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Phineas T. Barnum

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Phineas T. Barnum

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Phineas T. Barnum's History

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Introduction

P. T. Barnum Born: Phineas Taylor Barnum, July 5, 1810, Bethel, Connecticut, U.S. Died: April 7, 1891 (aged 80) Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S. Resting place Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport Political party Democratic (until 1854) Republican (after 1854) Spouse(s) Charity Hallett (m. 1829; died 1873) Nancy Fish (m. 1874) Children 4 Occupation Showman, entrepreneur (entertainment as founder and promoter), politician, author, publisher, philanthropist Known for Founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus Signature Phineas Taylor Barnum (/ˈbɑːrnəm/; July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871–2017) with James Anthony Bailey. He was also an author, publisher, and philanthropist, though he said of himself: "I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me." According to his critics, his personal aim was "to put money in his own coffers". He is widely credited with coining the adage "There's a sucker born every minute", although no evidence has been collected of him saying this. 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. He used the museum as a platform to promote hoaxes and human curiosities such as the Fiji mermaid and General Tom Thumb. In 1850, he promoted the American tour of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, paying her an unprecedented $1,000 a night for 150 nights. He suffered economic reversals in the 1850s due to bad investments, as well as years of litigation and public humiliation, but he used a lecture tour 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, Connecticut. He spoke before the legislature concerning the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude: "A human soul, 'that God has created and Christ died for,' is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit". He was elected in 1875 as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut where he worked to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets, and enforce liquor and prostitution laws. He was also instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital in 1878 and was its first president.[6] Nevertheless, the circus business, begun when he was 60 years old, was the source of much of his enduring fame. He established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome" in 1870, a traveling circus, menagerie, and museum of "freaks" which adopted many names over the years. Barnum was married to Charity Hallett from 1829 until her death in 1873, and they had four children. In 1874, a few months after his wife's death, he married Nancy Fish, his friend's daughter who was 40 years younger than P. T. Barnum. They were married until 1891 when Barnum died of a stroke at his home. He was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, which he designed himself. Early life Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of innkeeper, tailor, and store-keeper Philo Barnum (1778–1826) and his second wife Irene Taylor. His maternal grandfather Phineas Taylor was a Whig, legislator, landowner, justice of the peace, and lottery schemer who had a great influence on him. Barnum had several businesses over the years, including a general store, a book auctioning trade, real estate speculation, and a statewide lottery network. He started a weekly newspaper in 1829 called The Herald of Freedom in Danbury, Connecticut. His editorials against the elders of local churches 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. He sold his store in 1834. He began his career as a showman in 1835 when he was 25 with the purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralyzed slave woman named Joice Heth, whom an acquaintance was trumpeting around Philadelphia as George Washington's former nurse and 161 years old. Slavery was already outlawed in New York, but he exploited a loophole that allowed him to lease her for a year for $1,000, borrowing $500 to complete the sale. Heth died in February 1836, at no more than 80 years old. Barnum had worked her for 10 to 12 hours a day, and he hosted a live autopsy of her body in a New York saloon where spectators paid 50 cents to see the dead woman cut up, as he revealed that she was likely half her purported age. Showman Entertainers associated with Barnum: Charles Stratton ("General Tom Thumb") and his bride Lavinia Warren, alongside her sister Minnie and George Washington Morrison Nutt ("Commodore Nutt") Barnum had 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 in 1841, located at Broadway and Ann Street, New York City. He improved the attraction, upgrading the building and adding exhibits, then renamed it "Barnum's American Museum"; it became a popular showplace. He added a lighthouse lamp that attracted attention up and down Broadway and flags along the roof's edge that attracted attention in the daytime, while giant paintings of animals between the upper windows drew attention 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 were added to the exhibits of stuffed animals, including albinos, giants, little people, jugglers, magicians, exotic women, detailed models of cities and famous battles, and a menagerie of animals. Fiji mermaid and Tom Thumb 1866 newspaper advertisement for Barnum's American Museum located on Ann Street in Manhattan In 1842 Barnum introduced his first major hoax: a creature with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish known as the "Feejee" mermaid. He leased it from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston who became his friend, confidant, and collaborator.[10][11] Barnum justified his hoaxes by saying that they were advertisements to draw attention to the museum. "I don't believe in duping the public", he said, "but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them." He followed the mermaid by exhibiting Charles Stratton, the little person called "General Tom Thumb" ("the Smallest Person that ever Walked Alone") who was then four years old but was stated to be 11. With heavy coaching and natural talent, the boy was taught to imitate people from Hercules to Napoleon. In 1843 Barnum hired the Native American dancer fu-Hum-Me, the first of many First Nations people whom he presented. During 1844–45 he toured with General Tom Thumb in Europe and met Queen Victoria, who was amused but saddened by the little man, and the event was a publicity coup. It opened the door to visits from royalty throughout Europe, including the Tsar of Russia, and enabled Barnum to acquire dozens of new attractions, including automatons and other mechanical marvels. During this time he went on a spending spree and bought other museums, including artist Rembrandt Peale's Museum in Philadelphia,[14] the nation's first major museum. By late 1846, Barnum's Museum was drawing 400,000 visitors a year.
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Professional Career

P.T. Barnum, in full Phineas Taylor Barnum, (born July 5, 1810, Bethel, Connecticut, U.S.—died April 7, 1891, Bridgeport, Connecticut), American showman who employed sensational forms of presentation and publicity to popularize such amusements as the public museum, the musical concert, and the three-ring circus. In partnership with James A. Bailey, he made the American circus a popular and gigantic spectacle, the so-called Greatest Show on Earth. Barnum was 15 years old when his father died, and the support of his mother and his five sisters and brothers fell largely upon his shoulders. After holding a variety of jobs, he became publisher of a Danbury, Connecticut, weekly newspaper, Herald of Freedom. Arrested three times for libel, he enjoyed his first taste of notoriety. In 1829, at age 19, Barnum married a 21-year-old Bethel woman, Charity Hallett, who was to bear him four daughters. In 1834 he moved to New York City, where he found his vocation as a showman one year later when he successfully presented Joice Heth, a wizened Black woman whom he advertised as the 161-year-old nurse to Gen. George Washington. On her death, however, the story was exposed as a hoax. Casting about for a legitimate undertaking, Barnum outmaneuvered wealthier bidders to acquire John Scudder’s American Museum, in New York City, a five-story marble structure filled with stuffed animals, waxwork figures, and similar conventional exhibits. The new owner rapidly transformed the museum into a carnival of human curiosities, dramatic theatricals, beauty contests, and other sensational attractions. Although driven at the outset of his career by a desire for wealth and fame, Barnum may have been basically motivated by less selfish reasons. “This is a trading world,” he wrote, “and men, women, and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature.” Playing upon the public’s interest in the unusual and bizarre (part of the “human curiosities” movement of the 19th century that saw the exploitation of African slave Sarah Baartman and the rise of carnival freak shows), Barnum scoured the world for curiosities, living or dead, genuine or fake. By means of outrageous stunts, repetitive advertising, and exaggerated publicity, Barnum excited international attention and made his showcase of wonders a landmark. Uncover the history of P. T. Barnum's American Museum on Broadway in New York City Between 1842, when he took over the American Museum, and 1868, when he gave it up after fires twice had all but destroyed it, Barnum’s gaudy showmanship enticed 82 million visitors—among them Henry and William James, Charles Dickens, and Edward VII, then the prince of Wales—into his halls and to his other enterprises. General Tom Thumb Barnum’s first successful exhibit in the museum was the Feejee Mermaid, which had a seemingly human head topping the finned body of a fish and was, of course, found later to be a fake. Among the genuine curiosities were Chang and Eng, Siamese twins connected by a ligament below their breastbones. It was, however, Charles Stratton, a man only 25 inches (65 cm) tall who was discovered by Barnum, that proved to be his most profitable exhibit. Ballyhooing Stratton as General Tom Thumb, Barnum sold 20 million tickets to the museum. After being received by U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln, Barnum and Tom Thumb enjoyed a triumphal tour abroad, during which the latter gave a command performance before Queen Victoria. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Eager to change his image from promoter of human curiosities to impresario of artistic attractions, Barnum risked his entire fortune by importing Jenny Lind, a Swedish soprano whom he had never seen or heard and who was almost unknown in the United States. Dubbing Lind “The Swedish Nightingale,” Barnum mounted the most massive publicity campaign he had ever attempted. Lind’s opening night in New York City, before a capacity audience of 5,000, and her nine months of concerts across the United States earned immense sums. P.T. Barnum P.T. Barnum At the peak of his career, Barnum’s own appearance was nearly as familiar to the public as the exhibits he promoted. An impressive figure 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 metres) tall, semi bald, with blue eyes, a bulbous nose, and a potbelly, he called himself the “Prince of Humbugs.” He dwelt in a three-story Oriental mansion, named Iranistan, on a 17-acre (7-hectare) estate in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he played host to such notables as Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, and Matthew Arnold. Close friends regarded him as good-natured, thoughtful, and kind, as well as parsimonious and egotistical. His avocations were politics and writing. After serving two terms in the Connecticut state legislature, he was elected mayor of Bridgeport, in which post he fought prostitution and union discrimination against Blacks. In 1855 he published his autobiography, The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself; and because he frankly revealed some of the deceits he had employed, he was harshly taken to task by the majority of critics. Stung, Barnum continually modified the book in many revised versions, which, he claimed, sold a total of 1,000,000 copies. By 1884, eager more for publicity than for profit, Barnum placed his autobiography in the public domain, allowing anyone to print and sell it without copyright infringement. Though the cynicism “There’s a sucker born every minute” has long been attributed to Barnum, there is no proof that he ever wrote or spoke these words. Barnum’s family life was not entirely happy. One daughter died in childhood; another was dropped from his will for committing adultery. Disappointed because he had no male heir, Barnum left a sizable bequest to a grandson on the condition that he agree to use Barnum as part of his name. After 44 years of marriage, Charity Barnum died in 1873. The following year, Barnum, who was then 64, took the 24-year-old Nancy Fish, the daughter of a British admirer, for his second wife. Although his name has been popularly linked with the circus, Barnum did not, in fact, become a circus showman until he was past age 60. Barnum did not invent the modern circus, but, in partnership with the retiring, efficient Bailey, he did give the American spectacle its gigantic size, its most memorable attractions, and its widest popularity, attempting to make it what he called “the greatest show on earth.” Barnum capped his circus career by purchasing a six-and-a-half-ton elephant named Jumbo, who quickly earned back his purchase price during his first season under the big top. In his 81st year, Barnum fell gravely ill. At his request, a New York newspaper published his obituary in advance so that he might enjoy it. Two weeks later, after inquiring about the box-office receipts of the circus, Barnum died in his Connecticut mansion. The Times of London echoed the world press in its final tribute: “He created the métier of a showman on a grandiose scale. He early realized that the essential feature of modern democracy is its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it. His name is a proverb already, and a proverb it will continue.”
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