Living Curiosities: Agency and Exploitation of the Teratological Body
Pourtraict d'un monstre merueilleux
Paré, Ambroise, 1510?-1590
Source: www.cppdigitallibrary.org
Curiosity draws us to the monstrous. But seeing is believing: whether in a book, a museum, or in a show, for centuries people have flocked to see “monsters” for themselves. In the 19th century, many people born with non-normative bodies performed as “freaks” in circus sideshows. Circuses became a sensation and they served as a forerunner to the modern entertainment industry. This exhibit explores the lives of the performers and showmen whose livelihoods depended on the public’s curiosity about seeing wondrous bodies for themselves.
As you read, think of yourself as an audience member in these various historical shows. Instead of simply sitting back to enjoy the show, ask yourself about the choices involved in what you are seeing. How are the performers displayed? What are they wearing, what are they performing? Are they presenting their “real” selves or a character? Who makes decisions about the show and the performances you are seeing?
The two topics below examine two sides of this story: the ways in which those individuals had agency in their display and how their bodies were monetized; and the ways in which societal structures and individuals led to the exploitation of those individuals.
Agency
In this section we will explore some of the ways individuals used their congenital abnormalities to assert their own agency, financially and otherwise.
Charles Byrne - A Public Sensation
The historical record preserves evidence of many people with non-normative bodies who displayed themselves for profit, such as Charles Byrne. While it is easy to focus on these cases, it is also worth remembering that many-- indeed most-- people with “monstrous” bodies preferred to live outside of the spotlight, shaping their lives and earning money in ways no different than anyone else. The lives and careers of people like Charles are visible to us today because people during his life were so fascinated by him: he appeared in broadsides, newspapers, and pamphlets.
Chang and Eng Bunker and their families, 1853
This illustration from 1853, perhaps copied from a daguerreotype, shows the famous "Siamese Twins" Chang and Eng and their families in North Carolina.
Source: cppdigitallibrary.org
Chang and Eng and Barnum
Many of us associate the name “P.T. Barnum” with the circus. But before Barnum began the circus, he ran a museum. Barnum’s American Museum opened in New York City in 1841. The museum was home to many types of oddities, and many people with non-normative bodies found their way to the stage of the lecture hall in Barnum’s American Museum. Two of these performers might be familiar to you if you have visited the Mütter Museum: Chang and Eng Bunker.
Chang and Eng Bunker were born in Siam (modern day Thailand) in 1811. In their late teens, Chang and Eng moved first to England and then to the United States to pursue a life of performance. At first, the twins worked under contract with a man who arranged their tours, but when the contract was up, Chang and Eng decided to go into business for themselves. They toured widely around the United States until 1838, by which time they had amassed a fortune of $60,000 (over $1,500,000 dollars in today’s money). Chang and Eng bought adjacent farms in North Carolina, they married two sisters, and had twenty-one children.
After losing most of their fortune during the American Civil War, Chang and Eng briefly returned to the stage to put on a series of shows at Barnum’s American Museum (by then the museum also had a wax statue of the twins). These shows led to a European tour in 1868, during which time the brothers met with various doctors who examined the possibility of separation. The Bunkers returned to the United States in 1870.
Tom Thumb and the Traveling Circus
When P.T. Barnum’s American Museum burned down in 1865, he decided to take his show on the road. Barnum created a traveling circus, complete with animal shows, scientific demonstrations, and a sideshow filled with extraordinary-looking humans. Sideshow performers were known by their stage names: The Human Seal! The Camel Girl! The Siamese Twins! The Bearded Lady! The Human Skeleton!
People around America flocked to the circus, and the “freak show” became one of its most popular attractions. Yet the people known as freaks did not just passively sit around, allowing visitors to gawk. They often presented themselves as characters, performed songs or physical feats, or engaged with visitors directly. Being a “freak” was a performance, and many people intentionally played up aspects of their own unique appearance to delight, startle, and entertain the circus goers.
One of the most famous performers to work with Barnum was Charles Stratton, known to the public as General Tom Thumb. Only 25” tall in adulthood, Stratton used his extensive training in acting, singing, dancing, and comedy to build Tom Thumb into a nationwide sensation. Though never serving in the military, he styled himself a “General” and presented himself as a member of high society. Stratton —along with his wife and fellow performer, Lavinia Warren— found enormous success through their partnership with Barnum.
"Unsightly Beggars"
Although circuses and sideshows were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most people with non-normative bodies did not perform. Instead, they earned their living through a variety of everyday jobs, although they faced a great deal of stigma and discrimination in hiring. Many people with non-normative bodies lived in poverty —either not hired, or underpaid, or unable to work— and some turned to begging to survive.
Exploitation
This section explores some of the ways in which those with congenital abnormalities were exploited, either by individuals or by society.
Dual Lives - The McKoy Sisters
Perhaps no persons better characterized the dual nature of the life of a sideshow performer, the possibility of agency and exploitation, than Millie and Christine McKoy, known as the “Carolina Twins.” The twins were born into slavery in North Carolina in 1851. When they were just 10 months old, their owner, a blacksmith named Jabez McKay, made a contractual agreement for their exhibition with John Pervis. Pervis exhibited the girls shortly before selling them once again to Joseph Pearson Smith. Possibly accompanied by their mother, Monemia, Smith exhibited them at the first North Carolina State Fair in 1853 to great success, before being conned into selling them to another man, at which point they were separated from their mother and siblings.
Due to the duplicitous nature of his acquisition, their new owner did not display them publicly at first, instead showing them only to scientists and physicians for a fee. In 1854, when the twins were just three years old, they were exhibited publicly at Barnum’s American Museum for the first time, launching their performance career. Due to the exploitative nature of their relationship to their owner, they received none of the revenue from these performances. The twins traveled to England, where Smith and Monemia caught up with and reclaimed the pair. Millie and Christine’s life of forced exhibition continued until the Emancipation Proclamation ended their slave status in 1863.
Afterwards, Millie and Christine used their performances to enrich their lives, both financially and intellectually. Smith provided them with an education, and they learned five languages. The twins learned to perform piano duets with accompanying vocal harmonies, earning them the moniker, “The Two-Headed Nightingale.” They continued to tour extensively with Barnum’s Traveling Circus, this time earning their share of the profits, even going so far as to see themselves as the main providers for their own family as well as Smith’s. This new agency meant the twins could now refuse to be subjected to frequent medical examinations, which they found to be invasive and humiliating.
Scholar Izetta Autumn Mobley discussed images of the twins taken for the Photographic Review of Medicine under coercion, and many of the other complicated issues surrounding the lives of Mille and Christine and their representations, in her presentation Troublesome Properties at a College of Physicians of Philadelphia symposium in March of 2018 (see "Of Marvels and Medicine" linked to the right).
The "Hottentot Venus"
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, many people with non-normative bodies displayed themselves in pubs, salons, or lecture halls to make money. Some people—like Charles Byrne, the "Irish Giant"—worked independently. Others had to enter into contracts with someone else who controlled when, where, and how they were displayed.
Barnum's American Museum
In the early 19th century, museums became important places for the public to go to learn about nature, science, and culture. In 1841, the showman P.T. Barnum opened up his American Museum in the heart of New York City. The museum offered educational attractions, like its menagerie of animals and its aquarium. The extreme popularity of the museum was also due to its display of various wonders and curiosities. People flocked to the museum to see strange objects, like the Fiji Mermaid, which was said to be the body of a real creature, but was instead the head of a juvenile monkey attached to the body of a fish. Human performers, however, whose bodies were spectacular and strange to audience members, were the main attraction to many who visited.
While some performers, such as Tom Thumb and Chang and Eng Bunker, discussed in the agency path of this exhibit, had a say in how they were displayed, this was not true for many at the museum.
Another popular type of exhibit at the Museum displayed “exotic” people from around the world. Audience members were titillated by their bodies, skin, hair, clothing, and behavior. Yet these people often did not benefit from being displayed. Instead, the money went to their “agents,” who sold these performances to showmen like Barnum.
The American Museum burned to the ground in 1865, by which time it had transformed American entertainment. Not wanting to rebuild the museum, Barnum pursued a new idea: taking the show on the road.
"Freak Shows"
After the fire in 1865, Barnum decided to pursue a new format, a traveling show of performances and wonders, of animals and humans beneath a big tent. In 1870, Barnum established his circus company which, in an 1881 merger, became Barnum and Bailey’s. The circus became an American entertainment phenomenon, and one of the most popular components of the circus was the sideshow, also called the “freak show." Audience members could pay a separate free to see people with strange bodies. Hairy women, dwarves and giants, people without arms or legs, or people with “pin heads” (microcephaly), were popular attractions.
The sideshow became a staple at fairs, circuses, and exhibitions in the late 19th century. The performers were employees of these institutions but were not paid high wages. Instead, most of the profits remained with the institution itself. Even the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago - created to celebrate scientific progress - hosted an extensive sideshow of "freaks" and exotic people on its Midway.
In sideshows, performers could engage with audience members and, to a degree, had a say in how they were displayed. Yet in these venues, performers were understood by showmen to be products to sell to audience members. Decisions about display and performance were guided by business interests.
The Perils of Reform
During the Progressive Era (1890-1920), “cleaning up” society became a major goal of reformers. Reformers attacked government corruption, sought to expand public education, and worked to eradicate the "immoralities" of urban life. Progressive Era reformers attacked places like the Bowery in New York City. To reformers, they were dens of gambling, drinking, and home to scandalous “dime museums” where many people with non-normative bodies performed for shocked and titillated audiences.
For these performers, however, the dime museums were an important source of income. Reformers were successful in shutting down some dime museums, but did not provide another source of employment for the now out-of-work performers. People with non-normative bodies often faced limitations on what types of work they could do. Additionally, laws protecting against discrimination in hiring did not yet exist. Though the intentions of Progressive Era reformers were often noble, the results sometimes made peoples' lives more difficult.
Picture of a Dime Museum in Philadelphia, 1928, Temple University Library Urban Archives