P.T. BARNUM WAS A CHAMPION OF CRITICAL THINKING
Prince of Humbug's reputation as a hoaxer had merit, but he also welcomed skepticism
There is no evidence that he ever uttered the quote for which he became famous. Indeed, it is very unlikely that Phineas Taylor Barnum would ever have stated that “there is a sucker born every minute.”
The Greatest Showman did not look on the throngs that flocked to Barnum's American Museum In New York City, eager to see his exhibits of curiosities, as “suckers.”
The folks may have been drawn by some “humbug,” but Barnum insisted that they got their money's worth of entertainment.
Visitors may have been attracted by the giant picture of the Feejee Mermaid that adorned the front of the museum, but once inside were confronted with the skull of a monkey cleverly attached to the skeleton of a fish.
However, even those who recognized this as a hoax never complained, because they were treated to exhibits of exotic live animals, a flea circus, magic acts, glassblower demonstrations, ventriloquists and performances by Grizzly Adams's trained bears.
They could have their skulls examined by phrenologists, or meet General Tom Thumb, who stood all of 25 inches tall and had charmed Queen Victoria.
Chang and Eng the Siamese twins were there, along with Josephine Clofullia, the bearded lady who had a genuine case of hirsutism.
Barnum did not mind that some of his exhibits aroused skepticism, in fact he welcomed it.
Visitors' doubts fostered debates and resulted in more publicity and increased ticket sales.
When the bearded lady didn't generate the interest he had hoped for, Barnum hired a man to sue him for false advertising, claiming Clofullia was really a man dressed up as a woman.
The case went to trial in which Barnum introduced three physicians who had examined Clofullia and testified that she was indeed a woman.
The press reported on the dismissal of the lawsuit and visitors surged through the turnstiles to meet the “authenticated” bearded lady.
None thought of themselves as suckers, except perhaps those who had been taken in by signs indicating “this way to the Egress” and found themselves outside.
Barnum was concerned about people were lingering too long at the exhibits and took advantage of some not recognizing that egress was another term for exit.
The Prince of Humbug's rise to fame had an unsavoury path. It all began when at the age of 25 he got wind of a travelling act in Philadelphia that featured a woman who supposedly had been George Washington's nursemaid and was now 161 years old! Barnum purchased the act and shamelessly exhibited the toothless, blind, semi-paralyzed former slave, African-american Joice Heth, as the “greatest natural and national curiosity in the world.”
In response to doubts about her age, Barnum announced that when she died, Heth would be autopsied to prove her longevity.
He followed through, hired a surgeon and charged people to watch the gruesome performance.
The doctor declared that the age claim was a fraud but Barnum got the publicity he wanted.
Zip the Pinhead, with his tapering cranium was another one of Barnum's side show displays as the “missing link,” supposedly discovered in Africa.
William Henry Johnson, who was well paid, was a big attraction in the museum where dressed in a furry suit he would rattle the bars in his cage and screech at passers-by.
Later in his career, Barnum entered the political arena, expressed regret over his abuse of Heth and Johnson and became a vocal opponent of slavery.
While Barnum's somewhat sordid history as a showman has been addressed by historians, far less attention has been paid to his exposés of medical quacks, and various other charlatans.
His 1865 book Humbugs of the World is a classic in which he skewers hoaxers of all sorts and exposes the antics of fake mediums some 50 years before Houdini achieved fame with his revelations about séance scams.
Indeed, Barnum was the first to offer a reward to any medium who could prove an ability to communicate with the dead. He never had to come up with the $500 prize.
Fraudsters such as the Davenport brothers and the Fox sisters who claimed to contact the spirit world also came under scrutiny.
The Davenports allowed themselves to be tied up inside a “spirit cabinet” along with some musical instruments.
When the cabinet's doors were closed, the instruments began to play, supposedly by spirits.
Barnum explained to his readers the tricks that the brothers used to free themselves of the bonds to play the instruments themselves.
The “rappings” heard at the Fox sisters' “performances” that were said to be communications from the spirit world were nothing other than the girls cracking their toes.
Barnum also condemned merchants who adulterated food, a common practice at the time.
He revealed how milk often had a component that came from a “cow with a wooden tail,” a reference to the handle of a water pump. Coffee was adulterated with chicory root and dark tea was converted to the more prized green version with Prussian blue.
He advised people to stay away from processed foods, long before this became fashionable, saying that you “can't adulterate an egg, nor an apple or a potato.”
The most vicious attacks were reserved for the medical quacks, such as a Dr. Andrews whose “Hasheesh candy” was a “sure cure for all diseases of the liver, stomach and brain.” While dismissing these as odious deceptions, Barnum also invoked the idea of the placebo effect, actually using that term.
While P.T. Barnum's reputation as a scoundrel who swindled people with his hoaxes has some merit, he curiously was also a champion of critical thinking.
He railed against “blatherskites,” people who talk but make no sense, and proposed that “it is high time that the credulous portion of our community should be saved from the deceptions, delusions and swindles of blasphemous mountebanks.” Chalk one up for the Prince of Humbug.