User:Gospatric/Freakshow

A freak show is an exhibition of biological oddities and is traditional feature of the American carnival, but also popular in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They commonly contained either live specimens, human and animal, and inanimate objects such as preserved biological specimens in jars. There were a number of common exhibits, some genuine, some fake, including bearded ladies, Siamese twins, and people of unusual height.

Important examples include P. T. Barnum's American Museum. Barnum's famous attractions include Tom Thumb, a man who was only 89 cm high. However many attractions were the result of fakery or mislabelling.

At the time, some freaks were offered as educational exhibits, but often they were purely entertainment. This became increasingly problematic through the 20th century. Today, freak shows still exist in a slightly different form, focusing on "made freaks", for instance those who have extreme tattoos, piercings, or body modification, rather than "born freaks".

Bearded ladies
Woman with hairy faces were often exhibited, billed as for example Leonine the Lion Faced Lady, Alice Bounds the Bear Lady. Some were human, but Hairy Mary from Borneo was actually a monkey claimed to be human. Occasionally there were hirsute male humans, such as Jo Jo the Dog Faced Boy.

Short people
General Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton) was perhaps the most famous, although Barnum worked with others including Lavinia and Minnie Warren, two girls born with a pituitary disorder in a family of otherwise normal height. Lavinia Warren married Stratton in a celebrity wedding organised by Barnum. In the UK, performers included Major Mite, Harold Pyott, and Anita the Living Doll; they continued to be popular until quite recently with Davy the Irish Leprechaun pupular in the 1960s and Johnnie Osbourne the Wee McGregor performing until the 1980s.

Generally these were people of genuinely short height. However there was a degree of fakery with children being passed off as adults or older children.

Giants
Chang Yu Sing, The Chinese Giant, was exhibited by Barnum

Conjoined twins
Chang and Eng Bunker, now known as the "original" Siamese twins, were shown internationally by Scottish merchant Robert Hunter, although they later retired from showbusiness and lived on a farm.

Myrtle Corbin the Four-Legged Girl had four legs and duplicated lower internal organs as a result of, a deformity where the lower part of the body splits but the upper part remains single.

Pinheads
Zip the Pinhead, microcephaly.

Other deformities
Many other deformities were exhibited. Some were real, but others were fake, as with the armless wonder who tucked his arms into the body of his shirt.

Isaac W. Sprague, The Human Skeleton, exhibited by Barnum was diagnosed with progressive muscular atrophy.

"Savages"
Examples of "primitive" people from around the world were often shown even at respectable events like expos and world fairs in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Tattoed women
Women could acquire tattoos and then perform as tattooed ladies, often wearing skimpy costumes. While the tattoos were usually genuine, the women were often accompanied by bizarre fictitious stories to explain the origins of their body art, with one popular fiction being that they were captured by Native Americans and forcibly tattooed.