 1: call hype. And I think that's really the point to
Speaker 1: remember when thinking about Barnum. He was a hype man.
Speaker 1: He was the prince of Humbug to the end. He
Speaker 1: really was so phineas. Taylor Barnum was born July ten
Speaker 1: in Bethel, Connecticut. His father was kind of a jack
Speaker 1: of all trades who was a tailor, a farmer, tavern keeper,
Speaker 1: and as a kid, p T. Barnum worked the farm,
Speaker 1: but also showed his business streak pretty early. According to
Speaker 1: his New York Times obituary, he sold homemade molasses candy
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty good, and gingerbread, and even some sort
Speaker 1: of moonshine he'd make called cherry rum, not quite as
Speaker 1: appetizing as the molasses candy and gingerbread, I think. When
Speaker 1: Barnum was fifteen, his father died, leaving him to care
Speaker 1: for his mother and his five sisters and brothers. This
Speaker 1: started a string of jobs and moves to get away
Speaker 1: from manual farm work because he really disliked it. He
Speaker 1: worked in a general store, moved to Brooklyn, and came
Speaker 1: home to Bethel to open his own store at age eighteen.
Speaker 1: Then he got married at nineteen to a local girl
Speaker 1: named Charity Hallett. He published a weekly paper called The
Speaker 1: Herald of Freedom and Dan Barry Connecticut, and was arrested
Speaker 1: three times for libel gives you a little peek at
Speaker 1: his his future career too, but it was his eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five moved back to New York City at the
Speaker 1: age of twenty five that really got him into show
Speaker 1: business and compared to his later insistence on family friendly entertainment,
Speaker 1: his first gigs in New York were considered quite low amusements,
Speaker 1: according to Timothy Gilfoyle and then Journal of the History
Speaker 1: of Sexuality. He'd run minstrel shows. He'd write ads for
Speaker 1: the Bowery Amphitheater in the very rough Five Points neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and he would talent scout there too. He discovered acts
Speaker 1: like William Henry Lane, who was better known later as
Speaker 1: Juba Black Dancer, who broke into the all white minstrel shows.
Speaker 1: But Barnum's first really big discovery was an old woman
Speaker 1: named Joyce Heth and Heth claimed to have been born
Speaker 1: in sixteen seventy four, which would have made her a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one years old. But even more impressively,
Speaker 1: she claimed to have been the nurse for the young
Speaker 1: George Washington. She was blind and frail, but she'd smoke
Speaker 1: a pipe and tell visitors stories about Washington as a boy.
Speaker 1: To kind of authenticate these outrageous stories, Barnum presented her
Speaker 1: alongside her seventeen twenty seven bill of sale to George
Speaker 1: Washington's father. So no surprise probably that this was eventually
Speaker 1: exposed as a hoax, but at certain he convinced to
Speaker 1: Barnum that show biz was worth as a while. With
Speaker 1: Heth and his act, he earned seven and fifty dollars
Speaker 1: a week. So in eighteen forty one, after that first
Speaker 1: big success with Health, Barnum decided that he wanted to
Speaker 1: go into the museum business. Then it may be kind
Speaker 1: of hard to understand why a hoax promoting former minstrel
Speaker 1: show admin would want to get into museums, but David A. Norris,
Speaker 1: writing in History Magazine, helped explain a little bit to
Speaker 1: me how different and uncommon American museums were in the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties from what they are today, and one of
Speaker 1: the country's earliest museums was called Peels, and it was
Speaker 1: in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Was established in seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: four by Charles Wilson Peel, and visitors who were going
Speaker 1: there could just see a real mixed bag of stuff,
Speaker 1: folk clothing from around the world, a quote tiger cat,
Speaker 1: even lava from Mount Vesuvius, or at least something billed
Speaker 1: as lava from Mount Vesuvius. The first mastodon skull laton
Speaker 1: shown in the United States was there, and there were
Speaker 1: also plant and animal specimens from Lewis and Clark's expedition,
Speaker 1: so anything you could imagine could be found, apparently at
Speaker 1: Peel's museum. Another major museum in the style of Peels
Speaker 1: was that of John Scutter, who ran his front of
Speaker 1: five story marble building in New York City. When Scutter's
Speaker 1: closed in one Barnum tried to buy it, but was
Speaker 1: beat out by representatives from Peels, who paid for the
Speaker 1: building in stock. When that stock collapse, though, Barnum wound
Speaker 1: up being able not only to buy Scutters but quite
Speaker 1: a few of Peel's exhibits too. He reopened this as
Speaker 1: Barnum's American Museum and kept some of the flavor of
Speaker 1: the old style museums, including the menagerie's tax Germy's exotic
Speaker 1: items from around the world, But he also added another
Speaker 1: popular element of the day, which was freak shows. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's time to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: tradition of so called freak shows, because if we just
Speaker 1: jump right into it, it's going to seem a little
Speaker 1: bit out of place. According to Laura Grand in History Magazine,
Speaker 1: the tradition of freak shows had really been around for
Speaker 1: quite some time by the time Barnum was getting into
Speaker 1: the business, really since the early sixteen hundreds, right around
Speaker 1: the time that many people stopped seeing major physical abnormalities
Speaker 1: as some kind of divine punishment or bad omen But
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, the exhibition of people with physical
Speaker 1: abnormalities bearded ladies for example, or thin men, really started
Speaker 1: to pick up. Ten and one shows would exhibit ten performers,
Speaker 1: usually a mix of physically unusual people with folks with
Speaker 1: unusual talents such as sword swallowing or fire eating. So
Speaker 1: two of the earliest American freak show stars where Chang
Speaker 1: and Hang can join twins the original Siamese Twins, of course,
Speaker 1: and basically visitors would walk by these ten performers and
Speaker 1: look at them. It's something that sounds very awkward and
Speaker 1: uncomfortable today, but these shows were really getting very popular
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, and Barnum's technique of combining these
Speaker 1: ten and one shows and other types of freak show
Speaker 1: acts with a curiosity filled museum proved to be a
Speaker 1: major hit. Visitors would flood to his American museum, paying
Speaker 1: twenty five cents for the privilege of seeing his curated
Speaker 1: collection from around the world. He built the place as
Speaker 1: admission to everything, and in addition to a sideshow type performances,
Speaker 1: he staged beauty pageants, cultural exhibits, and dramatics like adaptations
Speaker 1: of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels or those of Charles Dickens,
Speaker 1: who was incidentally a visitor. So the museum was open
Speaker 1: six days a week, fifteen hours a day. He was
Speaker 1: a real modern businessman. I mean, I even think that
Speaker 1: admission to everything sounds kind of like a slogan you
Speaker 1: would hear today um. But well, many side shows at
Speaker 1: the time featured adults only entertainment. Barnett was really big
Speaker 1: on bringing the whole family, and the whole family was there,
Speaker 1: though he would hustle them through the exhibits by displaying
Speaker 1: a large sign in the back labeled egress, and so
Speaker 1: people would wonder, what's an egress? You know, it's just
Speaker 1: beyond that door I need to go see, And then
Speaker 1: once they get there, they'd realize, oh, agres is just
Speaker 1: another word for exit, and they'd have to pay if
Speaker 1: they wanted to get back in again. The museum's first
Speaker 1: big hit was the Fiji Mermaid, supposedly caught by a
Speaker 1: Japanese fisherman, but this was really just a hoax personally
Speaker 1: engineered by Barnum. It was a monkey's body sewn onto
Speaker 1: a large fish tail. Other attractions over the years included
Speaker 1: a giant python and electric eels, and albino Beauty, the
Speaker 1: Wild Boy, who was an exceptionally hairy child, Pharaoh's Chariot Wheel,
Speaker 1: Rosa Richter, the Human Cannonball, Annie Jones, the Bearded Lady Eyes, W. Sprague,
Speaker 1: the American human Skeleton, kral Farini, the Missing Link, the
Speaker 1: Wonder of the World, who was an armless man who
Speaker 1: used his feet to do tricks like firing a pistol
Speaker 1: or playing an instrument. In eighteen sixty one, Barnum even
Speaker 1: added a white whale to his menagerie's pipes, would supply
Speaker 1: it with fresh seawater, and he'd also include hoaxes of hoaxes,
Speaker 1: like the fake version of the already fake Cardiff Giant
Speaker 1: we discussed in our Historical Hoaxes episode from last summer.
Speaker 1: After Barnum's offer to buy the real fake Giant was
Speaker 1: turned down, he just made his own and started saying, well,
Speaker 1: that one is fake, I have the real one, I think.
Speaker 1: Ultimately he was sued and the judge rule, both of
Speaker 1: your giants are fake. This is a non issue. Um.
Speaker 1: Barnum himself was also something of an attraction at his museum,
Speaker 1: much like Madam Tussot was at her wax works. He
Speaker 1: was fairly striking six two balding, He had blue eyes
Speaker 1: and a giant nose in a pot belly, and was
Speaker 1: always there, always roaming around if he wasn't out looking
Speaker 1: for new curiosities to bring to it. Barnum's real name maker, though,
Speaker 1: was his own distant cousin, Charles Stratton, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Stratton's life later. Maybe in
Speaker 1: a different episode. He and Barnum went from being manager
Speaker 1: and child performer to being business partners and lifelong friends.
Speaker 1: But Stratton's appearance as General Tom Thumb introduced Barnum to
Speaker 1: really new heights of fame. Stratton, who was a little
Speaker 1: person tall when he was discovered by Barnum at age five,
Speaker 1: was trained to sing, dance, and do comic compressions. He
Speaker 1: was a natural ham and an actor, and met folks
Speaker 1: like Abraham Lincoln and even Queen Victoria. She is again
Speaker 1: we need to start keeping a tally here. But Barnum
Speaker 1: had ambitions outside of the museum, even though Tom Thumb
Speaker 1: made him a huge hit in this world. According to
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica, he wanted to be an impressar oh too,
Speaker 1: and he recruited the Swedish soprano Jenny Lynn to make
Speaker 1: that happen. She's somebody who appeared in our Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson episode. He had She was his celebrity crush. Essentially,
Speaker 1: even though Barnum hadn't ever seen Lynn, hadn't ever heard
Speaker 1: her sing, he blatched onto her, decided that she would
Speaker 1: be his ticket to the real big time, and publicized
Speaker 1: her as the Swedish Nightingale. He publicized her so successfully
Speaker 1: that forty thou people were waiting for her upon her
Speaker 1: arrival in the United States. She toured for about nine
Speaker 1: months to sell out shows and really became one of
Speaker 1: the earliest marketing sensations to She had all this tie
Speaker 1: in merchandise connected to her, like a Jenny Lynn bonnet,
Speaker 1: a Jenny Lynn porcelain set, all sorts of things that
Speaker 1: are easy to imagine today, but we're fairly unusual at
Speaker 1: the time. Barnum also got into politics. He served twice
Speaker 1: in the Connecticut legislature and as mayor of Bridgeport, where
Speaker 1: he was an especially strong opponent of racial discrimination and
Speaker 1: and of prostitution. In eighteen forty eight, he became a teetotaler,
Speaker 1: hiring undercover detectives to patrol his museum for anyone who
Speaker 1: could be maybe sneaking in a drink, or just any
Speaker 1: low people. He was very concerned about them potentially being
Speaker 1: in his museum. Kind of odd considering his earlier show.
Speaker 1: His career exactly when he got into real estate in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties, he'd even have leaser's or buyers signed
Speaker 1: covenants banning the use of liquor or tobacco on the property.
Speaker 1: He even eventually made his performers swear off alcohol and
Speaker 1: ran a temperance play at the museum for one hundred shows.
Speaker 1: So to mark all of his achievements in life. At
Speaker 1: this point in politics in the business world, Barnum decided
Speaker 1: to build a palace. And you can't imagine somebody like
Speaker 1: Barnum building a little understated house, but this really was
Speaker 1: a palace. It was on seventeen acres in Connecticut. He
Speaker 1: called it a Ranistan and the inspiration for the building
Speaker 1: was Brighton's Royal Pavilion, which I saw when I was
Speaker 1: in ninth grade, I think, and it's a can look
Speaker 1: up a picture of it. It's pretty elaborate. Anything that
Speaker 1: it's the inspiration for would be pretty elaborate to I'd imagine.
Speaker 1: He entertained big names there too, people like Mark Twain,
Speaker 1: Horace Greeley. But in eighteen fifty seven Barnum's luck started
Speaker 1: to turn. The palace burned down, which started a chain
Speaker 1: of misfortune that eventually drove Barnum coincidentally into the circus business.
Speaker 1: He lost his money though through bad investments in a
Speaker 1: clock of business and saw his museum burned down twice.
Speaker 1: During the Civil War, Confederate spies had plotted to set
Speaker 1: fires throughout New York City, including one at Barnum's. The
Speaker 1: plot failed, with the museum burned down just a few
Speaker 1: months later. Anyway, after twice rebuilding his museum and twice
Speaker 1: losing it to fire, he switched to a menagerie, but
Speaker 1: saw this burned down two in eighteen seventy three. That
Speaker 1: same year, his wife Charity died, and two outward appearances.
Speaker 1: After Charity died, Barnum waited ten months before remarrying twenty
Speaker 1: two year old Nancy Fish, who was forty four years
Speaker 1: younger than him. According to that Guilfoil article we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: though he was actually remarried after only thirteen weeks and
Speaker 1: before he had even returned home to the United States
Speaker 1: following charities death. The whole thing was super super secret.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew about it except the couple, and the marriage
Speaker 1: certificate wasn't even found until nineteen four, so he really
Speaker 1: took the secret to the grave. Barnum's remarriage also coincided
Speaker 1: with his entrance into the circus world. Though he started
Speaker 1: a traveling show and called it the Great Traveling World's Fair.
Speaker 1: It was really bigger than most of the circuses of
Speaker 1: the day, and Barnum would even arrange it was so big,
Speaker 1: in fact, that it would have to be way on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of town. So Barnum would arrange these excursion
Speaker 1: trains so that people in cities could easily come to
Speaker 1: his show. He could just shuttle them back and forth
Speaker 1: and get more customers that way. In eighteen eighty he
Speaker 1: merged with the Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie
Speaker 1: and the Grand International Allied Shows, and later became the
Speaker 1: Barnum and Bailey Circus, better known as the Greatest Show
Speaker 1: on Earth, which we talked about in the intro. Barnum,
Speaker 1: of course, didn't invent the modern circus, but by working
Speaker 1: with Bailey, he helped make it the giant, really spectacular
Speaker 1: event that we know it as today, rather than the
Speaker 1: sort of small time entertainment it was in the past. Exactly,
Speaker 1: and Barnum's eighty two purchase of Jumbo the African Elephant
Speaker 1: also helped to make this act a hit, really helped
Speaker 1: to make the Barnum and Bailey Circus get off the ground.
Speaker 1: Jumbo is another subject we're gonna say for later. He
Speaker 1: has a pretty interesting story, but he was popular enough
Speaker 1: that his name caught on as a term for Jumbo,
Speaker 1: really really big um. That's just a little hint of
Speaker 1: how crazy Jumbo's ultimate story is. Though, the Prince of
Speaker 1: Humbug stayed devoted to self promotion to the end too.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty four, he moved his autobiography into the
Speaker 1: public domain because he was more concerned with attracting readers
Speaker 1: than making money off of it. In at the age
Speaker 1: of eighty one and clearly dying at this point, he
Speaker 1: had a New York obituary published ahead of schedule so
Speaker 1: that he could read it and enjoy his own hype
Speaker 1: before he passed away. So P. T. Barnum died April
Speaker 1: seven in Bridgeport, leaving most of his estate to his
Speaker 1: sole grandson, and aside from his circus legacy, of course,
Speaker 1: I think Barnum is probably most famous for a quote
Speaker 1: that he likely never said, and that's, of course, there's
Speaker 1: a sucker born every minute. We meant to mention that
Speaker 1: in the Cardiff Giant episode one quote that might suit
Speaker 1: him a little better, though in one that he really
Speaker 1: did say is that people quote appear disposed to be
Speaker 1: amused even when they are conscious of being deceived. And
Speaker 1: he got a lot of flak for some of his deceptions.
Speaker 1: I think he was pretty frank about them in his autobiography,
Speaker 1: but he stuck by it to a certain extent. Revised
Speaker 1: some things in his in his biography, but was fairly
Speaker 1: open a out the deceptions he had committed and how
Speaker 1: he did them, and how it was all just in
Speaker 1: good fun if you still enjoyed the show. According to
Speaker 1: his biographer Candice Fleming, when he was asked whether he
Speaker 1: wished he had done something more important with his life,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, Amusement may not be the great aim
Speaker 1: of life, but it gives us to our days. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
Speaker 1: episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
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Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at I heart
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