Barnum, P. T.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2010)

Phineas Taylor Barnum
Phineas Taylor Barnum photo by Mathew Brady, c.1860
Born	Phineas Taylor Barnum July 5, 1810(1810-07-05) Bethel, Connecticut
Died	April 7, 1891(1891-04-07) (aged 80) Bridgeport, Connecticut
Resting place	Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport
Political party	Democratic (1824-54) Republican (1854-91)
Religion	Universalist
Signature

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

His successes may have made him the first "show business" millionaire.^{[citation needed]} Although Barnum was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for sometime a politician, he said of himself, "I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me,"^[1] and his personal aims were "to put money in his own coffers."^{[citation needed]} Barnum is widely but erroneously credited with coining the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute."

Born in Bethel, Connecticut, Barnum became a small-business owner in his early twenties, and founded a weekly newspaper, before moving to New York City in 1834. He embarked on an entertainment career, first with a variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", and soon after by purchasing Scudder's American Museum, which he renamed after himself. Barnum used the museum as a platform to promote hoaxes and human curiosities such as the '"Feejee" mermaid' and "General Tom Thumb".^[2] In 1850 he promoted the American tour of singer Jenny Lind, paying her an unprecedented $1,000 a night for 150 nights.

After economic reversals due to bad investments in the 1850s, and years of litigation and public humiliation, he used a lecture tour, mostly as a temperance speaker, to emerge from debt. His museum added America's first aquarium and expanded the wax figure department.

Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican for Fairfield. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution over slavery and African-American suffrage, Barnum spoke before the legislature and said, "A human soul is not to be trifled with. It may inhabit the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hotentot - it is still an immortal spirit!"^{[citation needed]} As mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut he worked to improve the water supply, bring gaslighting to streets, and to enforce liquor and prostitution laws. Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and was its first president.^[3]

The circus business was the source of much of his enduring fame. He established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome", a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks", which adopted many names over the years.

Barnum died in his sleep at home on April 7, 1891 and was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Connecticut, a cemetery he designed.^[4]

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Early life and career 1.2 Funhouse showman 1.3 Feejee mermaid and Tom Thumb 1.4 Jenny Lind 1.5 Diversified leisure-time activities 1.6 Circus king 2 Author and debunker 3 Politician and reformer 4 "Profitable Philanthropy" 5 Legacy 6 Publications 7 References 8 See also 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Life

[edit] Early life and career

Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of inn keeper, tailor and store-keeper Philo Barnum (1778–1826) and second wife Irene Taylor. He was the third great grandson of Thomas Barnum (1625–1695), the immigrant ancestor of the Barnum family in North America. His maternal grandfather Phineas Taylor was a whig, legislator, landowner, justice of the peace, and lottery schemer, and he had a great influence on his favorite grandson. Barnum was adept at arithmetic but hated physical work. He started as a store-keeper, and he learned haggling and using deception to make a sale. He was involved with the first lottery mania in the United States. He married Charity Hallett when he was 19; she'd be his companion for the next 44 years.

The young husband had several businesses: a general store, a book auctioning trade, real estate speculation, and a state-wide lottery network. He became active in local politics and advocated against blue laws promulgated by Calvinists who sought to restrict gambling and travel. Barnum started a weekly paper in 1829, The Herald of Freedom, in Danbury, Connecticut, Connecticut. His editorials against church elders led to libel suits and a prosecution which resulted in imprisonment for two months, but he became a champion of the liberal movement upon his release. In 1834, when lotteries were banned in Connecticut, cutting off his main income, Barnum sold his store and moved to New York City. In 1835 he began as a showman with his purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralyzed slave woman, Joice Heth, claimed by Barnum to have been George Washington's nurse, and to be over 160 years old.

[edit] Funhouse showman

Joice Heth died in 1836, no more than 80 years old.^{[citation needed]} After a year of mixed success with his first variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", followed by the Panic of 1837 and three years of difficult circumstances, he purchased Scudder's American Museum, at Broadway and Ann Street, New York City, in 1841. Barnum improved the attraction, renamed "Barnum's American Museum," upgrading the building and adding exhibits and became a popular showplace. Barnum added a lighthouse lamp which attracted attention up and down Broadway and flags along the roof's edge that attracted attention in daytime. From between the upper windows, giant paintings of animals drew stares from pedestrians. The roof was transformed to a strolling garden with a view of the city, where he launched hot-air balloon rides daily. A changing series of live acts and curiosities, including albinos, giants, midgets, "fat boys"^{[clarification needed]}, jugglers, magicians, "exotic women"^{[clarification needed]}, detailed models of cities and famous battles, and, eventually, a menagerie of animals were added to the exhibits of stuffed animals.

[edit] Feejee mermaid and Tom Thumb

In 1842, Barnum introduced his first major hoax, a creature with the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish, known as the "Feejee" mermaid. Barnum leased the "mermaid" from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston. Kimball became his friend, confidant, and collaborator.^{[citation needed]} Barnum described his hoaxes and justified the act of perpetrating them by saying they were "advertisements to draw attention...to the Museum. I don't believe in duping the public, but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them." ^[5] Later, he crusaded against fraudsters (see below). Barnum followed that with the exhibition of Charles Stratton, the dwarf "General Tom Thumb" ("the Smallest Person that ever Walked Alone") who was then four years of age but was stated to be 11. With heavy coaching and natural talent, the boy was taught to imitate people from Hercules to Napoleon. By five, he was drinking wine and by seven smoking cigars for the public's amusement. Though exploited, Tom Thumb enjoyed his job and had a good relationship with Barnum free of bitterness.

In year 1843 Barnum hired the traditional Native American dancer fu-Hum-Me, the first of many Native Americans he presented. During 1844-45, Barnum toured with Tom Thumb in Europe and met Queen Victoria, who was amused^[6] and saddened by the little man, and the event was a publicity coup. It opened the door to visits from royalty across Europe including the Czar of Russia and let him acquire dozens of attractions, including automatons and other mechanical marvels. He was almost able to buy the birth home of William Shakespeare. Barnum was having the time of his life, and for all of the three years abroad with Thumb, except for a few months when his serious, nervous, and straitlaced wife joined him, he had piles of spending money, food and drink, and lived a carefree existence. On his return to New York, he went on a spending spree, buying other museums, including Peale's museum in Philadelphia, the nation's first major museum. By late 1846, Barnum's Museum was drawing 400,000 visitors a year.^[2]

[edit] Jenny Lind

A much-cited act by Barnum which established him as a legitimate impresario was his engagement of Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale", to sing in America at $1,000 a night for 150 nights, all expenses paid by the entrepreneur in advance—an unprecedented offer^{[clarification needed]}. Lind's popularity was growing in Europe and she was a favorite of Queen Victoria. She was unpretentious, shy, and devout, and possessed a crystal-clear soprano voice projected with a wistful quality which audiences found touching. The offer was accepted in part to free her from opera performances which she disliked and to endow a music school for poor children. The risk for Barnum was huge. Besides never having heard her or knowing whether Americans would take to her, he had to assume all the financial risk. He borrowed heavily on his mansion and his museum. With bravado, he drummed up publicity but conceded, "'The public' is a very strange animal, and although a good knowledge of human nature will generally lead a caterer of amusement to hit the people right, they are fickle and ofttimes perverse." ^[7]

As a result of Barnum's months of preparations, close to 40,000 greeted her at the docks and another 20,000 at her hotel, the press was in attendance, and "Jenny Lind items" were available. The tour began with a concert at Castle Garden on September 11, 1850 and was a major success, recouping Barnum four times his investment. Washington Irving proclaimed, "She is enough to counterbalance, of herself, all the evil that the world is threatened with by the great convention of women. So God save Jenny Lind!"^[8]

[edit] Diversified leisure-time activities

Using profits from the Lind tour, Barnum's next challenge was to change public attitudes about the theater. Widely seen as 'dens of evil' , Barnum wanted to position them as palaces of edification and delight, and as respectable middle-class entertainment. He built the city's largest and most modern theater, naming it the "Moral Lecture Room". He hoped this would avoid seedy connotations and attract a family crowd and win the approval of the moral crusaders of New York City. He started the nation's first theatrical matinées, to encourage families and to lessen the fear of crime. He opened with The Drunkard, a thinly disguised temperance lecture (he had become a teetotaler after returning from Europe.) He followed that with melodramas, farces, and historical plays, put on by highly regarded actors. He watered down Shakespearean plays and others such as Uncle Tom's Cabin to make them family entertainment.

He organized flower shows, beauty contests, dog shows, poultry contests, but the most popular were baby contests (fattest baby, handsomest twins, etc.). In 1853, he started a pictorial weekly newspaper Illustrated News and a year later completed his autobiography, which through many revisions, sold more than one million copies. Mark Twain loved it but the British Examiner thought it "trashy" and "offensive" and "inspired...nothing but sensations of disgust...and sincere pity for the wretched man who compiled it."^[9]

In the early 1850s, Barnum began investing to develop East Bridgeport, Connecticut. He made substantial loans to the Jerome Clock Company, to get it to move to his new industrial area. But by 1856, the company went bankrupt, taking Barnum's wealth with it. This started four years of litigation and public humiliation. Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed that Barnum's downfall showed "the gods visible again" and other critics celebrated Barnum's moral comeuppance. But his friends supported him, and Tom Thumb, now touring on his own, offered his services and they undertook another European tour. Barnum also started a lecture tour, mostly as a temperance speaker. By 1860, he emerged from debt and built a mansion "Lindencroft" (his palace "Iranistan" had burnt down in 1857) and he resumed ownership of his museum.

Despite critics who predicted he could not revive the magic, Barnum went on to greater success. He created America's first aquarium and expanded the wax figure department. His "Seven Grand Salons" demonstrated the Seven Wonders of the World. He created a rogues gallery. The collections expanded to four buildings and he published a "Guide Book to the Museum" which claimed 850,000 'curiosities'.^[10]

Late in 1860, the Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng, came out of retirement (they needed more money to send their numerous children to college). The Twins had had a touring career on their own and went to live on a North Carolina plantation with their families and slaves, under the name of "Bunker". They appeared at Barnum's Museum for six weeks. Also in 1860, Barnum introduced the "man-monkey" William Henry Johnson, a microcephalic black dwarf who spoke a mysterious language created by Barnum. In 1862, he discovered the giantess Anna Swan and Commodore Nutt, a new Tom Thumb, who with Barnum visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House. During the Civil War, Barnum's museum drew large audiences seeking diversion from the conflict. He added pro-Unionist exhibits, lectures, and dramas, and he demonstrated commitment to the cause. For example, in 1864, Barnum hired Pauline Cushman, an actress who had served as a spy for the Union, to lecture about her "thrilling adventures" behind Confederate lines. Barnum's Unionist sympathies incited a Confederate arsonist to start a fire in 1864. On July 13, 1865, Barnum's American Museum burned to the ground from a fire of unknown origin. Barnum re-established the Museum at another location in New York City, but this too was destroyed by fire in March 1868. This time the loss was too great, and Barnum retired from the museum business.

[edit] Circus king

Barnum did not enter the circus business until he was 61. In Delavan, Wisconsin in 1871 with William Cameron Coup, he established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome", a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks", which by 1872 was billing itself as "The Greatest Show on Earth". It went through various names: "P.T. Barnum's Travelling World's Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show On Earth", and after an 1881 merger with James Bailey and James L. Hutchinson, "P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show On Earth, And The Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie and The Grand International Allied Shows United", soon shortened to "Barnum & London Circus". Despite more fires, train disasters, and other setbacks, Barnum plowed ahead, aided by circus professionals who ran the daily operations. He and Bailey split up again in 1885, but came back together in 1888 with the "Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show On Earth", later "Barnum & Bailey Circus", which toured the world. The show's primary attraction was Jumbo, an African elephant he purchased in 1882 from the London Zoo and who died in a train wreck. Jumbo eventually became the mascot of Tufts University, in honor of Barnum's 1882 donation.

Barnum was the first circus owner to transport his circus by train, and the first to purchase his own train. Given the lack of paved highways in America, this turned out to be a shrewd business move that enlarged Barnum's geographical reach. Many circus historians credit Bailey with this innovation. In this new field, Barnum leaned on the advice of Bailey and other business partners, most of whom were young enough to be his sons.

[edit] Author and debunker

Barnum wrote several books, including Life of P.T. Barnum (1854), The Humbugs of the World (1865), Struggles and Triumphs (1869), and The Art of Money-Getting (1880).^[11]

Mass publication of his autobiography was one of Barnum's more successful methods of self-promotion. Some readers owned every edition. Barnum eventually gave up his copyright to allow other printers to sell inexpensive editions. At the end of the 19^th century the number of copies printed was second only to the New Testament in North America.^{[citation needed]}

Often referred to as the "Prince of Humbugs", Barnum saw nothing wrong in entertainers or vendors using hype (or "humbug", as he termed it) in promotional material, as long as the public was getting value for money. However, he was contemptuous of those who made money through fraudulent deceptions, especially the spiritualist mediums popular in his day, testifying against noted spirit photographer William H. Mumler in his trial for fraud. Prefiguring illusionists Harry Houdini and James Randi, Barnum exposed "the tricks of the trade" used by mediums to cheat the bereaved. In The Humbugs of the World, he offered $500 to any medium who could prove power to communicate with the dead.

[edit] Politician and reformer

Barnum was significantly involved in politics, focusing on race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up to the American Civil War. He had some of his first success as an impresario through his slave Joice Heth. Around 1850, he was involved in a hoax about a weed that would turn black people white.

Barnum was a producer and promoter of blackface minstrelsy. Barnum's minstrel shows often used double-edged humor. While replete with racist stereotypes, Barnum's shows satirized white racial attitudes, as in a stump speech in which a black phrenologist (like all minstrel performers, a white man in blackface) made a dialect speech parodying lectures given at the time to "prove" the superiority of the white race: "You see den, dat clebber man and dam rascal means de same in Dutch, when dey boph white; but when one white and de udder's black, dat's a grey hoss ob anoder color."^[12]

Promotion of minstrel shows led to his sponsorship in 1853 of H.J. Conway's politically watered-down stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; the play, at Barnum's American Museum, gave the story a happy ending, with Tom and other slaves freed. The success led to a play based on Stowe's Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. His opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 led him to leave the Democratic Party to become a member of the new Republican Party. He had evolved from a man of common prejudices in the 1840s to a leader for emancipation by the Civil War.

While he claimed "politics were always distasteful to me," Barnum was elected to the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as Republican representative for Fairfield and served two terms. In the debate over slavery and African-American suffrage with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Barnum spoke before the legislature and said, "A human soul is not to be trifled with. It may inhabit the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hotentot - it is still an immortal spirit!" He ran for the United States Congress in 1867 and lost. In 1875, Barnum was mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut for a year and worked to improve the water supply, bring gaslighting to streets, and enforce liquor and prostitution laws. Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and was its first president.^[3]

[edit] "Profitable Philanthropy"

Barnum enjoyed what he publicly dubbed "profitable philanthropy." In Barnum's own words: "I have no desire to be considered much of a philanthropist...if by improving and beautifying our city Bridgeport, Connecticut, and adding to the pleasure and prosperity of my neighbors, I can do so at a profit, the incentive to 'good works' will be twice as strong as if it were otherwise." ^[13] In line with this philosophy was Barnum's pursuit of major American museums and spectacles. Less known are Barnum's significant contributions to Tufts University. Barnum was appointed to the Board of Trustees prior to the University's founding and made several significant contributions to the fledgling institution. The most noteworthy example of this was his gift in 1883 of $50,000 dollars ($1,136,269 2009 U.S. dollars), to establish a museum and hall for the Department of Natural History, which today houses the department of biology.^[14] Because of the relationship between Barnum and Tufts, Jumbo the elephant became the school's mascot, and Tufts students are known as "Jumbos." ^[15]

[edit] Legacy

Barnum built four mansions in Bridgeport, Connecticut: Iranistan, Lindencroft, Waldemere and Marina. Iranistan was the most notable: a fanciful and opulent Moorish Revival splendor designed by Leopold Eidlitz with domes, spires and lacy fretwork, inspired by the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England. This mansion was built 1848 but burned down in 1857.^[16]

Barnum died in his sleep at home on April 7, 1891 and was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Connecticut, a cemetery he designed.^[4] In 1893, a statue in his honor was placed at Seaside Park, by the water in Bridgeport. Barnum had donated the land for this park in 1865. His circus was sold to Ringling Brothers on July 8, 1907 for $400,000 (about $8.5 million in 2008 dollars).^[3][17] At his death, most critics had forgiven him and he was praised for good works. Barnum was hailed as an icon of American spirit and ingenuity, and was perhaps the most famous American in the world. Just before his death, he gave permission to the Evening Sun to print his obituary, so that he might read it. On April 7 he asked about the box office receipts for the day; a few hours later, he was dead.

The Tufts University Biology Building is named in honor of Barnum.

In 1936, for the centennial of the city of Bridgeport, CT, his portrait was used for the obverse of a commemorative half dollar.

Walt Kelly, who grew up in Bridgeport, named the Pogo character P.T. Bridgeport after Barnum, and endowed the circus operator bear with a Barnum-like outsized personality and word balloons with lettering that resembled 19th century circus posters giving graphic depiction of the sort of colorful language Barnum was prone to use.

The Bethel Historical Society hosted a contest for Bethel residents to choose between three different maquettes (statues). David Guesualdi, local resident of Bethel, CT is in the process of creating a life-size bronze sculpture of P.T. Barnum that will be dedicated on September 26, 2010.

The Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry company operates three vessels that run across the Long Island Sound between Port Jefferson, NY, and Bridgeport. One of those three ferry boats is named "The P.T. Barnum".

[edit] Publications

• Art of Money Getting, or, Golden Rules for Making Money. Originally published 1880. Reprint ed., Bedford, MA: Applewood, 1999. ISBN 1-55709-494-2.
• Struggles and Triumphs, or Forty Years' Recollections of P.T. Barnum. Originally published 1869. Reprint ed., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2003. ISBN 0-7661-5556-0 (Part 1) and ISBN 0-7661-5557-9 (Part 2).
• The Colossal P.T. Barnum Reader: Nothing Else Like It in the Universe. Ed. by James W. Cook. Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2005. ISBN 0-252-07295-2.
• The Life of P.T. Barnum: Written By Himself. Originally published 1855. Reprint ed., Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000. ISBN 0-252-06902-1.
• The Wild Beasts, Birds and Reptiles of the World: The Story of their Capture. Pub. 1888, R. S. Peale & Company, Chicago.
• Why I Am A Universalist. Originally published 1890 Reprint Kessinger Pub Co. ISBN 1-4286-2657-3

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• James Anthony Bailey
• Barnum, a Broadway musical about P.T. Barnum
• Barnum effect
• Barnum's American Museum
• Barnum's Aquarial Gardens, Boston, Massachusetts (1862–1863)
• Tufts University
• Cardiff Giant
• Fiji Mermaid
• Carl Hagenbeck
• Joice Heth
• Human zoo
• Fedor Jeftichew
• Jumbo
• Moses Kimball
• Middlebush Giant
• Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
• Isaac W. Sprague
• There's a sucker born every minute
• General Tom Thumb
• Wild Men of Borneo
• Lucia Zarate
• Zip the Pinhead
• Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Ferry

[edit] Further reading

• Adams, Bluford. E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of U.S. Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8166-2631-6.
• Barnum, Patrick Warren. Barnum Genealogy: 650 Years of Family History. Boston: Higginson Book Co., 2006. ISBN 0-7404-5551-6 (hardcover), ISBN 0-7404-5552-4 (softcover), LCCN 2005903696.
• Benton, Joel. The Life of Phineas T. Barnum, [1].
• Cook, James W. The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-674-00591-0. Relates Barnum's Fiji Mermaid and What Is It? exhibits to other popular arts of the nineteenth century, including magic shows and trompe l'oeil paintings.
• Harding, Les. Elephant Story: Jumbo and P. T. Barnum Under the Big Top. Jefferson, NC.: McFarland & Co., 2000. ISBN 0-7864-0632-1. (129 p.)
• Harris, Neil. Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. ISBN 0-226-31752-8.
• Kunhardt, Philip B., Jr.; Kunhardt, Philip B., III; Kunhardt, Peter W. (1995). P.T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-43574-3. 
• Lott, Eric (1993). Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507832-2. 
• Reiss, Benjamin. The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-674-00636-4. Focuses on Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth.
• Saxon, Arthur H. P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-231-05687-7.
• Uchill, Ida Libert. Howdy, Sucker! What P.T. Barnum Did in Colorado. Denver: Pioneer Peddler Press, 2001. OCLC 47773817
• Jefferson, Margo. On Michael Jackson. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2006. ISBN 978-0-307-27765-7. Critique of Michael Jackson, including his obsession wit