P. T. Barnum

Based on Wikipedia: P. T. Barnum

The Greatest Showman's Greatest Trick

Phineas Taylor Barnum hosted a live autopsy in a New York saloon. The year was 1836, the admission price was fifty cents, and the body on the table belonged to Joice Heth, an enslaved woman he had purchased the previous year. Barnum had been advertising her as George Washington's former nurse, claiming she was 161 years old. The autopsy was meant to settle the question of her age once and for all. She was, of course, no more than eighty.

This grotesque spectacle tells you almost everything you need to know about P. T. Barnum. He was a man who could turn anything into entertainment, including death itself. He was also a man who understood, perhaps better than anyone in American history, that people will pay to be deceived—as long as the deception is entertaining enough.

"I am a showman by profession," Barnum once said, "and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me."

He was being modest. Barnum was also a newspaper publisher, a politician, a temperance lecturer, a real estate developer, and a philanthropist. He served in the Connecticut legislature and spoke eloquently for the abolition of slavery. He was elected mayor of Bridgeport and improved its water supply. He founded a hospital.

But none of that stuck to his name the way the humbug did.

The Education of a Huckster

Barnum was born on July 5, 1810, in Bethel, Connecticut—a small town that would prove far too small to contain him. His father ran an inn, worked as a tailor, and kept a store. But the man who shaped young Phineas was his maternal grandfather, known to the family as Uncle Phin.

Uncle Phin was a character. He served in the Connecticut legislature, owned considerable land, and worked as a justice of the peace. He also ran lottery schemes and was, by all accounts, an incorrigible practical joker. The grandson clearly inherited more than just his first name.

By his early twenties, Barnum was running a general store, speculating in real estate, and operating a statewide lottery network. But it was his newspaper that first revealed his true talents—and got him into serious trouble.

In 1831, Barnum founded a weekly paper called The Herald of Freedom. He used it to attack the Congregational Church's influence in Connecticut politics, writing editorials so inflammatory that local church elders sued him for libel. He was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to two months in prison.

Most people would have been chastened by imprisonment. Barnum seems to have viewed it as a valuable lesson in the power of controversy to generate attention.

The Business of Human Curiosity

Barnum's entertainment career began in 1835 with a transaction that modern readers will find deeply disturbing. He was twenty-five years old when he learned of an acquaintance in Philadelphia who was exhibiting Joice Heth, a blind, almost completely paralyzed enslaved woman whom he was advertising as George Washington's 161-year-old former nurse.

Slavery had been outlawed in New York by this point, but Barnum found a loophole: he could lease a slave for a year without technically owning her. He borrowed five hundred dollars, paid a total of one thousand for the lease, and forced Heth to work ten to twelve hours a day. She died within a year.

Then came the autopsy in the saloon.

It's worth pausing here to note the contradiction that would define Barnum's entire life. This was the same man who, thirty years later, would stand before the Connecticut legislature and argue passionately for the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. "A human soul, that God has created and Christ died for, is not to be trifled with," he declared. "It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit."

People are complicated. Barnum was more complicated than most.

The American Museum

After the Heth debacle, Barnum tried his hand at running a variety troupe called Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater. It was a year of mixed success, followed by the Panic of 1837 and three years of hardship. Then, in 1841, he made the purchase that would make his name.

Scudder's American Museum sat at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in Manhattan. Barnum bought it, renamed it after himself, and transformed it into something the world had never seen before.

He started with the building itself. He installed a lighthouse lamp so powerful it attracted attention up and down Broadway. He lined the roof with flags that caught the eye during daylight hours. Between the upper windows, he hung giant paintings of exotic animals. Pedestrians couldn't help but look up.

Then he transformed the roof into a strolling garden with views of the city. He launched hot-air balloon rides every day. And inside, he assembled a constantly changing array of what the nineteenth century called "curiosities."

There were stuffed animals and live animals. There were albinos, giants, and little people. There were jugglers, magicians, and women billed as exotic foreigners. There were detailed scale models of famous cities and famous battles. There was something for everyone, and most of it was at least slightly fraudulent.

By 1846, Barnum's American Museum was drawing 400,000 visitors per year.

The Art of the Hoax

In 1842, Barnum introduced his first major attraction to go viral—though no one used that word in the nineteenth century. He called it the Feejee Mermaid, and it was exactly what it sounds like: the body of a monkey sewn to the tail of a fish, presented as evidence that mermaids were real.

Barnum didn't make the thing. He leased it from a fellow museum owner in Boston named Moses Kimball, who became his friend, confidant, and collaborator. But Barnum marketed it, and that made all the difference.

When critics accused him of fraud, Barnum had a ready defense. He called his hoaxes "advertisements to draw attention to the museum." Once people were inside, he argued, he gave them their money's worth. "I don't believe in duping the public," he explained, "but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them."

This distinction—between harmless deception that entertains and harmful deception that exploits—would become the founding philosophy of American show business. It's a philosophy we still live with today, though we rarely examine it closely.

General Tom Thumb

Shortly after the mermaid sensation, Barnum discovered Charles Stratton, a four-year-old boy of unusually small stature. Barnum recognized gold when he saw it.

He renamed the boy General Tom Thumb—after the tiny hero of English folklore—and advertised him as eleven years old rather than four. This lie served two purposes: it made Stratton's size seem more remarkable, and it allowed Barnum to present the boy's performances as the work of a prodigy rather than a coached toddler.

Stratton was taught to impersonate famous figures: Hercules flexing his muscles, Napoleon striking imperious poses. He was charming and quick-witted, and audiences adored him.

In 1844, Barnum took Tom Thumb on a European tour. The highlight was an audience with Queen Victoria, who was reportedly both amused and saddened by the little performer. The royal visit was a publicity coup that opened doors throughout Europe. Barnum and his tiny star met the Tsar of Russia and collected automatons and mechanical marvels to bring back to America.

During this European tour, Barnum also acquired several other museums, including the nation's first major museum—founded by the painter Rembrandt Peale in Philadelphia—and the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts. He was becoming an entertainment empire.

The Swedish Nightingale

While touring Europe with Tom Thumb, Barnum became aware of Jenny Lind, a Swedish opera singer known as the Swedish Nightingale. Her career was at its peak on the continent, and her voice was considered one of the wonders of the age.

Barnum, by his own admission, was completely unmusical. He had never heard Lind sing. This didn't stop him from offering her an unprecedented deal: one thousand dollars per night—equivalent to nearly thirty-eight thousand dollars today—for 150 nights, with all expenses paid.

Lind demanded the entire fee in advance. Barnum agreed.

To raise the money, he mortgaged his mansion and his museum. He was still short, so he persuaded a Philadelphia minister that Lind would be a positive influence on American morals. The minister lent him the final six thousand dollars.

This was either visionary or insane. Barnum was betting everything he had on a singer he'd never heard, hoping to make her a star in a country where she was unknown.

Creating a Celebrity

Jenny Lind arrived in America in September 1850. By then, thanks to months of Barnum's promotional work, she was already a celebrity. Nearly forty thousand people greeted her at the docks. Another twenty thousand gathered at her hotel. Merchandise bearing her name and likeness was already selling.

This was something new in the world. Barnum hadn't just promoted a performer; he had manufactured fame itself. He had created anticipation for someone most Americans had never seen or heard. He had made her arrival into an event.

When Lind realized how much money she stood to earn, she insisted on renegotiating. Barnum signed a new agreement on September 3, giving her the original fee plus whatever remained of each concert's profits after his management fee of fifty-five hundred dollars.

She intended to give most of her earnings to charity—principally to fund schools for poor children in Sweden. Barnum intended to get rich. Both succeeded.

Lind Mania

The tour began at Castle Garden on September 11, 1850. It was a sensation. Barnum recouped four times his investment from that single concert.

Tickets were in such demand that Barnum began selling them at auction. The press coined a new term: "Lind mania." The writer Washington Irving proclaimed that Jenny Lind was "enough to counterbalance, of herself, all the evil that the world is threatened with by the great convention of women"—a reference to the Seneca Falls Convention two years earlier, which Irving apparently viewed with alarm.

Barnum's publicity machine was relentless. He reportedly had as many as twenty-six journalists on his payroll. His advance teams generated enthusiasm in every city before Lind arrived. The tour moved from New York down the East Coast, through the southern states, and on to Cuba.

By early 1851, Lind had grown uncomfortable with the relentless commercialism. She exercised a clause in her contract allowing her to sever ties with Barnum, and they parted amicably. She continued touring for nearly a year under her own management.

In the end, Lind performed ninety-three concerts for Barnum. She earned about three hundred fifty thousand dollars; Barnum netted at least five hundred thousand—equivalent to nearly nineteen million today.

Making Theater Respectable

After the Lind tour, Barnum turned his attention to a problem that had long vexed middle-class Americans: the theater.

In the nineteenth century, theaters were considered disreputable places. They attracted prostitutes, served alcohol, and featured entertainment that respectable families avoided. Barnum saw an opportunity.

He built New York City's largest and most modern theater and gave it a name calculated to reassure the anxious: the Moral Lecture Room. The name was meant to avoid seedy connotations, attract family audiences, and win the approval of moral crusaders.

He started the nation's first theatrical matinees—afternoon performances specifically designed to encourage families and ease fears about nighttime crime. He opened with a play called The Drunkard, which was really a temperance lecture in dramatic form. Barnum had become a teetotaler himself after returning from Europe.

He followed this with melodramas, farces, and historical plays performed by well-regarded actors. When he staged Shakespeare or Uncle Tom's Cabin, he edited the texts to make them more palatable for family audiences—removing bawdy jokes, toning down violence, and smoothing over anything that might give offense.

This, too, was something new: entertainment sanitized for mass consumption. Barnum was inventing the family-friendly blockbuster.

Ruin and Recovery

In the early 1850s, Barnum began investing in real estate development, trying to build up East Bridgeport, Connecticut. He extended substantial loans to the Jerome Clock Company to lure it to his new industrial area.

The clock company went bankrupt in 1856 and took Barnum's fortune with it.

What followed was four years of litigation and public humiliation. The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had never approved of Barnum, declared that the showman's downfall proved "the gods visible again." Critics who had long despised Barnum's methods celebrated his ruin.

But Barnum had resources his critics underestimated. Tom Thumb, now touring independently, offered to help. The two launched another European tour. Barnum also hit the lecture circuit, speaking mostly about temperance—a cause he had genuinely embraced.

By 1860, he had emerged from debt. He built a new mansion he called Lindencroft, resumed ownership of his museum, and began planning his next act.

The Civil War Years

The American Civil War was, among other things, a business opportunity. Barnum's museum drew large audiences seeking diversion from the conflict. He added pro-Union exhibits, lectures, and patriotic dramas.

In 1864, he hired Pauline Cushman, an actress who had served as a spy for the Union, to lecture about her "thrilling adventures" behind Confederate lines. The shows were packed.

Barnum's Unionist sympathies made enemies. A Confederate sympathizer started a fire at the museum in 1864. On July 13, 1865—just three months after the war ended—Barnum's American Museum burned to the ground. The cause was never determined.

He rebuilt at another location in New York. In March 1868, that museum also burned. The second loss was too much. Barnum retired from the museum business.

He was sixty years old, and his most famous venture was still ahead of him.

The Circus

In 1870, Barnum partnered with William Cameron Coup to establish something with a characteristically grandiose name: P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome. It was based in Delavan, Wisconsin, and it combined everything Barnum had learned about spectacle into a single mobile operation.

The show was a traveling circus, a menagerie of exotic animals, and a museum of human curiosities—what the era called "freaks." It moved from town to town by railroad, the first circus to do so at scale. And it kept changing names as Barnum merged with competitors and expanded his operation.

In 1881, Barnum merged with James Bailey and James L. Hutchinson. The combined show eventually became Barnum and Bailey's Circus. It was the first circus to use three rings simultaneously—so much spectacle that no single audience member could possibly see it all.

The show's biggest star arrived in 1882: Jumbo, an African elephant purchased from the London Zoo. Jumbo was the largest elephant in captivity, and Barnum promoted him relentlessly. The elephant's name entered the English language as a synonym for anything enormous.

The Politician

Alongside his show business career, Barnum pursued politics. He served two terms in the Connecticut legislature as a Republican, representing Fairfield. His most notable moment came when he spoke in favor of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.

"A human soul, that God has created and Christ died for, is not to be trifled with," Barnum told his fellow legislators. "It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit."

In 1875, he was elected mayor of Bridgeport. He improved the city's water supply, brought gas lighting to the streets, and enforced laws against liquor and prostitution. He founded Bridgeport Hospital in 1878 and served as its first president.

These facts sit uneasily alongside the memory of Joice Heth and the saloon autopsy. Barnum's defenders might argue that he evolved; his critics might reply that he was always whatever the moment required him to be.

The Private Man

Barnum married Charity Hallett in 1829. They had four children and remained married until her death in 1873. A few months later, at the age of sixty-three, Barnum married Nancy Fish—his friend's daughter, forty years his junior.

He died on April 7, 1891, of a stroke, at his home in Bridgeport. He was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, which he had designed himself.

Near the end of his life, according to legend, a newspaper asked if it could print his obituary in advance so he could read it. Barnum supposedly agreed. Whether this story is true or apocryphal, it captures something essential about the man: he wanted to control the narrative, even of his own death.

The Legacy of Humbug

The phrase "there's a sucker born every minute" has been attributed to Barnum for more than a century. There's no evidence he ever said it. The attribution itself may be the most Barnum-like thing about it: a hoax that became more famous than the truth.

What Barnum actually believed was subtler and, in some ways, more troubling. He believed that people wanted to be fooled—that deception, properly packaged, was a form of entertainment. He believed that the line between fraud and showmanship was not a matter of honesty but of style.

He invented modern celebrity culture before anyone had a name for it. He pioneered the manufacture of fame, the art of generating buzz, the science of making people want to see something before they even knew what it was. He understood that attention was a commodity that could be bought, sold, and manipulated.

Today, we live in Barnum's world more than we realize. Every viral marketing campaign, every manufactured controversy, every celebrity whose fame precedes any accomplishment—all of it descends from the man who put a lighthouse lamp on his museum roof and called a monkey torso stitched to a fish tail the Feejee Mermaid.

He was a fraud and a philanthropist, a huckster and a humanitarian, a man who exploited human beings and later argued for their fundamental dignity. He was, in other words, thoroughly American.

"I am a showman by profession," he said. The gilding never made him anything else.