Once upon a time, it was a common cry across the fairgrounds and carnivals of the world! A suited man in a top-hat and cane, bellowing through a big, shiny brass horn:

“Roll up! Roll up! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Come on, come all! See the Fat Boy, the Crab Family, the Lion Boy and the smallest man in the world! See the Elephant Man and the Limbless Wonder, the Rubber Man and the Teen Titan! Pay only a penny to gawp and ogle at these wonders of human perversion!”

But what was the reality of life in a circus sideshow? What did being a freak-show entertainer actually entail? In the 21st century, such entertainment is rare, but it still exists in one form or another, and most likely – it will always exist, because humankind has always had a fascination with the bizarre and the abnormal, the strange, the rare and the wonderful!

In modern times, freak shows tend to have an entirely negative perception by the general public, but was this always the case? In this posting, we’ll be exploring the reality of life ‘on the road’ as a traveling showman and as a freak show or sideshow attraction, as well as getting acquainted with some of the most famous sideshow acts in history!

What Is a Sideshow?

A sideshow was the name given to any secondary or side-act performed or exhibited at a fairground which was not part of the main event or main performances being held at the circus during the time of its stay. Sideshows could be anything from someone walking on coals to sword-swallowing, breathing fire or juggling any number or range of strange or even dangerous objects. Or, it could completely depart from the realm of ‘normal’ entertainment – and enter the realm of the freak show!

A ‘freak show’, as the name suggested, was a variety of ‘freaks’ who traveled with the circus as performers and exhibitors, displaying themselves for the amusement, shock, education or sometimes, just the sheer wonderment – of the paying public – and paying public, is the key here – if you wanted to see one of the freaks, or meet them, touch them, ask them questions or take photographs of them – you were obliged to pay them for it – this wasn’t some free exhibition! Displaying themselves to the public was their job, and like all employees, the freaks expected to be paid for their time and effort!

What is a Freak Show?

A freak show is similar to, but not the same as, a sideshow. A sideshow is any type of sideline attraction at a fairground. A freak show is a type of sideshow focusing on ‘freaks of nature’ – human beings which were in one way odd, different, strange or otherwise mentally or physically deformed or handicapped in one way or another.

How Long have Freak Shows Been Around?

Honestly? Probably since the dawn of time.

The modern idea of the ‘freak show’ dates back at least to the 1630s, and by the 18th century, traveling freaks (either individuals, pairs or small groups), who exhibited themselves at shows around Europe, started becoming common. It became common for freaks to entertain royalty and nobility, and from as early as the 1600s, the position of ‘Court Dwarf’ started to spread around Europe.

What is a Court Dwarf?

A court dwarf was a little person, or person who grew up with one of any of the many forms of dwarfism, who were employed by royal and imperial courts throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, to act as entertainers and companions to the ruling monarch and their family. In a sense, these were the first type of ‘freak show’ to ever officially exist.

Due to their rarity, dwarfs were actively traded among royal and princely families, and a dwarf could be given as a ‘gift’ from one ruler to another, as a sign of goodwill. Their unique appearance made court dwarfs very popular, and dwarfs often attained great wealth from the sizable stipends paid to them by the rulers whom they served. This practice lasted for over two hundred years, and the last official court dwarf was, Josef Boruwlaski, a Pole born in 1739. Although he had no official aristocratic title, his position as a Court Dwarf led to the nickname of ‘Count Jozef’.

A musician and entertainer, 3ft 3in ‘Count’ Jozef Boruwlaski died in 1837 at the impressive age of 97. He was most famous, in his day, for his meeting with Daniel Lambert – the 700-pound former prison-guard who was the fattest man in the world up to that point in recorded history. The official meeting of the world’s largest, and smallest men was reported widely in English newspapers at the time.

The Beginnings of Freak Shows

Count Boruwlaski and his contemporaries, such as Mr. Lambert, did exhibit themselves and did earn money from it. Indeed, ogling at Daniel Lambert’s gigantic obesity was highly fashionable in Georgian-era high-society…so fashionable in fact, that Lambert had to discontinue the practice, because it gave him absolutely no privacy!

However, the days of the court dwarf were numbered, and Boruwlaski is widely considered to be the last of his kind. He lived so long that he outlived all other court dwarfs, and after his death at the dawn of the Victorian era, the practice was discontinued. The death of the ‘Durham Dwarf’ effectively marked the end of one era of freak shows, and the beginning of another era – the professional, commercially-minded and enterprising freak-show operator and performer!

And for this, we must largely thank…one man. And that man is the incredibly flamboyant Mr. Phineas Taylor Barnum!…Better known as P.T. Barnum, arguably the most famous 19th century showman ever!

P.T. Barnum and the Greatest Show on Earth!

Born in 1810, Barnum’s actions basically gave rise to the world’s first official freak-show, as we might recognise it today. In 1841, Barnum purchased an old exhibition building on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York City. Naming it “Barnum’s American Museum”, it served as a showcase for all the weird and wonderful things that he could find, with which to shock and amaze the paying public!

Not all of Barnum’s exhibits were entirely truthful – for example there was the “Feejee Mermaid” (a monkey and a fish sewn together!) or Joice Heth – purported to be the nursemaid of George Washington. Aged 161, Barnum passed her off as the “oldest living person in the world!”…when she died, an autopsy revealed that her age was closer to 80, rather than 160-odd.

But, in among the frauds and fakes, the half-truths and outright lies, Barnum’s American Museum did host some real and actual human oddities, and some of them became world-famous in their time! From the smallest man in the world to the dog-faced man, the lion boy and the camel woman, Barnum and his collection of freaks and sideshows shocked, wowed and amazed the public. In the 1840s, 50s and 60s, a good day out in the Big Apple was not considered to be complete without a visit to the museum.

Famous Freak Show Acts and Performers

One of the reasons we know so much about Victorian-era freak shows is because they were heavily promoted and advertised. There is a huge wealth of information out there documenting everything about them – photographs, advertising posters, postcards, newspaper articles, diary entries, and even biographies and autobiographies, written by the freaks themselves, or by the people who knew them.

So, who were these people, and what were their histories? Here, we’ll have a look at some of the most famous freak show attractions of all time.

NAME: Charles Sherwood Stratton.
BIRTH-DEATH: 1838 – 1885.
STAGE NAME: General Tom Thumb.
CLAIM TO FAME: Smallest man in the world.

Born on the 4th of January, 1838, Charles S. Stratton is arguably the most famous circus freak who ever lived. He was also related to P.T. Barnum – they were distant cousins. When Barnum heard about his newborn cousin and his diminutive size, he couldn’t help but try to convince the boy’s parents that the child would be perfect for his American Museum. After working out a deal with Stratton’s parents, Barnum taught young Charles the elemental aspects of showbiz! Singing, dancing, how to be witty and smart and funny. Stratton’s father assisted with his son’s adjustment to the world of the circus, and accompanied Charles around, to aid in his adjustment.

Stratton became famous for impersonating famous ‘small people’ from history and mythology such as Napoleon Bonaparte, and Cupid, the baby angel of love. Once he’d started working at Barnum’s Museum, Charles Stratton was just four years old and was barely over two feet tall.

Stratton proved to be a natural comedian, and in 1856, when Stratton was eighteen, Barnum took him on their first European tour. By now, Stratton had attained the nickname of ‘General Tom Thumb’ and used this as his stage-name. Stratton’s popularity was astronomical, and he was soon more famous and more popular than almost any other big-name celebrity of the mid-1800s! He met Queen Victoria and Prince Albert Edward while he was in London. Queen Victoria was at first enraged, but then charmed, by the dwarf’s inability to walk backwards with ease (it was considered impolite to turn your back on the monarch) and she thought that everything about Stratton was adorable and comic, and invited him back to Buckingham Palace a number of times.

Back in America, Stratton’s fame only grew stronger when he met President Lincoln and Stratton notoriety made freak shows and sideshows widely socially-acceptable for the first time in history. People started treating circus freaks as entertainers and people, professionals who deserved respect, and not as oddities to be ogled at and degraded.

In 1863, Stratton married Lavinia Warren. Like everything else about his life, P.T. Barnum hammed this up for the press like it was going out of style. Stratton’s wedding photographs appeared in newspapers and magazines…and you could even gather a collectors’ set of them! His wedding was attended by thousands of people, and to greet all the guests who came to his house afterwards, Charles had to stand on top of a grand piano just to shake all their hands!

Stratton became obscenely rich from his freak-show appearances. He owned two houses, bailed out his cousin P.T. Barnum when the latter hit financial struggles, and even bought himself his own private yacht! Unfortunately, Stratton’s life was all too brief, and he died aged 45, in 1885, shortly after suffering a stroke.

NAME: Wilfred Westwood
BIRTH-DEATH: 1897 – 1939.
STAGE NAME: N/A
CLAIM TO FAME: Circus Fat Boy

A staple of freak shows almost from day one was the classic ‘circus fat boy’ – typically an extremely obese, prepubescent child (usually a boy, although circus fat girls also existed – Wilfred’s older sister Ruby was a circus fat girl), whose job it was to shock and wow audiences with his gigantic size! Numerous sideshow fat boys existed throughout history, but one of the best documented was young Wilfred Westwood.

A native of New Zealand, Wilfred was the second-last child born into a large family, in 1897. Including his parents, there were nine people! Wilfred had an older sister (Ruby, also a circus fat-child), an older sister Eva, three older brothers, and one younger sister, Loyis Westwood. Together, Wilfred and Ruby brought the Westwood family incredible fame, and they toured Australia, New Zealand and several other countries besides. As early as 1900, when Wilfred was just three years old, newspaper articles were being written about him and his sister, as circus-promoters and journalists started trying to publicise the ‘giant children’.

By the age of 11, Wilfred weighed over 300lbs, and yet, despite this, he wasn’t even the largest circus fat-boy in the world…around the same time, John Trunley, the ‘Fat Boy of Peckham’, weighed over 350 pounds!

Trunley and Westwood were far from the only circus fat boys, but they were possibly, the most famous. In the 1800s and early 1900s, when infant and child mortality was as high as 25 or even 30%, and when millions of children were underfed and chronically malnourished (a public health-concern that caused the British government to start free school meals for underprivileged children) – children of incredible obesity were something to be celebrated and admired! At a time when the health-effects of extreme obesity were poorly understood, fatter children were seen as well-fed, healthy children, who were just a little bigger than the others.

Trunley became a watchmaker in later life, and died in 1944. Westwood became a glass-blower, and was killed in a car-crash in 1939.

NAME: Stephan Bibrowski
BIRTH-DEATH: 1890 – 1932
STAGE NAME: Lionel the Lion Boy!
CLAIM TO FAME: Hypertrichosis.

Born in Poland in 1890, young Stephan was abandoned by his mother almost since birth, when he started exhibiting symptoms of the phenomenally rare genetic condition known today as ‘Hypertrichosis’ or ‘Wolfman syndrome’, where the entire body – save the hands, and feet – are covered in hair!

Stephan’s mother believed that she had been a victim of ‘Maternal Impression’, also known as ‘Monstrous Birth Syndrome’, a popular (but unfounded) medical theory that had existed since at least the 1600s. Never heard of it? Not surprising.

The theory of maternal impression, or the ‘Monstrous Birth’ theory was the belief that if an expectant mother experienced some kind of trauma, her child would bear the marks of that trauma upon birth. In Bibrowski’s case, his father was attacked by a lion, which led his mother to believe that it was life-scarring event that led to her giving birth to a ‘lion’ of her own.

Young Stefan was taken in by the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus (yes, that Barnum), and by the age of 11 in 1901, he was touring Europe and America, billed as “Lionel the Lion Boy!” Apart from appearing as a sideshow, Lionel also performed acrobatic feats to impress the audiences who came to see him.

By the late 1920s, Lionel, or Bibrowski, started getting tired of the circus-life. He retired, and moved to Germany. He died in Berlin in 1932, at the age of 41. Cause of death: Heart attack.

NAME: Chang & Eng Bunker
BIRTH-DEATH: 1811-1874
STAGE NAME: The Siamese Twins
CLAIM TO FAME: Conjoined Twins

Ever heard the term ‘Siamese Twins’, referring to conjoined twins? Ever wondered where the term came from?

You have P.T. Barnum and Chang and Eng Bunker to thank for that!

Born in Siam (Thailand), Chang and Eng were of mixed American-and-Siamese heritage, and moved to America when they were still children. In later life, they adopted the more English-sounding surname ‘Bunker’ as part of their Americanisation. Chang and Eng started touring in 1829, and toured and exhibited themselves on and off for the rest of their lives, stopping in 1839. They had by this time become fluent in English, and took the time off to build a home for themselves, get married, and even raise children, but ten years later, they found themselves getting bored with ‘retirement’, and in 1849, they returned to the touring circuit through the 1850s and 60s.

The Bunkers were noted slaveholders in the years leading up to the Civil War, and in the period of Reconstruction that followed, much was made of this in the public press, which earned them great public backlash from the audiences who came to witness their performances. Depression and declining health led to the twins’ death within hours of each other, in 1874.

Apart from their fame in giving rise to the term ‘Siamese twins’, Chang and Eng Bunker hold another distinction – they were one of the longest-lived sets of conjoined twins in history – a record not surpassed until 2012!

NAME: Joseph Carey Merrick
BIRTH-DEATH: 1862 – 1890
STAGE NAME: The Elephant Man
CLAIM TO FAME: Proteus Syndrome (?)

By far the most famous freak show exhibitor in history (apart from Tom Thumb), has to have been Joseph Carey Merrick – better known as the Elephant Man.

Born in 1862, Merrick had a brutally hard and incredibly short life. His mother, one of the few people to care for him, died young, leaving him in the care of his father and stepmother. Repulsed by his appearance, they abandoned him, whereupon, Joseph was taken in by his uncle, a barber and hairdresser.

Numerous attempts to find Joseph meaningful work (from hawking wares to rolling cigars, and even sweeping the floor of his uncle’s barbershop) all ended in failure due to his increasing deformities. Young Merrick ended up in the workhouse at least twice in his life, before finally deciding to turn his attention to the world of the circus freak!

Circus freaks were a world apart from everybody else in polite, straitlaced, and morally-upright Victorian society. They were a society of outcasts and misfits – the perfect place, Merrick reasoned, for someone like himself.

With the assistance of an understanding circus manager, Merrick started out on his career as a circus freak. In this role he remained for a few years, occupying a room behind a shop across the Whitechapel Road from the London Hospital. It was from this hospital that Frederick Treves, a noted surgeon, would come to meet Merrick. He studied his deformities and even had him photographed and examined. Merrick left London and traveled to Europe, where his fortunes took a downturn yet again.

Merrick had made a considerable amount of money from selling copies of his biography, which he sold alongside his freak-show act. The (slightly fictionalised) account of his life detailed his birth and upbringing, and the belief that he was the result of maternal impression. Mugged and robbed while in France, Merrick had lost almost all the money he’d made during his time as a circus-freak and returned to London almost penniless, arriving at Liverpool Street Station in 1886.

In an incident dramatically recreated in the 1980 film ‘The Elephant Man’, Merrick collapses from exhaustion, and only Dr. Treves’ business-card, in Merrick’s coat-pocket, gives a clue to his identity.

After a great deal of campaigning, fundraising, and philanthropic donations, enough funds were raised for the Elephant Man to live indefinitely in the London Hospital in Whitechapel. ‘The London’ was founded in the 1700s as a charity hospital, providing free healthcare to the impoverished and destitute. It survived entirely on public donations, and the physicians who worked there did so voluntarily, giving up a few days a week from their Harley Street addresses to tend to the sick and dying in the East End. In many respects, the London was the best place for Merrick. It was used to dealing with the very worst of the human condition – attempted suicides, alcoholism, industrial accidents, and infectious disease – which also meant that it was one of the most advanced medical centers in the world at the time. It was to the London Hospital that Jack the Ripper’s victims were taken, in 1888, for their autopsies.

Despite this background, the hospital had a strict policy of not admitting ‘incurables’ – those who had conditions which could not be treated, and which would only be a drain on the hospital’s already limited funds. It took a lot of convincing of the hospital’s board to allow Merrick special dispensation for his unique condition. It was more than obvious that he would not survive without round-the-clock medical care, and once enough funds had been raised, a two-room suite was laid out for him on the ground floor of the hospital. Here he would live for the rest of his life.

Merrick’s health improved, and it was during this time that Treves photographed Merrick once more, and interviewed him extensively about his life. Meeting the ‘Elephant Man’ became highly fashionable, and many of London’s wealthiest residents – including the future Queen Alexandra – would visit him at the hospital.

Joseph Carey Merrick – the Elephant Man – died in 1890. The autopsy on his disfigured body was carried out by the man who had come to know him better than anybody else – Sir Frederick Treves. Treves’ examination and the subsequent certificate he filled out, listed the cause of death as ‘Asphyxiation. It was Treves’ own theory that Merrick – who was unable to sleep lying down due to the contortions of his body, and the weight of his head – had slumped backwards against his bed during the night. This had caused his neck to break, cutting off his airway and resulting in death.

He was 27 years old.

To this day, Joseph Merrick’s skeleton is still held at the London Hospital.

The Public Perception of Freak Shows

The public tolerance of freak shows has waxed and waned over the years, decades, and even centuries and at various times they were celebrated, reviled, condemned and promoted.

The majority of freak-show managers and circus ringmasters looked upon running freak shows as being a social service. They were providing entertainment and education to the masses, as well as ‘shock-value’, indulging mankind’s fascination with the bizarre and unusual. At the same time, they were also providing misfits and people with horrible disfigurements or medical conditions, with a home, a family of sorts, a camaraderie, and a social network which gave them a living, a form of security, and a sense of belonging.

A lot of circus-freaks turned to their chosen occupation, usually as a last resort, to make the most of a bad situation, or simply to wow people with what they were. In an age before social security, government pensions, advocacy groups, effective medical treatment, and the countless other facilities and organisations available to people with severe disabilities today, being a circus-freak was, more or less – the last half-respectable occupation open to people who would otherwise have found themselves on the street.

Freak-shows have never really gone away. They still exist, and in some cases, have simply switched mediums. There’s no shortage, in the 21st century, of TV shows depicting all kinds of modern-day ‘freaks’ from ‘Freaky Eaters’ to ‘Hoarders’ and ‘Most Shocking’, which featured its own ‘circus fat boy’ – Dzhambulat Khatohov.

More Information?

https://timespanner.blogspot.com/2012/06/foxtons-perfect-young-giants-wilfred.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5847964/fat-boy-of-peckham-victorian-freak-show-career/

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/23/elephant-man-joseph-merrick/