← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
Who was the "Elephant Man"? Joseph Merrick's True Story
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- [00:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access, Sign up to.
- [00:10]
Maddy Pelling
History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.
- [00:21]
Anthony Delaney
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:27]
Eva Longoria
Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like, what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez Rejon. Our podcast Hungry for History is back. And this season we're taking an even bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history, saying that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba and the pina colada from Puerto Rico. Listen to Hungry for history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan Reynolds here for I guess my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, don't. No, don't, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this I thought I only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming. Here, give it a try@mintmobile.com switch whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What's your perfect night? Is it curling up on the couch for a cozy peaceful night in therapy can feel a bit like that. Your comfort place where you replenish your energy with better help. Get matched with a therapist based on your needs entirely online. It's convenient and suited to your schedule. Find comfort this season with better help. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P.com.
- [02:00]
Maddy Pelling
Hello and welcome to After Dark Season's Greetings. I'm Maddie.
- [02:05]
Anthony Delaney
And I'm Anthony.
- [02:06]
Maddy Pelling
And Christmas is upon us. You're probably listening to this after one too many mince pies. And I want you to picture me and Anthony on Christmas day. Also in our probably Christmas pyjamas, eating mince pies. We won't be together for Christmas.
- [02:21]
Anthony Delaney
We might be Maddie. How dare you say that. We spend all of our time together every single wa day. Listen, it has properly been just the most incredible first year for After Dark. Can you, Maddie, it's been only one year. Like, it feels like we've been here forever. It's so incredible that we have this much support already. And we started back in October 2023 and have put out 129 episodes. Oh, my goodness, I'm exhausted. And that's the end. No. And we've just genuinely, honest to God, we have been blown away by you guys and your feedback. It's been amazing, Maddie, hasn't it?
- [02:56]
Maddy Pelling
We are currently away obviously for the Christmas break, so we thought we would pick out some favourite episodes so far for you to enjoy.
- [03:05]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. And we are starting with one that got us both and that was the History of Joseph Merrick, also known as the Elephant Man.
- [03:15]
Maddy Pelling
It's a remarkable story. It's set in Victorian London and it's a time and place that we have visited a lot on After Dark. We spend a lot of time walking Victorian streets. But it was Merric's story that made us see another type of darkness within the human beings in that tale. And it's that story that we want to explore for you today.
- [03:38]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, we tried to give him back a bit of dignity because he was a man with great dignity in his life and, you know, we talked about that darkness, but Joseph himself brought such light to his life and to the life of other people and we just thought that was so worth exploring and celebrating. So we hope you enjoy this episode. And now I shall leave you with a Christmas carol. I hear those sleigh bells ringingly on 5 August 1862, Joseph Rockley Merrick, a warehouseman, and his wife, Mary Jane Potterton, a Sunday school teacher, were delivered of a seemingly healthy baby boy, Joseph Carey Merrick, at 50 Leigh Street, Leicester, England. He was the couple's third child, following an older son who had sadly died of scarlet fever and his older sister, Marian Eliza. Between the ages of 2 and 5, little happy Joseph began exhibiting signs of an unknown condition. His lips swelled and his skin began to thicken and turn an unusual grey colour. Lumps which continued to grow rapidly and dramatically rose from his forehead. His feet grew large and became more and more difficult to walk on. His right arm became increasingly limited in use. Behind these changes, of course, the mind of a curious and lightly frightened little boy still dreamed of play and friendship and hijinks. And while his changing appearance inspired fear and morbid curiosity in many around him, his joyful little heart still craved love and listener. He received it in abundance. From his doting mother, Mary Jane, who, if you were to ask her, believed she had the most extraordinary son in the world. When her child, curious and frustrated, came to his mother seeking answers regarding his changing appearance, Mrs. Merrick, in the absence of any medical explanation, told her son that the cause of his unique appearance was due to an incident which occurred while she carried him. You see, Mrs. Merrick had attended a fair, as many people might have done in the mid 19th century. Only at this particular fair, a rowdy crowd had accidentally pushed her into the path of an approaching animal parade. Startled by the sudden appearance of a woman on the ground before him, the parade's elephant had reared in fright and coming down hard, caught Mrs. Merrick and her precious cargo momentarily underfoot. The fright and resulting pain, Joseph's mother told him, must have caused his appearance to change so dramatically. This was most likely a fiction, of course, told to quiet an inquisitive child. But stories are powerful and, if meaningly crafted, might inspire comfort and peace. Tragically, however, in 1873, when her son was just 11 years old, Mary Jane Merrick died as a result of pneumonia. Later, Joseph would call this the greatest misfortune of my life. As if the poor boy had not endured enough. What happened next, he warned, makes for heartbreaking listening. This is After Dark, and this is the tragic history of Joseph Merrick, the boy they dared to call the Elephant Man.
- [07:31]
Maddy Pelling
Okay, this has never happened to me before and after Dot, but I've actually teared up just from your introduction.
- [07:38]
Anthony Delaney
I cried writing this, funnily enough.
- [07:40]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. I'm Maddie, by the way.
- [07:42]
Anthony Delaney
Oh, yes. Hello, hello, hello.
- [07:44]
Maddy Pelling
Welcome to the show, and welcome.
- [07:46]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, this one is a doozy. Listen, there's probably not a great deal to say. You know, often we try and give a little bit of context, but the context is. Is emotional, I think, in this, and it's hard to sum that up. Right.
- [08:02]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And I think predicting from this standpoint at the beginning of the episode, that it's really a story of two halves. It's a story of the cruelty that this little boy is going to experience through his life, becoming incredibly famous and, of course, known as the Elephant Man. But it's also, I think, a story of the love from his mother that he obviously carries through all of his life and. Oh, God, I'm gonna go again.
- [08:29]
Anthony Delaney
No, but he does. He does, and we'll see that as we go. He does carry that with him. I mean, he's a remarkable man. By the time we get to the end of this history and we'll see that. But what he is able shouldn't have had to. But what he is able to endure and how he crafts a place for himself in the world is truly inspirational, despite the fact that the context around it is heartbreaking. Now, and I will say this, we have covered heavy topics on this podcast before. We have seen gruesome murders, we've seen horrendous assaults, and there is none of that in here. But it's a very basic human thing that we are reacting to, I think, in this. And that is cruelty. And maybe, I don't know, but I'm suggesting that maybe one of the reasons we're reacting so strongly to it is because every single one of us are capable cruelty in a way that we're not capable of committing some of the. Or we'd hope that we're not capable of committing some of the crimes that we cover on After Dark. But this one, we're all capable of being cruel. But let me give you some of the historical context. We can steady ourselves as we get into the context of the 1860s and the world into which Joseph Merrick is born. Victoria, as we might assume, is on the throne in Great Britain on 14 December 1861. Actually, her husband, famously Prince Albert, dies aged 42, which leads into all kinds of conversations around mourning and death. In Britain at this time, on the 20th of December 1862, we have Robert Knox, a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and zoologist. He dies on the 20th of December in that year.
- [10:09]
Maddy Pelling
Not a huge loss.
- [10:10]
Anthony Delaney
Not a huge loss. Matty and I have been working on him for something that you'll see quite soon, I would imagine. And he's an interesting character, but more on him later, later on in the 1860s. Then William Gladstone becomes Prime Minister for the first time in 1868, and the Suez Canal opens in November 1869, linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. So we have these big things happening, and we always like to give you the backdrop to what's going on. But then we have a single brilliant life, and that life is Joseph Merrick.
- [10:43]
Maddy Pelling
So tell me a little bit more. I mean, you painted the most beautiful and touching story of his childhood there at the beginning. And we know that he has disabilities and is visibly different from the other people around him. So what is the condition that he has that makes him stand out from other people?
- [11:02]
Anthony Delaney
We don't know, is the short answer. There has been some speculation, though. It has been suggested that he might have been suffering with a condition called Proteus syndrome, which is Characterised by disproportionate overgrowth of limbs and multiple haemorrhatomas and vascular malformations. Very complex medical condition, as you can probably tell. Other people say that they're quite confident it wasn't Proteus syndrome. And there have been some DNA tests done on his hair and bones in more recent times, but even they have proved inconclusive. So we really don't know, I mean.
- [11:37]
Maddy Pelling
Even that, even those tests, and I don't know the context for them, but we're still bothering him even after his death and people are still trying to invade his body and test it and try and figure out, I suppose, what's quote unquote wrong with him. And there is nothing necessarily wrong with him, there's a difference. He has a medical condition. But, you know, the language around this in our own moment, and especially in the 19th century, I think is going to be kind of quite a complex thing to get our head around. So let's talk a little bit about the 19th century attitudes towards disability. I think we can all guess that they're not going to be great. But can you give us some specifics of how people would have viewed Merrick and people like him?
- [12:20]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. And you know, Merrick's case is kind of unique in many ways because he was very able bodied in many ways, but probably would have been labelled in the 19th century as disabled. Though in our own time it's difficult to know. So, for instance, there is a charity in the UK called Changing Faces and they look at how society in which anybody is visibly different can live and how they live and how they are integrated within that society, free from prejudice and discrimination. We'll put a link to that charity in the notes for this show. But I suppose today we would call Merrick visibly different. There is a visible difference in the way he appears. I suppose what is key for us to remember is that people who are legally classified as having severe disfigurements or that are visually different often don't feel as if the label disabled applies to them. So it's important for us to hold those distinctions in our mind while we talk about this, even if those distinctions are modern, but things would have been a lot less inclusive in the 19th century, shall we say?
- [13:24]
Maddy Pelling
So something that leapt out at me from your introduction was this moment that Merric's mother has when she's pregnant with her son, where she steps in front of an elephant momentarily and supposedly the elephant stands on her or comes into physical contact with her in some way. And we know from ideas from the early modern period, I guess, harking back to the medieval period even, there is an existent idea. And this is why I've latched onto it here, because it's surprising to see it in the Victorian age in Britain. There's this idea that women who are pregnant might be shocked by something, might see something whilst they're pregnant, particularly an animal, and it will affect them. And I'm thinking specifically about the case of Mary Toft, the woman who supposedly gave birth to rabbits. And part of her story is it's claimed within that that she is pregnant with a human child and she sees a rabbit or a hare run in front of her on a path and that's when she starts to give birth to rabbits and that there's this sort of strange exchange. It's almost a magical moment. And it's bizarre to me that this is cropping up in Merric's story with his mother being pregnant and the elephant in this time period.
- [14:42]
Anthony Delaney
And it's funny because there is a tension between that type of thinking, bearing in mind that that story is invented by Merric's mother, so we don't necessarily know how widely accepted that was or whether she just told it to comfort a child. But certainly it's part of the narrative here. But on the flip side, we have then Darwinian thinking that is used by social Darwinists and eugenicists to justify the mass institutionalization and killing of disabled people that is happening in the 19th century because they claim that that any type of disability or visual difference signifies a type of genetic dead end. Now this is being totally debunked. And more recent scholars like Travis Chi Wing Lao have argued that Darwin evolution imagines disability not as an evolutionary dead end, actually, and that we have misinterpreted what Darwin was saying. Actually, what Darwin was trying to say was that this disability or visual difference is instead a variable adaptation for human survival. Now, even some of that is controversial, but whatever the case may be, scientifically what we do know is that people living with disabilities or visual difference were experiencing two different types of life at this time. And I think that's more important than how people are trying to classify them. Right. And those two differences were, yes, there's more mass institutionalization, so institutions become part of the Victorian landscape as well. We know following the 1834 Poor Law act, for instance, 350 new workhouses were built, one within every 20 miles or so. So, you know, the landscape is littered with these workhouses and we have asylums, as we know Pauper or lunatic asylums, depending on the differentiation you're looking at there. And some people with disabilities or with visual difference did end up in these workhouses, some in asylums, but other people did continue to live with their families. And it's important not to just focus on the institutionalized part of this history, because there is a family history too, that within which people with visual differences and disabilities are very much included. And there are schools dedicated to people with disabilities, charitable organizations, so, you know, such as the Guild of the Brave Poor Things, which is a very evocative name.
- [17:09]
Maddy Pelling
Condescending and Victorian name at the same time.
- [17:12]
Anthony Delaney
Very, very condescending and Victorian. Exactly. And in 1848, a religious advice pamphlet, because of course religion can't keep out of this matter either, says that some boys laugh at poor cripples when they see them in the street. Sometimes we meet a man with only one eye or one arm or one leg, or who has a humpback. How ought we to feel when we see them? We ought to pity them, apparently. So pity is one of the words associated with people in these situations.
- [17:41]
Maddy Pelling
Yes. And this feels very much like it's adjacent to the treatment of so called fallen women in this period who are also institutionalised and looked down on and to be quote, unquote, pitied and not given any autonomy of their own. And I see this being repeated here, even though, as you say, the reality maybe to individual lives was sometimes a little bit more hopeful and sometimes probably incredibly bleak. We see it in Charles Dickens, of course, thinking about A Christmas Carol and Tiny Tim and there's, you know, sort of moralistic narrative there about this child who is so loved within his family, but faces a very bleak world beyond that, a world full of Scrooges who won't necessarily help. What was Merrick's experience like, specifically? We know from your opening that he had a mother who absolutely adored him. But she doesn't live very long into his life, does she?
- [18:38]
Anthony Delaney
No, he has her until he's 11. And that's the thing, you know, we have this thing about people like this are pitied, or so says this religious pamphlet, but they're not, they're loved. That's the key thing that I came away with from Merric's early life, from his early childhood. Unfortunately, that changes after his mother dies and he feels so impacted by this death that he leaves school very shortly afterwards because he's being so horrendously bullied. And this is where this. This is where the cruelty starts to really infiltrate this story. And it's interesting that it comes around this time in his life when he's.
- [19:24]
Maddy Pelling
I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches clues in the title really. So follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:54]
Eva Longoria
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- [22:03]
Anthony Delaney
Is misfortune intensify when he gets an evil stepmother of his very own? It's almost fairy tale like and that is his father's second wife, Emma Wood Anthill. And with her arrival, Merrick tells us himself, he quote, never had one moment's comfort. Joseph's new stepmother was a widow who had numerous children of her own, and while we do not know much about her relationship with her stepdaughter, she had no time for her stepson. She, in Merrick's own words, was the means of making my life a perfect misery. The new Mrs. Merrick demanded that Joseph should contribute to the household income and so he was sent to work in a cigar shop. However, the now 13 year old's unusual bodily changes continued to advance until he could no longer easily participate in the workforce and had to leave the cigar shop. But Joseph did not feel welcome in his own home and now unemployed, he was forced by his stepmother to wander the streets daily looking for work. He would beg for food so he did not have to return home to eat. But if he was forced home, his stepmother refused to feed him full meals until he was able to pay his own way, so his diet was reduced to half portions. Amidst such cruelty, Joseph made multiple attempts to run away, but he was always caught and returned to his father, who by now had become cruelly emotionally distant. His father set Joseph door to door in an attempt to have him sell items from his shop, but his son was only greeted with gasps of horror and demoralizing insults on his rounds inside, of course, Joseph's heart continued to beat. His emotions continued to swirl. His creativity and joviality and heartache and frustration and humor and everything else he had to offer. All the things of value that made Joseph Merrick who he truly was, were utterly neglected and overlooked by those who should have loved him the most. Eventually, in an attempt to escape the endless onslaught of human cruelties, Joseph made his way to the Leicester Union Workhouse. There he would remain for a hellish four years, devoid of love or attention. The place made such a nightmarish impact on the young man that he retained a great fear of such institutions for the rest of his life. By 1884, now aged 22, Joseph Merrick realized that in order to escape the workhouse, he would have to capitalise on the revulsion and curiosity that some people seemed to feel towards him. So he had to plan. Merrick contacted Mr. Sam Tor, the owner of a Leicester music hall. With this one decision, Merrick would solidify his place in the history books and for better and worse, earn himself the name the Elephant Man.
- [25:08]
Maddy Pelling
So now we're getting to the part of the story that certainly I'm more familiar with, but just to sort of recap what we've heard there, because that's quite a series of events. So he has, as you say, this sort of fairy tale evil stepmother and I wonder how much of this story told by Merric told by other people. You know, there's this sort of two archetypes of womanhood in the 19th century playing out there. We've got the sort of devoted mother, the woman who leans into her Victorian femininity, and then we've got this unmotherly sort of creature who swoops in to take her place. And I, I not to necessarily say that isn't that wasn't the case, but I'm just curious about this sort of narrative that's built up around them. But then he finds that he can't work and eventually has to leave home or runs away from home, escapes this terrible domestic situation and you know, things are bleak when you're looking to go to the workhouse for some respite from the cruelty that you're experiencing. I mean, that is, that is dark. And then he finds this way out, meeting Sam Tor, the Leicester musical owner. And I suppose what I want to know really is what is Tor's reaction when he meets Merric? Does he see a potential cash cow? Is this someone he can make into a star? Or does he take some persuading? Given the repulsion that people seem to exhibit towards Merric in his day to day life, is there even room for him in the world of entertainment? What's Tor's take on it?
- [26:49]
Anthony Delaney
So let's talk about some of those attitudes towards Merric. So let's just for a second concentrate on what you said about the narrative that's built up around his biological mother and then his stepmother. I get it and I get that there are very clear archetypes of place there, but there's also a world in which his stepmother was purely a wrongon, that she was just Bad. It's very possible that that was the case, that she had the capability of being a bad person and that she inflicted some of this badness on Merric. And my instinct is that that's where that is. And the reason being is because his father was too. And in many other ways, his father is to be blamed even more because he is his father and he has known him since childhood. But there's certainly this idea that the stepmother is incon and embarrassed and disgusted by him. And that's unforgivable, really, regardless of the context.
- [27:36]
Maddy Pelling
But you're absolutely right. It's the father's responsibility to care for his son. Even hearing that story, I didn't even register the extent to which his father lets him down. And now you say that that's so obvious. And I think that's part of the narrative, that we get these two archetypes of the two women in his life early on. But actually his father's there and should be caring for him and doesn't, clearly. And he's a huge part of this problem.
- [27:58]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. And I think for Joseph himself, he doesn't care about the gender politics of either of that. He cares that he is being let down and he's being abandoned. And certainly that is his experience. And then for Tor, you're absolutely right. Tor sees him as a cash cow. He sees this as a huge opportunity for him in terms of his business. And that opportunity comes within the context of what were termed the Victorian freak shows. Now, obviously, we're using the words that were used in the 19th century, and it is moving towards the end of the freak show history here. I think when we get to Merrick's case, because it reached its peak in the mid 19th century when Queen Victoria herself met a man named Charles Stratton, who was known in the freak show circles as General Tom Thumb. And she met him at Buckingham Palace. And she was so impressed by his abilities, his entertainment value, but not necessarily because of his size, but because of how funny he was, how good he was at crafting a joke that she wrote that Stratton was the greatest curiosity I, or indeed anybody else ever saw. And it was like the freak show received the royal stamp of approval when she made these remarks. And people could see how entranced she was by Stratton. So suddenly this becomes hugely popular.
- [29:16]
Maddy Pelling
It makes it okay as well, Right. If the Queen says, yes, it's okay to. To come and observe people who are different and to allow them to entertain you, but also to poke fun at them and to Use them for your own entertainment. That's the seal of approval there. Right. That's a huge cultural shift, actually, and.
- [29:34]
Anthony Delaney
Very few people are questioning the morality of it at this point. They do, they will go on to. And that's what brings about the kind of downfall of the so called freak show. But at this particular time, historian John Wolfe has said that the freak show was a commercial form of entertainment that peddled a physiological difference for amusement and profit. So that's what I mean about there being a lack of morality around some of the subjects in the middle of the 19th century. Very much aimed at the middle classes, interestingly, and this is fascinating, I think, because it reinforces hierarchy, it uses these people to reinforce the idea that, ah, we're in the right place. It's reinforcing class ideals, race ideals, able bodied ideals, sexual and gender ideals, and it is showing that middle class ideal lifestyle to the Victorian middle classes themselves. It's reflecting back to them what they have and other people don't.
- [30:31]
Maddy Pelling
Yes. So if you're stood or sat in the audience at a Victorian freak show, yes. You might be looking at the bearded lady or, you know, the strong man or the elephant man. Indeed. But actually what you're doing whilst you're looking at the people who are on display is thinking, oh, thank God, I'm not like that. Oh, you know, I can go home to my middle class life in that way. It's, you're part of the performance. You're all there to perform difference and to separate yourselves from the people who are on the stage.
- [31:01]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. And you asked about Tor specifically, and I think he's an interesting character. He sold the act initially as being known as the Terrible Elephant Man. I think that gives you an idea of how people might have experienced viewing the visual difference that Merrick had. He was billed as half man, half elephant. And Merrick's body, some have argued, represented cultural anxieties regarding the distinctions between self and other. I get it. And it's a theory and it's a, it's a, it's a legitimate theory. But for Joseph Merrick himself, he's not thinking about this in terms of theoretical explorations. He's experiencing this himself. And for Merrick, he is willing to experience some of this otherness in order to make money because Tor gives him a percentage of the income that he generates for Tor's attraction, presumably A low percentage. Yeah. He's not making a huge amount from it, but it's enough for Merrick to be intrigued and to follow through with it. And he becomes quite famous and he very quickly becomes quite famous and has to take on a manager named Tom Norman. And suddenly we're dealing with this variety act who then has to be publicized and have a machine, you know, a very rudimentary machine around him. But we are left with some posters that describe the act. And Mattie, in After Dark Tradition. I've provided one of the posters here for you and if you just let us know what we're seeing in there, it is the most intriguing thing, but I'll leave it to you to describe.
- [32:37]
Maddy Pelling
Okay, so this is a black and white poster and there's some very Victorian heavy font looking text which says, now exhibiting the greatest phenomenon with two exclamation marks. In my opinion it should be one or three. Two is just irritating. Underneath that it says, ever seen in this part of the country? The Elephant man right at the bottom. And it also says there in two different places that this is 2 pence, I assume entry, the cost of entry to see him, rather than the cost of the poster itself. But in the, the centre, the central section of this poster, we have a pictorial scene. We've got what look like Egyptian pyramids in the background and in the foreground we've got a scene framed by palm trees. This is a welcome to the generic Victorian imagination version of an exotic place. This isn't specific to a geographical region necessarily. And in the foreground at the centre, we've got the figure that I suppose is meant to. Well, it's clearly meant to be the Elephant Man. It is a being with the head and ears and trunk and tusks of an elephant, but the body of a man. We know that Merric had some disability in one of his arms and we see that depicted here. One arm is swelled to double, maybe triple the size of the other. He's shirtless and then he has these black trousers on and what looks like bare feet. But I'm looking a little bit closer and I wonder if they're meant to be sort of bandaged in some way. Are they meant to be elephants feet? It's unclear. And I suppose it's that ambiguity about his body. Right. And I guess in terms of a poster advertising this event, you don't want to give away what the act actually looks like. People are coming to be shocked. And so this is a light comic version of the Elephant Man. This is maybe if you're a Victorian walking down the street and you see this, this is the sort of thing that you'd imagine and it goes back to what you said of this half man, half elephant hybrid being, this is a very dehumanising version of what is of course, a real human being. But I think here's this very clever 19th century marketing, giving a flavour and a hint of what is to come, but really not representing much of the actual man that people are going to see when they pay their 2 pence to come into the freak show.
- [35:08]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, you're so right. There's no man here, is there? There's no human being here. It's another thing altogether. I find this really heartbreaking and it seems like such an innocuous point, but Merric, from his income that he's gaining from his appearance in these shows, he is setting this money aside so that he can buy his own house. That's his dream, that he wants to buy a house for himself someday.
- [35:30]
Maddy Pelling
That's so telling, isn't it? That he had such a terrible. Well, he had such a wonderful domestic life to begin with and then it all goes so wrong and that he's trying to. He's trying to recoup something of that from his childhood, I guess. And also, you know, it would offer him enormous security and safety in the age that he lives in to be able to own his own property and to create that space where he can shut out the rest of the world. God, it's so you can understand why that's what he craved above everything else.
- [35:57]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, absolutely. And it's so simple, isn't it? I mean, you know, home ownership was not a given in Victorian times, but to us it seems like such a simple thing and such a life altering thing for him. And just to clarify, when I'm talking about shows and performances here, Merrick is not doing very much. People are literally just. They pull back a curtain and they reveal him. That's kind of all it is.
- [36:18]
Maddy Pelling
Do we know how he felt about it?
- [36:20]
Anthony Delaney
Yes, he felt good about it. He felt good about it. He says himself in his own words. In making my first appearance before the public who have treated me well, in fact, I may say I am as comfortable now as I was uncomfortable before. But I mean, this is still exploitation. And also think about this, America's writing that for the public. So he wants to appeal to them, he wants to appease them and to make sure that they feel they have treated him well because that makes them feel good.
- [36:48]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And I think in terms of where the bar sits for his experiences, it's on the floor.
- [36:55]
Anthony Delaney
Absolutely.
- [36:56]
Maddy Pelling
So far in his life. So saying he's as comfortable now as he has been uncomfortable in the past. It's better. And I suppose we have to allow him that autonomy, that this is what he said, whether he was trying to appease the public or not. We have to take his words in terms of his description of how he felt privately, or at least how he projected it in the public. But it is hard to imagine, I suppose, from our modern standpoint, but also from, you know, we know that people did have problems with the so called freak Show in the 19th century, moral problems. And it is kind of hard to fully buy this idea that he's having a great time, but I suppose he was just thinking of the money.
- [37:36]
Anthony Delaney
So within this context that you're talking about, Maddie, where the moral attitudes are starting to change towards freak shows, Merrick's agent, Tom Norman, who I mentioned, his shop, if you like, was set up across the road from the London Hospital. And this is where Merrick's fate gives a hint of starting to change, because a surgeon named Frederick Treves worked at this hospital and, and he came to see Joseph in this so called freak show and asked if he could display him to the Pathological Society of London. And he did so on 2nd December 1884.
- [38:11]
Maddy Pelling
This feels like a very different thing, though. Now, this isn't display to a public audience. That's transactional, where Merrick has some autonomy and that he's taking a percentage of that money, that fee that people are paying to see him. This is making me feel, if anything, even more uncomfortable, potentially.
- [38:33]
Anthony Delaney
Well, funnily enough, he has paid for this appearance too. He does financially profit, although not to the same extent as he does from the freak show. And actually it works in his favour to a certain extent, because we're now in 1884 and the public interest in the freak show has very much started to wane because of what you were alluding to earlier, those moral questions that are inevitably asked for some 40 or 50 years into the idea of the freak show now, and these questions are coming up, and in this climate, within days of him having appeared in such a formal setting as the Pathological Society, Merrick's show is shut down by the police. And the reason they give for this is that it's in breach of decency rules. They are saying basically that the display of Merrick's body in such a fashion is indecent and they shut down the show. Now, in one sense, we might be tempted as a modern audience to go, good, somebody's looking out for him. But actually what this does, ironically, is cast him into near penury. And he has to then leave England and travel to Europe with a new European manager to show himself in Europe. And once again he encounters, which he does all throughout his life, just rotten cruelty. And this European manager steals his savings, which could have been as much as up to £50, for his house. This is his house money. And so he's robbed and he's abandoned in Brussels. This man is just abandoned in Brussels. And so he has to just beg his way back to Britain. He has nothing and he has to beg his way back to Britain, which he does eventually, and he lands in Liverpool street in such a really awfully distressed state two years later in 1886. 24th of June, 1886. I just, I despair at the people we encounter in this history.
- [40:20]
Maddy Pelling
It's so grim. I mean, it doesn't surprise me that a manager willing to exhibit, quote unquote, freaks for money is a bad person. Like we could have all guessed that. But he steals the money and you can just imagine the idea that Merric has, that he's holding onto this hope of his own home, of that security, you can see that just melting away. And then that journey back to Liverpool street from Brussels, it's so bleak. Do we know anything about that journey? Do we know how he was treated, how he survived during that time?
- [40:53]
Anthony Delaney
We don't have specific specifics, but we do know that he begged his way back. British people, particularly that he encountered, were relatively generous to try and get him home. They could see that he had been taken advantage of. And there were rumours circulating amongst British people in continental Europe that Merric was there and needed help getting home, should one encounter him.
- [41:16]
Maddy Pelling
Because he was famous, right? He was.
- [41:18]
Anthony Delaney
Exactly so. So there was. But I mean, imagine just the degradation that he is forced to endure because of this situation is just so. And then when he arrives back, this is the, this is so sad as well. He arrives back at Liverpool street, right? And because he has nobody, tour is not an option. The show is closed down, he is exhausted, there is nobody with him and all he has is the surgeon, Mr. Trevor's calling card, which he shows to authorities and they get Trevor to come and collect him from Liverpool Street Station. And then, despite all of this intense Sadness, finally, after 20 years of utter neglect and abuse, there is a glimmer, glimmer, glimmer of human kindness. Returning to Joseph Merrick's story, Francis Carr Gomm was the director of the London Hospital and a very privileged man. His privilege, however, did not make him blind to the suffering of others. When Trevor returned with the ailing Merrick to the hospital. He carried out further general tests to determine his overall health. It was quickly discovered that Merrick had developed a serious heart. Heart condition and would require substantial medical attention for the remainder of his life. Cargom, moved by Merrick's plight and Treves dedication to him, made an appeal to the public in the Times. On the 4th of December, 1886. His letter. Sir, I am authorized to ask your powerful assistance in bringing to the notice of the public the following most exceptional case. There is. There is now, in a little room off one of our attic wards, a man named Joseph Merrick, aged about 27, a native of Leicester. He has been called the Elephant man on account of his terrible deformity. Terrible though his appearance is, he is superior in intelligence, can read and write, and is quiet, gentle, not to say even refined in his mind. He occupies his time in the hospital by making with his one available hand little cardboard models which he sends to the matron, doctor and those who have been kind to him through all the miserable vicissitudes of his life. He has carried about a painting of his mother to show that she was a decent and presentable person. And as a memorial of the only one who was kind to him in life until he came under the kind care of the nursing staff of the London Hospital and the surgeon who has befriended him. It is a case of singular affliction brought about through no fault of himself. He can but hope for quiet and privacy during a life which Mr. Treves assures me is not likely to be long. Can any of your readers suggest to me some fitting place where he can be received? And then I feel sure that when that is found, charitable people will come forward and enable me to provide him with such a condition. Accommodation. Any communication about this should be addressed either to myself or to the secretary at the London Hospital. I have the honour to be, sir. Yours obediently. FC Carr Gomm, Chairman, London Hospital. The donations flooded in and within one week of his letter appearing in the Times, the London Hospital had received enough money to adapt awards specifically to Merrick's needs. It was there, in the care of the surgeons and nurses, that he would live out the remainder of his days.
- [44:46]
Maddy Pelling
Good on them, that they're able to offer him this. It's so deeply moving to me that he has a painting, presumably a miniature, not a giant painting on canvas, a little miniature portrait of his mother that he's been carrying around with him all this time.
- [45:04]
Anthony Delaney
Oh, I know. She's there the entire time she really weaves through this story, doesn't she? And it's just nice to see him have some kindness in his life again and just an understanding of his humanity. It's kind of the first time that we hear somebody beyond himself demonstrate Merric's humanity, that he is intelligent, that he has great conversation, that he is a joy to be with. And it's the first time we hear somebody else say that, which I think is really valuable.
- [45:33]
Maddy Pelling
And it's a really satisfying and good inversion of earlier on in his life when the public are asked to pay out some money to see him and to have access to him and to poke at him and stare at him and mock him and laugh at him. And here the same public are being asked to pay the bill for his care, essentially to do the right thing and to come together and show some of that humanity that, you know, the director of the hospital's like, I know this is in all of you, and you need to get your purses and wallets and cough up. And they do. And that's incredible. So tell me what the public money is used for. Because he does spend the rest of his life on this ward, essentially, doesn't he?
- [46:18]
Anthony Delaney
He does, yeah. They adapt a ward for him in the hospital basement. Now, you may be thinking, oh, they're hiding him away in the basement. But no, the reason they put him in the basement is because it has access to the courtyard. So they're allowing him to have this access to fresh air as well as the internal comforts that he has. So he's given two rooms upon his request. There are no mirrors in either of those two rooms. He is visited daily by Travis. So he has that now again, he has a person who he's seeing day by day, which is just quite heartwarming, even if it is a patient doctor relationship. But there's somebody. There's somebody coming to him again and again. And Travis introduces him to a woman called Laila Maturin. And he thought that maturen was kind woman. And by he, I mean Trevor thought that Maturin was so kind and so kind natured that Merric would enjoy her company and that she would be able to visit Merric without acting shocked or without insulting him. And so they become good friends too. But God, another little bit of a sad. But this is good sad. When he meets her for the first time and he shakes her hand, he starts to cry because it's the first time that a woman has ever shaken his hand. And it seems kind of fitting that the only letter we have from Joseph Merrick himself is to Layla Maturin. And it says, Dear Ms. Maturen, Many thanks indeed for the grouse and the book you so kindly sent me. The grouse were splendid. I saw Mr. Treves on Sunday. He said I was to give his best respects to you. With much gratitude, I am yours truly, Joseph Merrick. London Hospital, Whitechapel. Oh, I know. Why is it so emotional?
- [48:00]
Maddy Pelling
It is so emotional, this story. Honestly, I must be a psychopath because nothing in After Dark has affected me.
- [48:07]
Anthony Delaney
I know. I told you. Because we forget about him, Maddie. I think that's what it is. We forget about him. All we think about when we hear about the Elephant Man. And a lot has to be accounted for by the term the Elephant Man. It strips him of his humanness. He becomes subhuman, even to a modern audience, because he's the Elephant Man. But he's not. He's Joseph Merrick. And he feels and he wishes and he hopes and he is smart and he's tenacious, and that's what I love about him.
- [48:32]
Maddy Pelling
And we see that in this letter, right, that the only words that we have, really, the only letter that we have written by him is to a person who showed him great kindness and respect. Well, a normal level of kindness and respect that he should have encountered with every single person that he met throughout his life, but didn't. And he's so eloquent in this letter. And you get a sense of someone who is so polite and, as you say, intelligent, and that shouldn't come as a surprise to us, but it's so hard to access the real person because of these layers of narrative and prejudice that have been placed on top of him and buried him, really, since his own lifetime. And when we do peel those back, it's so moving, and I'm so moved to hear of their friendship and to hear that he had that kindness because he bloody deserved it.
- [49:19]
Anthony Delaney
Before you go on, because I know what you're going to go on to next. Because in the notes that I've prepared for this episode, we're supposed to talk about the next part of his life, which, of course is his death. But you know what, Mattie, let's not. Let's leave it on that note. And I don't mean to deny you knowledge, but let's just leave him with that, shall we? Is that. Is that a nice way to part ways with Joseph Merrick? But let me tell you, I'll remember my time with Joseph Merrick. It was one of the most rewarding historical pursuits I think I've ever had, especially on After Dark.
- [49:46]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And you did say to me before that you were so moved by this and I can see that it's affected you. And I know of something of his life, but I purposely didn't read that much ahead of this episode to try and experience it in real time with you. And I feel that I have. And what an incredible, resilient, brave, innovative, opportunistic, fascinating person and what a brave woman his mother must have been, not to be able to love him, but to be able to go against everything that society would have told her about her son. And that message, that love that she handed down to him, that's what kept him going all of his life. And I think that's what we need to take from this story, is that human endurance and, oh, we've both become a blubbery mess. But it's an incredible story and I think there are moments of real hope to take from it.
- [50:41]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, we'll leave him with his life and with his moments of dignity in the hospital, with his courtyard, hopefully enjoying a little bit of the sun. I think that's the best place to leave him. Just a reminder that if you've been affected by any of the conversations we've been having in this episode. Changing Faces, the UK based charity, continues to fight for society where anybody with visible difference can live the life they want free from prejudice and discrimination. So please do check them out.
- [51:08]
Maddy Pelling
Well, thanks for listening to this episode of After Dark. Coming up next time, we have the story of the ghost ship. Mary Celeste. We know you love a ghost story and a ship story, so we have combined them for you. Now, while the festive season is here and you are spending time with friends and family, just wait for that lull in the conversation you know is coming. And into that space, please insert all the information, all the praise and enthusiasm that you have for our podcast, tell everyone about it. It helps us grow and get more and more listeners that we can share amazing histories with. Happy Christmas.
- [51:52]
Eva Longoria
Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like, what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez.
- [51:59]
Maddy Pelling
Rehabilitation.
- [51:59]
Eva Longoria
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