January 7, 2022 • 28 mins
Every story has a beginning, and the tale of the American sideshow—in many ways—begins in the aftermath of one man’s personal tragedy. Learn how it all began, and what the early days were like, on the inaugural episode of Grim & Mild Presents: Sideshow.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
All eyes were turned towards the sky. It was coming soon,
you see, and the people were excited. Holley's comment was
due to pass by the Earth with a tale twenty
four million miles long and careening over three million miles overhead.
The residents of New York City marveled at the heavens
and wondered what it could all mean. Richard Locke certainly
(00:31):
had an idea. For him, it meant dollars if he
played his cards right. He was in the business of newspapers,
a ruthless, cutthroat game in Old New York, one that
pitted titans and penny press publishers against each other. He
knew you had to give the people what they wanted,
and in this moment, people wanted the stars. But he
(00:53):
would do them one better. He would also give them
the moon. On August thirty five, Lock published the first
installment of a new otherworldly story. It would run in
six parts, with each ending luring its readers to come
back for more. He titled it Celestial Discoveries and hid
behind the identity of a very real and very famous astronomer,
(01:15):
John Herschel. But beyond that, the story was what he
would call today fake news. Over the course of six issues,
lock I mean, Herschel told readers about what he was
seeing through his superpowered telescope aimed at the moon, plant life, rocks, animals.
He told of lunar forests, herds of brown bison like creatures,
(01:38):
even bluish unicorns, in a voice that echoed the same
travelog sensibilities of America's Age of New imperialism. His dispatches
read like field notes, and then came the big reveal.
He had discovered intelligent life on the Moon. They had
darkish yellow skin, beards and protruding lower jaws. They had
(01:58):
wings and a striking resemblance to beavers, but lived in
homes with smokestacks. There was a crystalline temple and another taller,
lighter skinned population. The social hierarchy here, unfortunately, is pretty implicit,
and just as external pressure to provide any and all
evidence mounted, the paper reports that Herschel's lab very conveniently
(02:20):
burned down. That was the end of that, or was
it The real Herschel was sought out by many readers.
One group of missionaries even asked how they could go
about sending Bibles to the Moon. Herschel's wife Margaret didn't
even blame readers for believing the hooks. The ruse had
gone on for weeks, but the public talked about it
for much longer. It turns out that Locke's readership didn't
(02:42):
care if the story was completely true or not. They
wanted to know how true it potentially could be. It
was a good tale, whether it was real or not.
The story had done its job, though it certainly sold papers.
This blurry line between fact and fiction, the world of
hoaxes and humbugs would go on to be a defining
cornerstone of the rest of the century. At that very
(03:05):
same moment, an intrepid young man arrived in the city.
We can imagine that for those few weeks in the
fall of eighteen thirty five, he cracked open his issues
of The Sun and followed along with rapt attention. We
can picture him making notes and seeing opportunity ahead. The
world was changing and he was going to be a
(03:25):
part of it. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome to the
side show. Taylor had always believed that he was destined
for greatness. As a young boy in the tiny village
(03:46):
of Bethel, Connecticut, he felt like a king, a shrewd
pint sized sales clerk at his father's general store. He
drove a mean bargain with a mix of Yankee wit
and thrift. He had big shoes to fill, after all.
He was named after his grandfather, Phineas Taylor, who was
an old sage and loved by all. Phineas so pleased
(04:07):
to have a small protege of his own, purchased Taylor
and I quote the greatest farmland in all of Connecticut,
which made him the richest kid in town, and everyone
else knew it. Not a week went by without Uncle
Finn waxing poetic to Taylor of this grand inheritance, a
place by the name of Ivy Island. In Taylor's mind,
(04:29):
it must have looked something like El Dorado. Minds of gold,
outcroppings of emerald diamonds, all aglow, a place where you
could pluck rubies from trees and silver from streams. His
autobiography talks about visions of milk and honey, and on
a practical level, we can think this picture included some
cows and chickens. Being New England in eighteen twenty two,
(04:50):
after all, so when the time came to finally visit
the land, his land. Taylor was ready. He was twelve
and all grown up. He left town early that morning
with the family friend. They trekked for hours. And we're
not talking about rolling hills of grassland. No, they mucked
through swamp. This couldn't be right, though. We can imagine Taylor,
like any other kid, asking are we there yet? But
(05:14):
then they stopped. And where they stopped did it turn
out to be the island of his wildest dreams? Not
at all. In front of him was a slice of squishy,
boggy ground. It was muddy, ugly, dotted with scraggly trees
and mosquitoes, and filled with stink and snakes. And then
it hit him. This was one of his grandfather's infamous
(05:36):
practical jokes. And worse, the whole town had been in
on it for years. Taylor had left his home that morning,
ready for retirement, and returned a laughing stock. We can
imagine that he went back to his job at the
Register of feeling a bit miffed and also scheming, because
Taylor never forgot that lesson the years went on. He
(05:58):
worked hard and loved the barter and banter of country life.
He was a quick talker, jovial, a teller of tall tales,
A charmer, he traded in commodities and gossip, but he
eventually took a job in Brooklyn and developed a taste
for the spectacle of city life. Still home had a
hold on him. His granddad implored him to come back,
(06:19):
so he did. It was back in Connecticut that he
met Charity Hallett. Soon the two were married, and then
Taylor set up a new shop with a co conspirator,
or at least company along for the ride. It was
here that he kept dreaming of riches and how to
get them. Taylor's magic was people. His emotional radar was
finally tuned to the desires, wants, and secrets of his customers,
(06:41):
catering to their whims and imaginations. At his newly minted store,
he sold everything from bibles to brandy to lottery tickets,
a little something for everyone. He had a natural sense
for psychology, and he was going to capitalize on it.
America in the mid eighteen hundreds, you see, was quickly changing.
Religious revivals were in full swing, the nation was quickly industrializing,
(07:04):
Immigration was on the rise, and the young country was
beginning to look west to far flung places, the word
scientist entered the vocabulary for the first time, and a
war that would fracture the country loomed ahead, and Taylor
wanted to ride these new waves, so he bought a
printing press. He believed that words had power and that
they would take him further than his horse could run.
(07:26):
He wanted to reach people in the world beyond Bethel.
On October nineteenth of eighteen thirty one, he began printing
his weekly Herald of Freedom. It fit right in with
the trend of independent newspapers being sold on street corners
in major cities across the nation, and Taylor wanted a
slice of that pie. He wanted the freedom to share
his ideas, to advertise, to call people to action. He
(07:49):
saw an opportunity to wrestle control of the narrative, to
spin yarns in his own fashion, much like his grandfather
Phineas had done all those years before. It was his
turn to become a bona fide, widely respected storyteller. Well
most of the time, you see, Taylor did like to
get mouths wagging. He loved to stir up controversy with
(08:09):
his paper, and it wasn't long before his affinity landed
him in a Connecticut jail for libel. While in this jail,
Cell one, he decorated with carpets and other cozy furnishings.
From home, he had an idea. He gathered his friends
and created what he called the Committee of Arrangements. They
spread the word of his imprisonment and impending release far
(08:30):
and wide, both through word of mouth and through his
printing press. We can imagine that on the day of
his release, he put on his best suit, threw his
shoulders back, and marched out of his cell and into
a throng of thousands his audience and their applause. Picture
this will you horse drawn carriages astride dusty town roads,
(08:52):
a marching band, blaring brass cannon, fire on the green,
sticky champagne, toasts and revelry airing on deep into the night,
all for him. At twenty two and back in the world,
he had made a statement. The show business career of
Phineas Taylor Barnum had arrived. The Mermaid was a game changer.
(09:30):
It was a decrepit specimen sewn together with the bottom
half of a fish and the top half of a monkey,
and holy dead p t. Barnum held it in his hands.
He was on the hunt for artifacts with star factor.
He went about these things with an open mind. You see,
they didn't have to be perfect, No, they didn't even
have to be real. What they did need was a
(09:51):
thread of a yarn that he could spin up into
a fantastic tale. And he immediately saw potential in this
scaly specimen, and had did a few years before. Like
many people at the time, he had transplanted his growing
family to New York City. It was a bustling, bursting
metropolis dressed up like a promise. The city was teeming
(10:11):
with life, a riot of foreign tongues, unrelenting construction, and
air thick with the smells of smoke, cooking and the
perfume of bodies. There was death and there was life,
and a lot of each. For some time he worked
in the throes of this at another dry goods shop,
and then one day, in eighteen thirty five, a customer
(10:32):
came in with the story to tell and an offer
to make Barnum was all ears. This customer was in
show business, but he was tired. He happened to manage
a very particular, very interesting charge. The purportedly one hundred
sixty one year old black nanny of George Washington, a
woman by the name of Joyce Heth. What he wanted
(10:52):
to know was this, would Barnum be interested in taking
his show on the road. Now, I can't overstate what
transpired that day. By saying yes, Barnum effectively purchased Joyce
and then paraded her in front of a pain audience.
We'll get to Joyce's whole story in her own episode
later this season, but for now, what you need to
know is this. Her life and her death made Barnum
(11:15):
a huge success, so successful, in fact, that he decided
to give up his mercantile life and get into full
time show business. He wanted to become a proper showman.
In eighteen forty one, he purchased New York City's American Museum,
two blocks from where the Twin Towers would later stand.
It was a grand brick building smack at the corner
(11:35):
of Broadway and Ann Streets. Visitors could see wax figures,
taxidermy art, and even hear lectures. But Barnum's version would
be a little different. They would be grand, they would
expand it would be his very own brick and mortar
world to fill with a menagerie of magical and living curiosities.
It would be open seven days a week, sunrise till
(11:57):
way past sunset. Doors flung open for any one who
could pay, and people paid. Interest in science and exploration
in medicine was booming. Yes, he wanted to have legitimate specimens,
but he wasn't above exploiting the ignorance of the masses
in order to serve their fantasies. He acquired objects from
around the world, animals from the ocean, and notably, individuals
(12:21):
with bodies that the Victorian era public saw as abnormal dwarves, giantesses,
people with dark skin, and he attached stories to each
of them, just as he had done with Joyce. Heth
capitalizing on this young country's expanding leisure time and burgeoning imagination.
He mixed fact and fiction and it was a smash hit.
(12:43):
But to understand how all of this came to be,
we first have to understand what was going on with
the mermaid that Barnum was holding, because it was this
very mermaid that helped put this museum, his museum, on
the map. Moses Kimball appeared on Barnum's doorstep in eighteen
forty two saw the specimen into as the young proprietor
of the Boston Museum. He had something that might be
(13:05):
of interest and offering, one might say, He presented Barnum
with an ugly, withered body roughly three ft long, with
its mouth a gape in a scream. Barnum took a
closer look. It was weird, but it was believable too.
Even at a time when only presidents and war heroes
count themselves in the ranks of American celebrities. Barnum knew
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he could make this mermaid famous. Then Kimball unspoiled the
Mummy's story. It involved the tale of a ship captain
out of Calcutta, bill, gotten gains and lost fortune. Now,
while you might bring back snow globes or refrigerator magnets
from trips these days, this guy brought home a mermaid.
If he was duped into believing its authenticity, we don't know.
(13:48):
But what we do know is that these fabricated Franken
creatures were fairly common in East Asia at the time.
Barnum knew that too, but he didn't think the general
public would. He christened it the Fiji Mermaid, implying an
exotic origin story far from the reaches of Lower Manhattan.
Folklore across the world has long told stories of mermaids.
(14:10):
Who was to say that this wasn't a bona fide corpse.
So he decided to do something clever. Let the public
decide for themselves. Barnum got to work. He blitzed small
town newspapers with fake news. He took pseudonyms and sang
the mermaids praises. He had them postmarked from Alabama and
South Carolina and Washington, d C. And the papers ran them.
(14:33):
His trusted friend Levi Lyman posed as the esteemed Dr Griffin.
His backstory was as fake as the mermaids, but it
landed him an exclusive interview in Philadelphia. The Eastern seaboard
was entranced, credulous, curious. Within a few weeks, Barnum produced woodcuts, engravings,
and banners of busty, fair life size women with fish tails,
(14:56):
advertising a fleeting one week opportunity to see this merm
made in the flesh. The city was electrified, it clamored.
Barnum promised three different city papers exclusive access to his exhibit,
which was a surprise to each editor. When Barnum's exhibit opened,
each of them ran the story anyway. Opening nights arrived,
(15:17):
the Mermaid packed the hall. Thousands came, paying a quarter
and sweltering in the summer heat, surely shocked at what
stood on stage before them. The discrepancy was very, very obvious,
but some wondered, could there be some truth here? Maybe
it wasn't the Mermaid in the picture, but it certainly
didn't disqualify it from mirror status. And that is exactly
(15:40):
what Barnum had hoped for. And the numbers spoke. The
show was a resounding success, so successful, in fact, that
the Mermaid hit the road on a Southern tour, passing
through the Bible Belt. It was only when the Mermaid's
veracity was attacked in the Charleston papers that Barnum grew concerned.
You see, at Charleston Minister had a bone to pick.
(16:00):
This man's daughters had married sons of the famed naturalist
John Ottobon, and he smelled a fraud. Barnum, to his credit,
countered his accusations. If it was so easy to craft
a fake, he would give any person who could show
him another example of a fish sewn to a monkey
five hundred dollars. No one came forward, but a group
of local scientists and naturalists piled on. They thought this
(16:23):
lie was a dangerous one, exploiting the public's trust as
they so desperately tried to move the legitimacy of their
work forward. The mermaid was evacuated and put on a
slow ship back to New York. Back in the city,
it sat dusty and dejected in a box on the
top shelf of Barnum's office, and there it rested a spell.
(16:45):
Barnum thought about what to do next, and of course
he came to the natural conclusion he had eventually put
the mermaid back out for a display. He had learned
something important through his experiment. Though by and large the
public wasn't upset about his dis option. On the contrary,
they seem to have actually enjoyed it, reveled in it,
(17:05):
even wanted more. The show he decided must go on.
The show went on for a good long while. To
be in Barnum's orbit was to have front row seats
to the spectacle of his life. He was known to
(17:28):
be more attentive to his exhibits than his family, often
gallivanting on tour meeting presidents, having audiences with the Queen.
But he had an idea that would bring him back
closer to home, an idea that proved, when all was
said and done, to be disastrous. He thought he knew
what he was getting into, But when Barnum invested in
the Jerome Clock Company with designs on moving it to
(17:50):
his beloved east Bridgeport, Connecticut, he didn't realize he was
buying into a sour deal, one that bankrupted him and
forced his family out of their palatial estate. They to
a house by the sea on Long Island, where charities,
health declined. We can imagine that depression loomed large, but
the gears kept turning. His time there offered him space
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that the big city did not. It was a pastoral place,
and we can imagine that it reminded him of Bethel.
It was in this quiet that Barnum incubated, hoping for
a rebirth, ideally spurred on by divine intervention. The newspapers
celebrated his downfall with headlines such as the deceiver has
been duped. People cheered, But Barnum never meant to hurt
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anyone in his line of work. There was no mal intent,
no malice. He merely meant to charm, to entertain, to
open the world to people beyond the confines of their geography.
This stroke of bad luck, this clock swindle, was something
entirely different. Never one to be alone much, he made
a friend, a local farmer. While walking the shore. One day,
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they came across a commotion. Just ahead were some men
and a twelve ft black whale, dead but hard and fresh.
He said, never want to turn down a carcass. Barnum
fished around in his pocket. While it's true that he
could have spent the last few dollars on milk and bread,
he instead spent it on this big, hulking corpse, And
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because its shelf life was short, he had to make
quick work of it. He shipped it to his museum
and exhibited it in a refrigerator. It was a success, too,
He was able to pay his rent. He took this
as a sign. It all felt pretty providential After all.
The papers, though, continued to predict his end, but Barnum
wasn't one to stay down or stay put. In the
(19:38):
winter of eighteen fifty six he went out on more tours,
again with a few trusted sidekicks, including General Tom Thumb,
a fellow who would become a lifelong friend. It's seeing
that Barnum was making a comeback without missing a beat
and with no sense of irony. He began a lecture
series called The Art of Money Getting or Success in Life,
(19:59):
and the allowing string of sold out shows sent a
loud and clear message. He was back, and he was
going to do those newspapers and naysayers won better. He
was going to run for public office and was going
to do it well. In eighteen sixty five, he was
elected to the Connecticut State Legislature. It was not lost
on him that Americans needed a reprieve from the Civil War.
(20:22):
To his museum, he added pro unionist exhibits, lectures, and plays,
and he also enlisted Pauline Kushman, an actress who had
been a spy for the Union, who regaled audiences with
her tales behind enemy lines. Barnum had become a staunch abolitionist,
running squarely on the antislavery platform. In later years, he
(20:42):
would amend his story about his time with Joyce. Heth
again and again and again his guilt was clear, even
if his conscience was not. On July thirteenth, eighteen sixty five,
Barnum was at the podium speaking to the legislature when
he was slipped a note, casting his eyes downward and
barely missing a beat. He continued on about the state's
(21:03):
train system. But that piece of paper, well, it held
some devastating news. At that very moment, it seems Barnum's
Great American Museum was burning to the ground. Was it
(21:23):
a furnace failure, Was it set by Confederate sympathizers. Will
never truly know. But what we do know is this
around noon and employee came running from the basement yelling fire.
There were no sprinkler systems or fire extinguishers. There wasn't
even a fire code at the time. This place was
a labyrinth of Barnum's own design and a veritable tinder box.
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Window panes exploded, flames licked up the walls, and smoke
poured out as thick as oil. The most famous building
in New York City was choking. The air was gone,
gobbled up by the fire birds flew from the building's belly.
Snakes evacuated down Broadway. There are even reports of firefighters
saving a seal named Ned and rumors of a lion
(22:06):
that escaped to roam the streets. Any movable artifacts were
launched from the windows, including a wax likeness of Jefferson
Davis wearing a dress. The roof was collapsing, the walls
were caving in. Two whales recently kidnapped from the coast
of Labrador boiled in their own salt water tanks before
firefighters broke their glass. They collapsed through the building and
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landed on Broadway, where they spent weeks rotting there in
the summer heat because no one could figure out how
to move them. Upon reading the note, Barnum, true to
his unruffled form, finished his speech, folded it back into
his pocket, and went home to Bridgeport. He left for
New York City the following day. Once there, he assessed
the carnage, and wouldn't you know it, he decided to
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begin again. Mere months after the tragic fire, he opened
a new version of his museum about a mile uptown.
He found more artifact x and more guests. This was
all fine until it wasn't. Because this new museum eventually
burned down as well. We can only imagine the tenacity
and blind faith it would require to believe that this
(23:12):
would all eventually work out. After all, he had sold
thirty eight million admission tickets at the time when the
population of his country was only thirty five million. He
knew he was onto something. At sixty, this master of
reinvention was now free to embark on his next act,
the creation of the American side show. P. T. Barnum
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was the ultimate showman and he could sell just about anything,
So it should come as no surprise that there are
countless stories about his business dealings, more than we could
ever fit into a single epiodode. But if you stick
around through this brief sponsor break, my friend and co
producer Robin Miniter, will share one more golden tail. Jenny
(24:19):
Lynde wasn't going to be played for a fool. She
was a woman self possessed, the lady Gaga of the
Victorian age. Jenny counted the Queen and her cronies among
her most rabid fans. In fact, Jenny believed her voice
to be divinely gifted, and for this reason she never
took it for granted. She dressed plainly, lived modestly, and
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curated a private life according to her deep seated faith,
and she did this stunningly well. By the way, for
a very long while. But by the time she neared
her seven performance, she found herself about to turn thirty
and totally exhausted. Marriage betrothals had been broken, and a
(25:02):
dear friend of hers had passed away. So she retreated
into herself and into retirement, stumbling into a personal and
professional crossroads. Until that is, she was offered a lot
of money. You see, word of her success had traveled
far and wide. Jenny was the most famous opera singer
in the world, after all, and when P. T. Barnum
(25:24):
heard whispers of this, he saw dollar signs, so he
decided to shoot his shot. When Barnum's man came knocking,
Jenny was ready to shake him down. He wanted to
cut a deal with her for two years of her time. Now,
if Barnum was ruthless about money, Jenny was in a
position to best him. She negotiated to bring along two servants,
(25:45):
a music director and a companion, as well as having
every single expense taken care of along the way. On
top of that, she required Barnum to deposit the modern
equivalent of six and a half million dollars into her
bank account, all before she had even left her house
To head off towards America before she had even met him,
and Barnum agreed to all of her terms. Jenny set
(26:08):
off on a steamership and Barnum got to work. For
six months, he peppered the papers with news of her
impending arrival in her great success in Europe, cranking his
ink splash star making printing presses like never before. In fact,
on September two of eighteen fifty, the New York Herald
dedicated five of its six front page columns to the
Swedish Nightingale, who would soon be arriving on the American
(26:30):
mail steamer the Atlantic. By the time the ship docked,
Barnum had drummed up enough interest that thousands of people
had gathered to meet her. The throngs arrived in their
Sunday best, hanging from the docks and waving madly. And yes,
it was also true that he had hired some of
these people to just stand around, but few would know
this at the time. This was an arrival fit for
(26:51):
a queen, but it was all for Jenny. It was here,
at long last, that the two finally made their acquaintance way.
Jenny wondered had Barnum first heard her sing, Actually, he
said as he handed her a bouquet of red roses,
he never had. When it came down to it, he
wasn't even that interested in her voice. What excited him
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most about her was what she represented to him, the
access to the upper echelons of society and something that
wasn't immediately afforded to him while trying to push a
frank and fish monkey on a pedestrian Lower Manhattan audience. Basically,
he was just interested in her reputation, and as any
woman knows, a reputation can be a very powerful thing.
(27:36):
In the case of Jenny Lynn, she won the game.
Her tour of America was hugely successful. The narratives that
Barnum spun around her were of the most agreeable kind
and actually set her up for even more success in
the future. But as you'll see, she was an anomaly
in our collection of stories to come. As we will
soon learn, most of the folks who entered Barnum's orbit
(27:59):
rarely on themselves in a position to ever escape. Sideshow
was written by Robin Miniter, with executive production, narration and
audio editing by me Aaron Mankey. Research for the series
was done by Taylor Haggerdorn and Sam Alberty. Graham and
Mild Presents was created in partnership with I Heart Radio.
(28:20):
You can learn more about this show and everything else
from Grim and mild Over at Grimm and mild dot com, and,
as always, thanks for listening.
All eyes were turned towards the sky. It was coming soon,
you see, and the people were excited. Holley's comment was
due to pass by the Earth with a tale twenty
four million miles long and careening over three million miles overhead.
The residents of New York City marveled at the heavens
and wondered what it could all mean. Richard Locke certainly
(00:31):
had an idea. For him, it meant dollars if he
played his cards right. He was in the business of newspapers,
a ruthless, cutthroat game in Old New York, one that
pitted titans and penny press publishers against each other. He
knew you had to give the people what they wanted,
and in this moment, people wanted the stars. But he
(00:53):
would do them one better. He would also give them
the moon. On August thirty five, Lock published the first
installment of a new otherworldly story. It would run in
six parts, with each ending luring its readers to come
back for more. He titled it Celestial Discoveries and hid
behind the identity of a very real and very famous astronomer,
(01:15):
John Herschel. But beyond that, the story was what he
would call today fake news. Over the course of six issues,
lock I mean, Herschel told readers about what he was
seeing through his superpowered telescope aimed at the moon, plant life, rocks, animals.
He told of lunar forests, herds of brown bison like creatures,
(01:38):
even bluish unicorns, in a voice that echoed the same
travelog sensibilities of America's Age of New imperialism. His dispatches
read like field notes, and then came the big reveal.
He had discovered intelligent life on the Moon. They had
darkish yellow skin, beards and protruding lower jaws. They had
(01:58):
wings and a striking resemblance to beavers, but lived in
homes with smokestacks. There was a crystalline temple and another taller,
lighter skinned population. The social hierarchy here, unfortunately, is pretty implicit,
and just as external pressure to provide any and all
evidence mounted, the paper reports that Herschel's lab very conveniently
(02:20):
burned down. That was the end of that, or was
it The real Herschel was sought out by many readers.
One group of missionaries even asked how they could go
about sending Bibles to the Moon. Herschel's wife Margaret didn't
even blame readers for believing the hooks. The ruse had
gone on for weeks, but the public talked about it
for much longer. It turns out that Locke's readership didn't
(02:42):
care if the story was completely true or not. They
wanted to know how true it potentially could be. It
was a good tale, whether it was real or not.
The story had done its job, though it certainly sold papers.
This blurry line between fact and fiction, the world of
hoaxes and humbugs would go on to be a defining
cornerstone of the rest of the century. At that very
(03:05):
same moment, an intrepid young man arrived in the city.
We can imagine that for those few weeks in the
fall of eighteen thirty five, he cracked open his issues
of The Sun and followed along with rapt attention. We
can picture him making notes and seeing opportunity ahead. The
world was changing and he was going to be a
(03:25):
part of it. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome to the
side show. Taylor had always believed that he was destined
for greatness. As a young boy in the tiny village
(03:46):
of Bethel, Connecticut, he felt like a king, a shrewd
pint sized sales clerk at his father's general store. He
drove a mean bargain with a mix of Yankee wit
and thrift. He had big shoes to fill, after all.
He was named after his grandfather, Phineas Taylor, who was
an old sage and loved by all. Phineas so pleased
(04:07):
to have a small protege of his own, purchased Taylor
and I quote the greatest farmland in all of Connecticut,
which made him the richest kid in town, and everyone
else knew it. Not a week went by without Uncle
Finn waxing poetic to Taylor of this grand inheritance, a
place by the name of Ivy Island. In Taylor's mind,
(04:29):
it must have looked something like El Dorado. Minds of gold,
outcroppings of emerald diamonds, all aglow, a place where you
could pluck rubies from trees and silver from streams. His
autobiography talks about visions of milk and honey, and on
a practical level, we can think this picture included some
cows and chickens. Being New England in eighteen twenty two,
(04:50):
after all, so when the time came to finally visit
the land, his land. Taylor was ready. He was twelve
and all grown up. He left town early that morning
with the family friend. They trekked for hours. And we're
not talking about rolling hills of grassland. No, they mucked
through swamp. This couldn't be right, though. We can imagine Taylor,
like any other kid, asking are we there yet? But
(05:14):
then they stopped. And where they stopped did it turn
out to be the island of his wildest dreams? Not
at all. In front of him was a slice of squishy,
boggy ground. It was muddy, ugly, dotted with scraggly trees
and mosquitoes, and filled with stink and snakes. And then
it hit him. This was one of his grandfather's infamous
(05:36):
practical jokes. And worse, the whole town had been in
on it for years. Taylor had left his home that morning,
ready for retirement, and returned a laughing stock. We can
imagine that he went back to his job at the
Register of feeling a bit miffed and also scheming, because
Taylor never forgot that lesson the years went on. He
(05:58):
worked hard and loved the barter and banter of country life.
He was a quick talker, jovial, a teller of tall tales,
A charmer, he traded in commodities and gossip, but he
eventually took a job in Brooklyn and developed a taste
for the spectacle of city life. Still home had a
hold on him. His granddad implored him to come back,
(06:19):
so he did. It was back in Connecticut that he
met Charity Hallett. Soon the two were married, and then
Taylor set up a new shop with a co conspirator,
or at least company along for the ride. It was
here that he kept dreaming of riches and how to
get them. Taylor's magic was people. His emotional radar was
finally tuned to the desires, wants, and secrets of his customers,
(06:41):
catering to their whims and imaginations. At his newly minted store,
he sold everything from bibles to brandy to lottery tickets,
a little something for everyone. He had a natural sense
for psychology, and he was going to capitalize on it.
America in the mid eighteen hundreds, you see, was quickly changing.
Religious revivals were in full swing, the nation was quickly industrializing,
(07:04):
Immigration was on the rise, and the young country was
beginning to look west to far flung places, the word
scientist entered the vocabulary for the first time, and a
war that would fracture the country loomed ahead, and Taylor
wanted to ride these new waves, so he bought a
printing press. He believed that words had power and that
they would take him further than his horse could run.
(07:26):
He wanted to reach people in the world beyond Bethel.
On October nineteenth of eighteen thirty one, he began printing
his weekly Herald of Freedom. It fit right in with
the trend of independent newspapers being sold on street corners
in major cities across the nation, and Taylor wanted a
slice of that pie. He wanted the freedom to share
his ideas, to advertise, to call people to action. He
(07:49):
saw an opportunity to wrestle control of the narrative, to
spin yarns in his own fashion, much like his grandfather
Phineas had done all those years before. It was his
turn to become a bona fide, widely respected storyteller. Well
most of the time, you see, Taylor did like to
get mouths wagging. He loved to stir up controversy with
(08:09):
his paper, and it wasn't long before his affinity landed
him in a Connecticut jail for libel. While in this jail,
Cell one, he decorated with carpets and other cozy furnishings.
From home, he had an idea. He gathered his friends
and created what he called the Committee of Arrangements. They
spread the word of his imprisonment and impending release far
(08:30):
and wide, both through word of mouth and through his
printing press. We can imagine that on the day of
his release, he put on his best suit, threw his
shoulders back, and marched out of his cell and into
a throng of thousands his audience and their applause. Picture
this will you horse drawn carriages astride dusty town roads,
(08:52):
a marching band, blaring brass cannon, fire on the green,
sticky champagne, toasts and revelry airing on deep into the night,
all for him. At twenty two and back in the world,
he had made a statement. The show business career of
Phineas Taylor Barnum had arrived. The Mermaid was a game changer.
(09:30):
It was a decrepit specimen sewn together with the bottom
half of a fish and the top half of a monkey,
and holy dead p t. Barnum held it in his hands.
He was on the hunt for artifacts with star factor.
He went about these things with an open mind. You see,
they didn't have to be perfect, No, they didn't even
have to be real. What they did need was a
(09:51):
thread of a yarn that he could spin up into
a fantastic tale. And he immediately saw potential in this
scaly specimen, and had did a few years before. Like
many people at the time, he had transplanted his growing
family to New York City. It was a bustling, bursting
metropolis dressed up like a promise. The city was teeming
(10:11):
with life, a riot of foreign tongues, unrelenting construction, and
air thick with the smells of smoke, cooking and the
perfume of bodies. There was death and there was life,
and a lot of each. For some time he worked
in the throes of this at another dry goods shop,
and then one day, in eighteen thirty five, a customer
(10:32):
came in with the story to tell and an offer
to make Barnum was all ears. This customer was in
show business, but he was tired. He happened to manage
a very particular, very interesting charge. The purportedly one hundred
sixty one year old black nanny of George Washington, a
woman by the name of Joyce Heth. What he wanted
(10:52):
to know was this, would Barnum be interested in taking
his show on the road. Now, I can't overstate what
transpired that day. By saying yes, Barnum effectively purchased Joyce
and then paraded her in front of a pain audience.
We'll get to Joyce's whole story in her own episode
later this season, but for now, what you need to
know is this. Her life and her death made Barnum
(11:15):
a huge success, so successful, in fact, that he decided
to give up his mercantile life and get into full
time show business. He wanted to become a proper showman.
In eighteen forty one, he purchased New York City's American Museum,
two blocks from where the Twin Towers would later stand.
It was a grand brick building smack at the corner
(11:35):
of Broadway and Ann Streets. Visitors could see wax figures,
taxidermy art, and even hear lectures. But Barnum's version would
be a little different. They would be grand, they would
expand it would be his very own brick and mortar
world to fill with a menagerie of magical and living curiosities.
It would be open seven days a week, sunrise till
(11:57):
way past sunset. Doors flung open for any one who
could pay, and people paid. Interest in science and exploration
in medicine was booming. Yes, he wanted to have legitimate specimens,
but he wasn't above exploiting the ignorance of the masses
in order to serve their fantasies. He acquired objects from
around the world, animals from the ocean, and notably, individuals
(12:21):
with bodies that the Victorian era public saw as abnormal dwarves, giantesses,
people with dark skin, and he attached stories to each
of them, just as he had done with Joyce. Heth
capitalizing on this young country's expanding leisure time and burgeoning imagination.
He mixed fact and fiction and it was a smash hit.
(12:43):
But to understand how all of this came to be,
we first have to understand what was going on with
the mermaid that Barnum was holding, because it was this
very mermaid that helped put this museum, his museum, on
the map. Moses Kimball appeared on Barnum's doorstep in eighteen
forty two saw the specimen into as the young proprietor
of the Boston Museum. He had something that might be
(13:05):
of interest and offering, one might say, He presented Barnum
with an ugly, withered body roughly three ft long, with
its mouth a gape in a scream. Barnum took a
closer look. It was weird, but it was believable too.
Even at a time when only presidents and war heroes
count themselves in the ranks of American celebrities. Barnum knew
(13:27):
he could make this mermaid famous. Then Kimball unspoiled the
Mummy's story. It involved the tale of a ship captain
out of Calcutta, bill, gotten gains and lost fortune. Now,
while you might bring back snow globes or refrigerator magnets
from trips these days, this guy brought home a mermaid.
If he was duped into believing its authenticity, we don't know.
(13:48):
But what we do know is that these fabricated Franken
creatures were fairly common in East Asia at the time.
Barnum knew that too, but he didn't think the general
public would. He christened it the Fiji Mermaid, implying an
exotic origin story far from the reaches of Lower Manhattan.
Folklore across the world has long told stories of mermaids.
(14:10):
Who was to say that this wasn't a bona fide corpse.
So he decided to do something clever. Let the public
decide for themselves. Barnum got to work. He blitzed small
town newspapers with fake news. He took pseudonyms and sang
the mermaids praises. He had them postmarked from Alabama and
South Carolina and Washington, d C. And the papers ran them.
(14:33):
His trusted friend Levi Lyman posed as the esteemed Dr Griffin.
His backstory was as fake as the mermaids, but it
landed him an exclusive interview in Philadelphia. The Eastern seaboard
was entranced, credulous, curious. Within a few weeks, Barnum produced woodcuts, engravings,
and banners of busty, fair life size women with fish tails,
(14:56):
advertising a fleeting one week opportunity to see this merm
made in the flesh. The city was electrified, it clamored.
Barnum promised three different city papers exclusive access to his exhibit,
which was a surprise to each editor. When Barnum's exhibit opened,
each of them ran the story anyway. Opening nights arrived,
(15:17):
the Mermaid packed the hall. Thousands came, paying a quarter
and sweltering in the summer heat, surely shocked at what
stood on stage before them. The discrepancy was very, very obvious,
but some wondered, could there be some truth here? Maybe
it wasn't the Mermaid in the picture, but it certainly
didn't disqualify it from mirror status. And that is exactly
(15:40):
what Barnum had hoped for. And the numbers spoke. The
show was a resounding success, so successful, in fact, that
the Mermaid hit the road on a Southern tour, passing
through the Bible Belt. It was only when the Mermaid's
veracity was attacked in the Charleston papers that Barnum grew concerned.
You see, at Charleston Minister had a bone to pick.
(16:00):
This man's daughters had married sons of the famed naturalist
John Ottobon, and he smelled a fraud. Barnum, to his credit,
countered his accusations. If it was so easy to craft
a fake, he would give any person who could show
him another example of a fish sewn to a monkey
five hundred dollars. No one came forward, but a group
of local scientists and naturalists piled on. They thought this
(16:23):
lie was a dangerous one, exploiting the public's trust as
they so desperately tried to move the legitimacy of their
work forward. The mermaid was evacuated and put on a
slow ship back to New York. Back in the city,
it sat dusty and dejected in a box on the
top shelf of Barnum's office, and there it rested a spell.
(16:45):
Barnum thought about what to do next, and of course
he came to the natural conclusion he had eventually put
the mermaid back out for a display. He had learned
something important through his experiment. Though by and large the
public wasn't upset about his dis option. On the contrary,
they seem to have actually enjoyed it, reveled in it,
(17:05):
even wanted more. The show he decided must go on.
The show went on for a good long while. To
be in Barnum's orbit was to have front row seats
to the spectacle of his life. He was known to
(17:28):
be more attentive to his exhibits than his family, often
gallivanting on tour meeting presidents, having audiences with the Queen.
But he had an idea that would bring him back
closer to home, an idea that proved, when all was
said and done, to be disastrous. He thought he knew
what he was getting into, But when Barnum invested in
the Jerome Clock Company with designs on moving it to
(17:50):
his beloved east Bridgeport, Connecticut, he didn't realize he was
buying into a sour deal, one that bankrupted him and
forced his family out of their palatial estate. They to
a house by the sea on Long Island, where charities,
health declined. We can imagine that depression loomed large, but
the gears kept turning. His time there offered him space
(18:10):
that the big city did not. It was a pastoral place,
and we can imagine that it reminded him of Bethel.
It was in this quiet that Barnum incubated, hoping for
a rebirth, ideally spurred on by divine intervention. The newspapers
celebrated his downfall with headlines such as the deceiver has
been duped. People cheered, But Barnum never meant to hurt
(18:33):
anyone in his line of work. There was no mal intent,
no malice. He merely meant to charm, to entertain, to
open the world to people beyond the confines of their geography.
This stroke of bad luck, this clock swindle, was something
entirely different. Never one to be alone much, he made
a friend, a local farmer. While walking the shore. One day,
(18:55):
they came across a commotion. Just ahead were some men
and a twelve ft black whale, dead but hard and fresh.
He said, never want to turn down a carcass. Barnum
fished around in his pocket. While it's true that he
could have spent the last few dollars on milk and bread,
he instead spent it on this big, hulking corpse, And
(19:16):
because its shelf life was short, he had to make
quick work of it. He shipped it to his museum
and exhibited it in a refrigerator. It was a success, too,
He was able to pay his rent. He took this
as a sign. It all felt pretty providential After all.
The papers, though, continued to predict his end, but Barnum
wasn't one to stay down or stay put. In the
(19:38):
winter of eighteen fifty six he went out on more tours,
again with a few trusted sidekicks, including General Tom Thumb,
a fellow who would become a lifelong friend. It's seeing
that Barnum was making a comeback without missing a beat
and with no sense of irony. He began a lecture
series called The Art of Money Getting or Success in Life,
(19:59):
and the allowing string of sold out shows sent a
loud and clear message. He was back, and he was
going to do those newspapers and naysayers won better. He
was going to run for public office and was going
to do it well. In eighteen sixty five, he was
elected to the Connecticut State Legislature. It was not lost
on him that Americans needed a reprieve from the Civil War.
(20:22):
To his museum, he added pro unionist exhibits, lectures, and plays,
and he also enlisted Pauline Kushman, an actress who had
been a spy for the Union, who regaled audiences with
her tales behind enemy lines. Barnum had become a staunch abolitionist,
running squarely on the antislavery platform. In later years, he
(20:42):
would amend his story about his time with Joyce. Heth
again and again and again his guilt was clear, even
if his conscience was not. On July thirteenth, eighteen sixty five,
Barnum was at the podium speaking to the legislature when
he was slipped a note, casting his eyes downward and
barely missing a beat. He continued on about the state's
(21:03):
train system. But that piece of paper, well, it held
some devastating news. At that very moment, it seems Barnum's
Great American Museum was burning to the ground. Was it
(21:23):
a furnace failure, Was it set by Confederate sympathizers. Will
never truly know. But what we do know is this
around noon and employee came running from the basement yelling fire.
There were no sprinkler systems or fire extinguishers. There wasn't
even a fire code at the time. This place was
a labyrinth of Barnum's own design and a veritable tinder box.
(21:45):
Window panes exploded, flames licked up the walls, and smoke
poured out as thick as oil. The most famous building
in New York City was choking. The air was gone,
gobbled up by the fire birds flew from the building's belly.
Snakes evacuated down Broadway. There are even reports of firefighters
saving a seal named Ned and rumors of a lion
(22:06):
that escaped to roam the streets. Any movable artifacts were
launched from the windows, including a wax likeness of Jefferson
Davis wearing a dress. The roof was collapsing, the walls
were caving in. Two whales recently kidnapped from the coast
of Labrador boiled in their own salt water tanks before
firefighters broke their glass. They collapsed through the building and
(22:28):
landed on Broadway, where they spent weeks rotting there in
the summer heat because no one could figure out how
to move them. Upon reading the note, Barnum, true to
his unruffled form, finished his speech, folded it back into
his pocket, and went home to Bridgeport. He left for
New York City the following day. Once there, he assessed
the carnage, and wouldn't you know it, he decided to
(22:51):
begin again. Mere months after the tragic fire, he opened
a new version of his museum about a mile uptown.
He found more artifact x and more guests. This was
all fine until it wasn't. Because this new museum eventually
burned down as well. We can only imagine the tenacity
and blind faith it would require to believe that this
(23:12):
would all eventually work out. After all, he had sold
thirty eight million admission tickets at the time when the
population of his country was only thirty five million. He
knew he was onto something. At sixty, this master of
reinvention was now free to embark on his next act,
the creation of the American side show. P. T. Barnum
(23:49):
was the ultimate showman and he could sell just about anything,
So it should come as no surprise that there are
countless stories about his business dealings, more than we could
ever fit into a single epiodode. But if you stick
around through this brief sponsor break, my friend and co
producer Robin Miniter, will share one more golden tail. Jenny
(24:19):
Lynde wasn't going to be played for a fool. She
was a woman self possessed, the lady Gaga of the
Victorian age. Jenny counted the Queen and her cronies among
her most rabid fans. In fact, Jenny believed her voice
to be divinely gifted, and for this reason she never
took it for granted. She dressed plainly, lived modestly, and
(24:42):
curated a private life according to her deep seated faith,
and she did this stunningly well. By the way, for
a very long while. But by the time she neared
her seven performance, she found herself about to turn thirty
and totally exhausted. Marriage betrothals had been broken, and a
(25:02):
dear friend of hers had passed away. So she retreated
into herself and into retirement, stumbling into a personal and
professional crossroads. Until that is, she was offered a lot
of money. You see, word of her success had traveled
far and wide. Jenny was the most famous opera singer
in the world, after all, and when P. T. Barnum
(25:24):
heard whispers of this, he saw dollar signs, so he
decided to shoot his shot. When Barnum's man came knocking,
Jenny was ready to shake him down. He wanted to
cut a deal with her for two years of her time. Now,
if Barnum was ruthless about money, Jenny was in a
position to best him. She negotiated to bring along two servants,
(25:45):
a music director and a companion, as well as having
every single expense taken care of along the way. On
top of that, she required Barnum to deposit the modern
equivalent of six and a half million dollars into her
bank account, all before she had even left her house
To head off towards America before she had even met him,
and Barnum agreed to all of her terms. Jenny set
(26:08):
off on a steamership and Barnum got to work. For
six months, he peppered the papers with news of her
impending arrival in her great success in Europe, cranking his
ink splash star making printing presses like never before. In fact,
on September two of eighteen fifty, the New York Herald
dedicated five of its six front page columns to the
Swedish Nightingale, who would soon be arriving on the American
(26:30):
mail steamer the Atlantic. By the time the ship docked,
Barnum had drummed up enough interest that thousands of people
had gathered to meet her. The throngs arrived in their
Sunday best, hanging from the docks and waving madly. And yes,
it was also true that he had hired some of
these people to just stand around, but few would know
this at the time. This was an arrival fit for
(26:51):
a queen, but it was all for Jenny. It was here,
at long last, that the two finally made their acquaintance way.
Jenny wondered had Barnum first heard her sing, Actually, he
said as he handed her a bouquet of red roses,
he never had. When it came down to it, he
wasn't even that interested in her voice. What excited him
(27:14):
most about her was what she represented to him, the
access to the upper echelons of society and something that
wasn't immediately afforded to him while trying to push a
frank and fish monkey on a pedestrian Lower Manhattan audience. Basically,
he was just interested in her reputation, and as any
woman knows, a reputation can be a very powerful thing.
(27:36):
In the case of Jenny Lynn, she won the game.
Her tour of America was hugely successful. The narratives that
Barnum spun around her were of the most agreeable kind
and actually set her up for even more success in
the future. But as you'll see, she was an anomaly
in our collection of stories to come. As we will
soon learn, most of the folks who entered Barnum's orbit
(27:59):
rarely on themselves in a position to ever escape. Sideshow
was written by Robin Miniter, with executive production, narration and
audio editing by me Aaron Mankey. Research for the series
was done by Taylor Haggerdorn and Sam Alberty. Graham and
Mild Presents was created in partnership with I Heart Radio.
(28:20):
You can learn more about this show and everything else
from Grim and mild Over at Grimm and mild dot com, and,
as always, thanks for listening.
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