SYMHC Classics: P.T. Barnum

This 2012 episode from prior hosts Sarah and Deblina covers P.T. Barnum the circus man, museum entrepreneur, and freak show runner. Barnum attracted people to his American Museum through shrewd advertising, and he wasn't afraid of a hoax.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, Everybody. Petty Barnum has gotten a couple of
name drops on the show lately, and there is another
coming up this week, so we are bringing out our
episode on him as Today's Classic. This originally came out
on May sixteen, twenty twelve, from previous hosts of the show,
Sarah and Bablina enjoying Welcome to Stuff You Missed in

(00:25):
History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina
Chocolate Boarding, and we have a few podcast regulars who
we like to talk about. Queen Victoria, of course, seems
to pop up in the most unlikely of episodes, as

(00:47):
does Arthur Conan Doyle Lord Byron had a little run
there for a while, but Pete Barnum may have the
strangest record of all of those folks. I think if
an episode takes place in the nineteenth century, you'll often
find P. T. Barnum somewhere in it, trying to buy something,
trying to hustle someone. And once I learned a little
bit more about his life, though, those regular appearances seemed

(01:11):
a lot less unlikely, because in life he really was everywhere,
buying odds and ends off of folks, cooking up hoaxes,
entertaining celebrities, even running for state legislature. Today, of course
we think of P. T. Barnum as the great circus man,
the guy behind the greatest show on Earth. Along with
his cohort and former competitor James Bailey, the Barnum and

(01:34):
Bailey Circus, which eventually teamed up with Ringling brother Circus,
became the premier circus in the US. So if you've
seen one circus in the States, it's probably Ringling Brothers,
Barnum and Bailey. But while Barnum helped to make the
Three Ring Circus the massive spectacle we know today, he
really didn't get into the business until he was in
the sixties. For most of his entertainment career, Barnum ran

(01:55):
a curiosity museum filled with wax works, fun house mirrors,
and other strange stuff like taxi jermy hybrid animals. He
also ran ten in one shows, which we'll talk about
a little bit more in a minute, and he managed
Menagerie's and he just really promoted everything he did, earning
the nickname the Prince of Humbug, which it's interesting to

(02:17):
point out here that humbug had the same meaning then
as it does today, you know, being deceitful on purpose.
But it also was the equivalent of what today we'd
call hype. And I think that's really the point to
remember when thinking about Barnum. He was a hype man.
He was the prince of Humbug to the end. He
really was so phineas. Taylor Barnum was born July ten

(02:40):
in Bethel, Connecticut. His father was kind of a jack
of all trades who was a tailor, a farmer, tavern keeper,
and as a kid, p T. Barnum worked the farm,
but also showed his business streak pretty early. According to
his New York Times obituary, he sold homemade molasses candy
which sounds pretty good, and gingerbread, and even some sort

(03:00):
of moonshine he'd make called cherry rum, not quite as
appetizing as the molasses candy and gingerbread, I think. When
Barnum was fifteen, his father died, leaving him to care
for his mother and his five sisters and brothers. This
started a string of jobs and moves to get away
from manual farm work because he really disliked it. He
worked in a general store, moved to Brooklyn, and came

(03:23):
home to Bethel to open his own store at age eighteen.
Then he got married at nineteen to a local girl
named Charity Hallett. He published a weekly paper called The
Herald of Freedom and Dan Barry Connecticut, and was arrested
three times for libel gives you a little peek at
his his future career too, but it was his eighteen
thirty five moved back to New York City at the

(03:44):
age of twenty five that really got him into show
business and compared to his later insistence on family friendly entertainment,
his first gigs in New York were considered quite low amusements,
according to Timothy Gilfoyle and then Journal of the History
of Sexuality. He'd run minstrel shows. He'd write ads for
the Bowery Amphitheater in the very rough Five Points neighborhood,

(04:08):
and he would talent scout there too. He discovered acts
like William Henry Lane, who was better known later as
Juba Black Dancer, who broke into the all white minstrel shows.
But Barnum's first really big discovery was an old woman
named Joyce Heth and Heth claimed to have been born
in sixteen seventy four, which would have made her a

(04:30):
hundred and sixty one years old. But even more impressively,
she claimed to have been the nurse for the young
George Washington. She was blind and frail, but she'd smoke
a pipe and tell visitors stories about Washington as a boy.
To kind of authenticate these outrageous stories, Barnum presented her
alongside her seventeen twenty seven bill of sale to George

(04:53):
Washington's father. So no surprise probably that this was eventually
exposed as a hoax, but at certain he convinced to
Barnum that show biz was worth as a while. With
Heth and his act, he earned seven and fifty dollars
a week. So in eighteen forty one, after that first
big success with Health, Barnum decided that he wanted to

(05:13):
go into the museum business. Then it may be kind
of hard to understand why a hoax promoting former minstrel
show admin would want to get into museums, but David A. Norris,
writing in History Magazine, helped explain a little bit to
me how different and uncommon American museums were in the
eighteen forties from what they are today, and one of

(05:34):
the country's earliest museums was called Peels, and it was
in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Was established in seventeen eighty
four by Charles Wilson Peel, and visitors who were going
there could just see a real mixed bag of stuff,
folk clothing from around the world, a quote tiger cat,
even lava from Mount Vesuvius, or at least something billed

(05:56):
as lava from Mount Vesuvius. The first mastodon skull laton
shown in the United States was there, and there were
also plant and animal specimens from Lewis and Clark's expedition,
so anything you could imagine could be found, apparently at
Peel's museum. Another major museum in the style of Peels
was that of John Scutter, who ran his front of

(06:18):
five story marble building in New York City. When Scutter's
closed in one Barnum tried to buy it, but was
beat out by representatives from Peels, who paid for the
building in stock. When that stock collapse, though, Barnum wound
up being able not only to buy Scutters but quite
a few of Peel's exhibits too. He reopened this as

(06:38):
Barnum's American Museum and kept some of the flavor of
the old style museums, including the menagerie's tax Germy's exotic
items from around the world, But he also added another
popular element of the day, which was freak shows. Okay,
so it's time to talk a little bit about the
tradition of so called freak shows, because if we just
jump right into it, it's going to seem a little

(06:59):
bit out of place. According to Laura Grand in History Magazine,
the tradition of freak shows had really been around for
quite some time by the time Barnum was getting into
the business, really since the early sixteen hundreds, right around
the time that many people stopped seeing major physical abnormalities
as some kind of divine punishment or bad omen But

(07:21):
in the nineteenth century, the exhibition of people with physical
abnormalities bearded ladies for example, or thin men, really started
to pick up. Ten and one shows would exhibit ten performers,
usually a mix of physically unusual people with folks with
unusual talents such as sword swallowing or fire eating. So

(07:41):
two of the earliest American freak show stars where Chang
and Hang can join twins the original Siamese Twins, of course,
and basically visitors would walk by these ten performers and
look at them. It's something that sounds very awkward and
uncomfortable today, but these shows were really getting very popular
in the nineteenth century, and Barnum's technique of combining these

(08:05):
ten and one shows and other types of freak show
acts with a curiosity filled museum proved to be a
major hit. Visitors would flood to his American museum, paying
twenty five cents for the privilege of seeing his curated
collection from around the world. He built the place as
admission to everything, and in addition to a sideshow type performances,

(08:27):
he staged beauty pageants, cultural exhibits, and dramatics like adaptations
of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels or those of Charles Dickens,
who was incidentally a visitor. So the museum was open
six days a week, fifteen hours a day. He was
a real modern businessman. I mean, I even think that
admission to everything sounds kind of like a slogan you

(08:49):
would hear today um. But well, many side shows at
the time featured adults only entertainment. Barnett was really big
on bringing the whole family, and the whole family was there,
though he would hustle them through the exhibits by displaying
a large sign in the back labeled egress, and so
people would wonder, what's an egress? You know, it's just

(09:11):
beyond that door I need to go see, And then
once they get there, they'd realize, oh, agres is just
another word for exit, and they'd have to pay if
they wanted to get back in again. The museum's first
big hit was the Fiji Mermaid, supposedly caught by a

(09:34):
Japanese fisherman, but this was really just a hoax personally
engineered by Barnum. It was a monkey's body sewn onto
a large fish tail. Other attractions over the years included
a giant python and electric eels, and albino Beauty, the
Wild Boy, who was an exceptionally hairy child, Pharaoh's Chariot Wheel,

(09:54):
Rosa Richter, the Human Cannonball, Annie Jones, the Bearded Lady Eyes, W. Sprague,
the American human Skeleton, kral Farini, the Missing Link, the
Wonder of the World, who was an armless man who
used his feet to do tricks like firing a pistol
or playing an instrument. In eighteen sixty one, Barnum even

(10:16):
added a white whale to his menagerie's pipes, would supply
it with fresh seawater, and he'd also include hoaxes of hoaxes,
like the fake version of the already fake Cardiff Giant
we discussed in our Historical Hoaxes episode from last summer.
After Barnum's offer to buy the real fake Giant was

(10:36):
turned down, he just made his own and started saying, well,
that one is fake, I have the real one, I think.
Ultimately he was sued and the judge rule, both of
your giants are fake. This is a non issue. Um.
Barnum himself was also something of an attraction at his museum,
much like Madam Tussot was at her wax works. He
was fairly striking six two balding, He had blue eyes

(10:59):
and a giant nose in a pot belly, and was
always there, always roaming around if he wasn't out looking
for new curiosities to bring to it. Barnum's real name maker, though,
was his own distant cousin, Charles Stratton, and we'll talk
a little bit more about Stratton's life later. Maybe in
a different episode. He and Barnum went from being manager

(11:19):
and child performer to being business partners and lifelong friends.
But Stratton's appearance as General Tom Thumb introduced Barnum to
really new heights of fame. Stratton, who was a little
person tall when he was discovered by Barnum at age five,
was trained to sing, dance, and do comic compressions. He
was a natural ham and an actor, and met folks

(11:41):
like Abraham Lincoln and even Queen Victoria. She is again
we need to start keeping a tally here. But Barnum
had ambitions outside of the museum, even though Tom Thumb
made him a huge hit in this world. According to
Encyclopedia Britannica, he wanted to be an impressar oh too,
and he recruited the Swedish soprano Jenny Lynn to make

(12:04):
that happen. She's somebody who appeared in our Hans Christian
Anderson episode. He had She was his celebrity crush. Essentially,
even though Barnum hadn't ever seen Lynn, hadn't ever heard
her sing, he blatched onto her, decided that she would
be his ticket to the real big time, and publicized
her as the Swedish Nightingale. He publicized her so successfully

(12:27):
that forty thou people were waiting for her upon her
arrival in the United States. She toured for about nine
months to sell out shows and really became one of
the earliest marketing sensations to She had all this tie
in merchandise connected to her, like a Jenny Lynn bonnet,
a Jenny Lynn porcelain set, all sorts of things that
are easy to imagine today, but we're fairly unusual at

(12:49):
the time. Barnum also got into politics. He served twice
in the Connecticut legislature and as mayor of Bridgeport, where
he was an especially strong opponent of racial discrimination and
and of prostitution. In eighteen forty eight, he became a teetotaler,
hiring undercover detectives to patrol his museum for anyone who
could be maybe sneaking in a drink, or just any

(13:11):
low people. He was very concerned about them potentially being
in his museum. Kind of odd considering his earlier show.
His career exactly when he got into real estate in
the eighteen fifties, he'd even have leaser's or buyers signed
covenants banning the use of liquor or tobacco on the property.
He even eventually made his performers swear off alcohol and

(13:31):
ran a temperance play at the museum for one hundred shows.
So to mark all of his achievements in life. At
this point in politics in the business world, Barnum decided
to build a palace. And you can't imagine somebody like
Barnum building a little understated house, but this really was
a palace. It was on seventeen acres in Connecticut. He
called it a Ranistan and the inspiration for the building

(13:54):
was Brighton's Royal Pavilion, which I saw when I was
in ninth grade, I think, and it's a can look
up a picture of it. It's pretty elaborate. Anything that
it's the inspiration for would be pretty elaborate to I'd imagine.
He entertained big names there too, people like Mark Twain,
Horace Greeley. But in eighteen fifty seven Barnum's luck started

(14:16):
to turn. The palace burned down, which started a chain
of misfortune that eventually drove Barnum coincidentally into the circus business.
He lost his money though through bad investments in a
clock of business and saw his museum burned down twice.
During the Civil War, Confederate spies had plotted to set
fires throughout New York City, including one at Barnum's. The

(14:36):
plot failed, with the museum burned down just a few
months later. Anyway, after twice rebuilding his museum and twice
losing it to fire, he switched to a menagerie, but
saw this burned down two in eighteen seventy three. That
same year, his wife Charity died, and two outward appearances.
After Charity died, Barnum waited ten months before remarrying twenty

(15:00):
two year old Nancy Fish, who was forty four years
younger than him. According to that Guilfoil article we mentioned earlier,
though he was actually remarried after only thirteen weeks and
before he had even returned home to the United States
following charities death. The whole thing was super super secret.
Nobody knew about it except the couple, and the marriage

(15:21):
certificate wasn't even found until nineteen four, so he really
took the secret to the grave. Barnum's remarriage also coincided
with his entrance into the circus world. Though he started
a traveling show and called it the Great Traveling World's Fair.
It was really bigger than most of the circuses of
the day, and Barnum would even arrange it was so big,

(15:42):
in fact, that it would have to be way on
the outskirts of town. So Barnum would arrange these excursion
trains so that people in cities could easily come to
his show. He could just shuttle them back and forth
and get more customers that way. In eighteen eighty he
merged with the Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie
and the Grand International Allied Shows, and later became the

(16:04):
Barnum and Bailey Circus, better known as the Greatest Show
on Earth, which we talked about in the intro. Barnum,
of course, didn't invent the modern circus, but by working
with Bailey, he helped make it the giant, really spectacular
event that we know it as today, rather than the
sort of small time entertainment it was in the past. Exactly,
and Barnum's eighty two purchase of Jumbo the African Elephant

(16:27):
also helped to make this act a hit, really helped
to make the Barnum and Bailey Circus get off the ground.
Jumbo is another subject we're gonna say for later. He
has a pretty interesting story, but he was popular enough
that his name caught on as a term for Jumbo,
really really big um. That's just a little hint of
how crazy Jumbo's ultimate story is. Though, the Prince of

(16:50):
Humbug stayed devoted to self promotion to the end too.
In eighteen eighty four, he moved his autobiography into the
public domain because he was more concerned with attracting readers
than making money off of it. In at the age
of eighty one and clearly dying at this point, he
had a New York obituary published ahead of schedule so

(17:10):
that he could read it and enjoy his own hype
before he passed away. So P. T. Barnum died April
seven in Bridgeport, leaving most of his estate to his
sole grandson, and aside from his circus legacy, of course,
I think Barnum is probably most famous for a quote
that he likely never said, and that's, of course, there's

(17:30):
a sucker born every minute. We meant to mention that
in the Cardiff Giant episode one quote that might suit
him a little better, though in one that he really
did say is that people quote appear disposed to be
amused even when they are conscious of being deceived. And
he got a lot of flak for some of his deceptions.
I think he was pretty frank about them in his autobiography,

(17:52):
but he stuck by it to a certain extent. Revised
some things in his in his biography, but was fairly
open a out the deceptions he had committed and how
he did them, and how it was all just in
good fun if you still enjoyed the show. According to
his biographer Candice Fleming, when he was asked whether he
wished he had done something more important with his life,

(18:14):
he said, quote, Amusement may not be the great aim
of life, but it gives us to our days. Thanks
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
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(18:37):
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(19:01):
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