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PT Barnum: More Complicated Than You've Heard · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bright. There's Jerry Hello. Hello, Hello, Hello.
0:22
Speaker 1: Jerry's got a top hat on. I know, I don't
0:25
Speaker 1: know why. I don't know. She's trying to be all
0:28
Speaker 1: Mr Monopoly or P. T. Barnum. Oh yeah, I forgot
0:34
Speaker 1: he wore a top hat allegedly. Oh no, he did.
0:38
Speaker 1: I saw a picture of it. Yeah, Hugh Grant certainly did.
0:42
Speaker 1: Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Laurie. I think it's no,
0:47
Speaker 1: it's Clive Owen. You're thinking, yeah, Hugh Jackman, Man, where's
0:51
Speaker 1: that top hat? Like a champ? He does? Um, I
0:54
Speaker 1: don't know how much you went on the internet for
0:57
Speaker 1: this one, because this is a pretty comprehensive article actually was,
1:02
Speaker 1: but um, The Greatest Showman really set the Internet on
1:05
Speaker 1: fire Man and a lot of like it really brought
1:09
Speaker 1: out a lot of people saying like, whoa, whoa whoa
1:11
Speaker 1: whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Yeah, this is the the
1:18
Speaker 1: very definition of the word fantasy. Yeah, it seemed like
1:22
Speaker 1: that movie was can be best described as a musical
1:26
Speaker 1: whitewashing mm hmm in every sense of that word. So
1:33
Speaker 1: let's destroy it. Yeah, I mean after reading this, I
1:36
Speaker 1: didn't think, like man P. T. Barnum, what a complete
1:40
Speaker 1: a whole. No, he was just a lot more complicated
1:44
Speaker 1: than that and did a lot of stuff that you
1:47
Speaker 1: just shouldn't just pass over because you can't figure out
1:50
Speaker 1: lyrics too. What what why? What raps with racism? Uh? Yeah,
1:57
Speaker 1: I mean he was. He was definitely an enigma and um,
2:01
Speaker 1: it seems like he did some good. But also, I
2:05
Speaker 1: mean he was a hustler man for sure. So this
2:09
Speaker 1: is what I didn't fully understand until researching this chuck.
2:12
Speaker 1: He he was He's known as the greatest showman, right,
2:17
Speaker 1: but there were plenty of other showmen out there at
2:19
Speaker 1: the time, which makes sense because you have to have
2:23
Speaker 1: something to compare, to be compared to, to be the greatest, right.
2:27
Speaker 1: But I I guess I had just assumed he was
2:29
Speaker 1: like the first or the originator. No, he was not
2:32
Speaker 1: the first showman. He was a great showman. What he
2:35
Speaker 1: really left his mark on was introducing America to pure,
2:41
Speaker 1: unadulterated hucksterism and using it for marketing. Humbug that's what
2:47
Speaker 1: he called it, and he had he had a lot
2:49
Speaker 1: of quotes somewhere somewhere, definitely something he said like every
2:53
Speaker 1: crowd has a silver lining, which means you can shake
2:57
Speaker 1: it out of him and get some money from a
2:58
Speaker 1: bunch of people. Right, Yeah, the one about a sucker
3:02
Speaker 1: board every minute. That's never been successfully attributed to him. Well, yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: And one thing is for sure, and uh is that
3:11
Speaker 1: his autobiography is I think if you order it, it
3:14
Speaker 1: comes with a salt lick, so you can just lick
3:18
Speaker 1: on that salt while you're reading it. Right. I don't
3:21
Speaker 1: know what that means, but it seems like something that
3:23
Speaker 1: they would do. Yeah, I mean he he uh. I
3:27
Speaker 1: think when the man is writing about himself, it's like,
3:30
Speaker 1: you know what, you may just want to believe a
3:33
Speaker 1: third of this. I would take it with a grain
3:35
Speaker 1: of salt, but so much so that you need an
3:37
Speaker 1: actual salt lick. I got it, now, I got it. So,
3:42
Speaker 1: So there is one quote that I think kind of
3:44
Speaker 1: describes this guy best, or at least his philosophy, and
3:47
Speaker 1: it also kind of reveals like you can't call him harmless,
3:52
Speaker 1: but also the intentions were not entirely evil, right, he
3:57
Speaker 1: had a quote it said that, um, people don't mind
4:01
Speaker 1: being deceived so long as they're being amused at the
4:05
Speaker 1: same time, which it does, and it largely lets him
4:09
Speaker 1: off the hook as far as being a huckster. Right.
4:11
Speaker 1: But the thing that that The Greatest Showman really glossed over,
4:16
Speaker 1: just outright ignored, was that a lot of the the
4:20
Speaker 1: amusements that he was presenting to the public were extraordinarily
4:25
Speaker 1: degrading two people at the time, Um, they were super racists.
4:30
Speaker 1: There were, um, just a lot of There was just
4:34
Speaker 1: a lot of exploitation. He made his money not just
4:36
Speaker 1: by hustling Americans, but by exploiting other Americans too, right. Um.
4:41
Speaker 1: And again, like this, a lot of this is contextual.
4:45
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily fair for later generations to judge previous generations,
4:49
Speaker 1: although it's really fun to do. Um. But yes, you
4:53
Speaker 1: could say, like this guy was exploitative even even in
4:57
Speaker 1: compared even compared to like his contemporary right. Perhaps so
5:01
Speaker 1: he is just this very complex character who I think
5:04
Speaker 1: you and I can agree was not an evil person.
5:08
Speaker 1: He just did some horrible things here there. Should we
5:11
Speaker 1: go back in time? Yes, let's all right, let's go
5:14
Speaker 1: back to the beginning, let's hop in the way back machine,
5:16
Speaker 1: which is appropriately steampunky right now. It takes many forms.
5:21
Speaker 1: I don't know if people realize that it has a
5:23
Speaker 1: clock without the glass and you can see the parts inside,
5:28
Speaker 1: but it doesn't actually function. It's strictly for decoration. So
5:38
Speaker 1: let's go back to eight ten, back to Bethel, Connecticut,
5:42
Speaker 1: where this man was born, Mr Phineas Taylor Barnum. Um.
5:46
Speaker 1: He had sort of a mixed family life. He I mean,
5:48
Speaker 1: he was they point out in this article. He was
5:50
Speaker 1: firmly American. His great great great grandfather came over from
5:54
Speaker 1: England as an indentured servant in the seventeenth century. Eventually
6:00
Speaker 1: became a landowner, but they didn't It's not like they
6:04
Speaker 1: had a ton of money. His dad, Filo great name, yeah,
6:07
Speaker 1: all these are great names. Was he was not super successful. Um.
6:11
Speaker 1: So it was kind of up to young pt to
6:15
Speaker 1: Um to make his own way in life. Right as
6:17
Speaker 1: his father was a farmer, which introduced um Phineas to
6:22
Speaker 1: the idea that he really hated like manual, mindless work. Now,
6:26
Speaker 1: he didn't like doing that farm work, but it's that's
6:29
Speaker 1: not to say he didn't like work. He just liked
6:32
Speaker 1: very specific kinds of work where his energies were appropriately
6:35
Speaker 1: chanted building people out of money. Sure, yeah, I mean
6:38
Speaker 1: that was that was kind of it. He liked. Um.
6:41
Speaker 1: He was the definition of the word enterprising, right, she
6:43
Speaker 1: could figure out a way. He could look at something
6:46
Speaker 1: literally look at something that you couldn't you could almost
6:49
Speaker 1: not give away, you certainly couldn't sell, and turn it
6:52
Speaker 1: into pure profits like like he got into lauteries for
6:56
Speaker 1: a little while once, right, Yeah, I mean he went
6:58
Speaker 1: he went to work. He left the farm into work
7:00
Speaker 1: at a country store and realized quickly, like, just because
7:03
Speaker 1: you're in the country doesn't mean there aren't like swindlers
7:06
Speaker 1: and cheaters out here. So he kind of learned some
7:09
Speaker 1: of the tricks of the trade there. His old man
7:11
Speaker 1: died when he was fifteen, uh, and he was kind
7:14
Speaker 1: of his his mom had his mom had to get
7:16
Speaker 1: a job. But he was basically like, all right, it's
7:19
Speaker 1: kind of up to me now to provide for my family.
7:21
Speaker 1: So he moved got that another job as a store clerk,
7:25
Speaker 1: and as you said, got into lotteries. Yeah, And he
7:28
Speaker 1: was early on pursuing a career at clerkship, which I
7:32
Speaker 1: guess is a thing. But but yeah, so there's this.
7:36
Speaker 1: He saw easy money and lottery, so he set up
7:38
Speaker 1: one himself. Apparently when he was working for these owners
7:41
Speaker 1: of the store, um, they were away at one point
7:45
Speaker 1: and he got his eyes on some um tin kitchenware
7:49
Speaker 1: that just would not sell. So he took some other
7:53
Speaker 1: stuff that wouldn't sell at that store. These things weren't his,
7:55
Speaker 1: by the way, and he traded him for a bottle
7:58
Speaker 1: collection of I guess was the thing that people wanted
8:01
Speaker 1: at the time. And he put those things up as prizes, right,
8:06
Speaker 1: and he started a lottery and these were the prizes,
8:08
Speaker 1: and there were cash prizes. But he ended up selling
8:11
Speaker 1: like a thousand tickets or something like that in this
8:14
Speaker 1: little town store, um based on these prizes and some
8:18
Speaker 1: cash prizes, saying like half of all tickets were going
8:21
Speaker 1: to be winners and you might win a bottle or
8:24
Speaker 1: you might win like a tin muffin pan, but you
8:26
Speaker 1: could also win this cash. And so these things that
8:29
Speaker 1: had just been sitting on these shelves forever were suddenly
8:31
Speaker 1: turned into something valuable thanks to his marketing expertise. And
8:35
Speaker 1: this is while he's still a teenager. Yeah, it's we've
8:38
Speaker 1: covered this and something before that. Lotteries were a thing
8:41
Speaker 1: back then that someone could just cook up, you know,
8:45
Speaker 1: Like it's not like the lotteries we have today, like
8:47
Speaker 1: be sanctioned, uh, sanctioned ways of stealing people's money, right,
8:52
Speaker 1: But back then, you could just cook up a lottery
8:54
Speaker 1: in a small town and be like, you know what
8:55
Speaker 1: I've got. Uh. It was almost like a Ponzi thing,
8:58
Speaker 1: like I can raise money, give away some of that
9:01
Speaker 1: money and prizes, and then keep the rest, right. I
9:04
Speaker 1: think that was in our lotteries episode. Oh really yeah, Okay, Well,
9:08
Speaker 1: in order to do that, though, you have to be
9:11
Speaker 1: a natural born salesperson, which is what he was. You
9:14
Speaker 1: really do And like lottery has been played like a
9:16
Speaker 1: theme throughout his early career, like that's how he ended
9:19
Speaker 1: up making his initial I don't know if fortune is
9:22
Speaker 1: the right word, but that's how he staked himself and
9:25
Speaker 1: his family was through lotteries and working in stores and
9:28
Speaker 1: then eventually owning stores like general stores, grocery stores, that
9:32
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But the lotteries are where he made
9:34
Speaker 1: his money, and he actually figured out that you could
9:37
Speaker 1: make more money with less work than having to go
9:40
Speaker 1: to the trouble of setting up a lottery. Like you said,
9:43
Speaker 1: anybody could just set up a lottery, um by taking
9:48
Speaker 1: tickets from somebody else's lottery and selling them further out
9:52
Speaker 1: at an increased price. But then he figured out one
9:55
Speaker 1: more thing, Chuck, You didn't even have to go out
9:57
Speaker 1: and sell these things yourself. You could hire other are
10:00
Speaker 1: people to sell them even further out. All you had
10:02
Speaker 1: to do was give them the tickets and collect the
10:04
Speaker 1: money that they brought you. So he ended up making
10:06
Speaker 1: money by basically expanding other people's lotteries for a while,
10:12
Speaker 1: that's right. And in the middle of this, and he
10:14
Speaker 1: had moved to Brooklyn at this point, he's kind of
10:16
Speaker 1: kind of hopping all over the place there in the northeast.
10:19
Speaker 1: But uh and and to be fair, we're hopping kind
10:22
Speaker 1: of all over his early life right now. Yeah, chronologically. Yeah. Yeah.
10:27
Speaker 1: So in this time period he met um who would
10:30
Speaker 1: become his wife, a woman named Charity Hallett, who he
10:33
Speaker 1: described in his autobiography as a fair, rosy cheeked buxom girl,
10:39
Speaker 1: beautiful white teeth. Did I mention she had big boobs,
10:44
Speaker 1: but those teeth, man. Uh. So they would get married
10:49
Speaker 1: and I think they had four daughters, Um. But during
10:53
Speaker 1: all this time he he did he had a little
10:55
Speaker 1: Josh Clark in him, because how do you mean, Well,
10:59
Speaker 1: he was writing letters to local papers that weren't getting published,
11:04
Speaker 1: so he said, you know what, I'm gonna start my
11:05
Speaker 1: own paper. Yeah, where he clarked himself a paper I'll
11:09
Speaker 1: see you all in hell media. Yeah, and much like yourself,
11:13
Speaker 1: you started your own paper, which was kind of cool. Sure,
11:16
Speaker 1: I mean like, if people won't print your crank ideas,
11:19
Speaker 1: go start your own paper. It's like if you want
11:22
Speaker 1: to get your manifesto out there and either either yeah,
11:25
Speaker 1: either become un obomb or esque, which we don't recommend,
11:28
Speaker 1: or start your own paper. That's right. And his was
11:30
Speaker 1: called Harold of Freedom, which is terrible. And this is
11:34
Speaker 1: where it gets a little weird because he he kind
11:36
Speaker 1: of went after people. Um was eventually hit with a
11:40
Speaker 1: libel suit and spent sixty days in jail. But that
11:44
Speaker 1: sold a lot of papers, and he was also hailed
11:46
Speaker 1: as a hero because apparently he was legitimately exposing corruption.
11:51
Speaker 1: So to me, Chuck, that one really stood out, um,
11:54
Speaker 1: because it shows just how huge this guy's life still
12:00
Speaker 1: where he is. That that even if you make a
12:02
Speaker 1: movie out of it all. The best you can hope
12:05
Speaker 1: for is to pick like five or six or ten
12:07
Speaker 1: different things and try to find a thread throughout him. Right,
12:10
Speaker 1: whether that's an accurate portrayal or not, it can't possibly be,
12:14
Speaker 1: because this guy's life was just so enormous and he
12:17
Speaker 1: did so many things, and he was such an outsize
12:20
Speaker 1: character that a lot of times you either vilify him
12:24
Speaker 1: or glorify him, and it was much more a combination
12:28
Speaker 1: of both of those things. And I think that example
12:30
Speaker 1: really says it all. Like he had his his notions,
12:33
Speaker 1: and he started his own paper and ended up going
12:35
Speaker 1: to jail and subscription boosted, so he ended up making
12:38
Speaker 1: money from it. But at the same time, he was
12:40
Speaker 1: legitimately trying to call out corruption in this town that
12:43
Speaker 1: he cared about. So his character was much more complex
12:48
Speaker 1: than than you get just from just about any source
12:52
Speaker 1: unless you read biographies about him. Agreed. Um, So finally
12:57
Speaker 1: he says, or I'm sorry, Connecticut said no more lotteries
13:01
Speaker 1: in Connecticut. So he's like, all right, what am I
13:04
Speaker 1: doing here? Even if I can't do this little scam?
13:07
Speaker 1: He's like, I love this time, but not that much.
13:10
Speaker 1: So in eighteen thirty four, he left the paper, shut
13:12
Speaker 1: that down, moved his family to New York City, and uh,
13:16
Speaker 1: should we take a break? Perfect ail, Right, we're in
13:19
Speaker 1: New York City and we'll be back right after this.
13:21
Speaker 1: If you want to know then you're in luck. Just
13:25
Speaker 1: listen up to chuck shoo. Shoot, I got a falafel?
13:49
Speaker 1: Is it good? It's pretty good? Is it from the
13:51
Speaker 1: Hallau guys? Of course? Man? Who else you going to
13:54
Speaker 1: get a falafel from? That's good stuff? Yeah? Uh so, man,
13:59
Speaker 1: this guy really just reading through this thing. He did
14:02
Speaker 1: so many jobs, right, he was a factotem dozens and
14:08
Speaker 1: dozens of jobs through his lifetime. Yeah, and I'm glad
14:11
Speaker 1: he didn't just stick to clerking, right, or even lottery.
14:16
Speaker 1: He had this thing like something about show business attracted
14:21
Speaker 1: this guy. I don't know what it was. Maybe nobody
14:24
Speaker 1: but him knows what it was. Maybe he doesn't even
14:27
Speaker 1: know what it was. But he was attracted to the
14:29
Speaker 1: idea of like wowing and amusing and amazing crowds. And
14:36
Speaker 1: he he did that pretty early on. I think he
14:39
Speaker 1: was twenty five when he got into exhibiting a human
14:45
Speaker 1: being who he purchased and owned for a while, which
14:48
Speaker 1: by the way does not show up in the Greatest Showman. Right,
14:51
Speaker 1: And this is after in New York he started a
14:54
Speaker 1: boarding house for a while and co owned a grocery
14:57
Speaker 1: store for a while, right, And so like his life
15:01
Speaker 1: is full of him just trying to do these kind
15:03
Speaker 1: of regular things and then being like, Nope, I gotta
15:06
Speaker 1: go buy a lady and put her on display. Right,
15:09
Speaker 1: And this is after Chuck. By the way, he had
15:11
Speaker 1: come down with smallpox for a while. Oh did we
15:15
Speaker 1: miss a small box. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like,
15:18
Speaker 1: this guy had a huge life. But let's get a
15:21
Speaker 1: Joyce Heath right, because she is a very controversial part
15:25
Speaker 1: of um P. T. Barnum's life. She was the first,
15:29
Speaker 1: his first foray in the show business. And there's no
15:32
Speaker 1: other way to put it. Like he purchased her. She
15:34
Speaker 1: was a slave and elderly slave, um who he purchased
15:39
Speaker 1: from another promoter who had been touting her as General
15:42
Speaker 1: George Washington's nursemaid from when George Washington was a child.
15:48
Speaker 1: This is eighteen thirty five, right, she was supposedly a
15:53
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one years old. Yeah, so he negotiates
15:57
Speaker 1: a price. He went, he went and sour, and she
16:00
Speaker 1: was blind, she had no teeth, she was partially paralyzed,
16:05
Speaker 1: but she could talk and tell her story. Yeah, she
16:07
Speaker 1: told stories about young George as a boy. And and
16:12
Speaker 1: to be fair, she she was already being exploited. It's
16:15
Speaker 1: not like he which is not great, but it's not
16:18
Speaker 1: like Barnum introduced this into her life. No, he just
16:22
Speaker 1: purchased her and took it over, took over the exploitation
16:26
Speaker 1: for for a thousand dollars, and he toured with her
16:31
Speaker 1: until she died. Um not that long later, just like
16:34
Speaker 1: a year later, not even inty six. He made a
16:37
Speaker 1: lot of dough Um and it was it was sort
16:41
Speaker 1: of a watershed moment for him where I think he
16:43
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, I've realized that I can
16:46
Speaker 1: get people um in a room by cooking up these
16:51
Speaker 1: stories and and getting things in the newspaper and printing
16:55
Speaker 1: these posters. Uh. And even if, like if if business
17:00
Speaker 1: was down, he would do these crazy things like one
17:03
Speaker 1: of them when business was down, appearing with Heth. At
17:07
Speaker 1: one point he accused her of being a robot what
17:10
Speaker 1: they called at the time an automaton in an anonymous
17:14
Speaker 1: letter to the editor in a newspaper. Yeah, a robot
17:17
Speaker 1: made of whalebone rubber in springs. So everyone was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
17:21
Speaker 1: Not only is she George Washington's nurse maid, but she's
17:25
Speaker 1: really a robot. Right. What that did was it got
17:29
Speaker 1: the people who had been avoiding going to see her,
17:32
Speaker 1: because even at the time, people were like, this is
17:36
Speaker 1: pure exploitation. This woman is being exhibited like a giraffe
17:40
Speaker 1: would be or something like that. She's an old lady's
17:43
Speaker 1: working or ten to twelve hours a day. Some people
17:46
Speaker 1: think that he worked her to death literally, um. And
17:49
Speaker 1: so there was part of the press that was saying
17:53
Speaker 1: and reporting on this with with great distaste. So there's
17:55
Speaker 1: a segment of American society who would not be caught
17:58
Speaker 1: dead seeing George Washington's a hundred and sixty year old
18:02
Speaker 1: nurse maide, but they would conceivably go see an autonomouton
18:07
Speaker 1: if that's really what was going on. So he managed
18:10
Speaker 1: to dupe the very people who were critical of this
18:15
Speaker 1: exploitation that he was undertaking. He got everybody in that one. Well, yeah,
18:20
Speaker 1: and it gets even worse. Um. Finally, when she passed away,
18:23
Speaker 1: he actually sold tickets to a public autopsy in a
18:27
Speaker 1: saloon so people could come look at this poor woman's insides.
18:32
Speaker 1: And this is where it was finally revealed. Doctor said
18:36
Speaker 1: she's maybe like eight eight one years old at most, right,
18:39
Speaker 1: And this was so so Jane um McGrath kind of
18:43
Speaker 1: walks past, like what a controversy this was. Like this
18:47
Speaker 1: guy had been like very much touting that she was
18:51
Speaker 1: the nurse Maide, like he supposedly had the bill of
18:54
Speaker 1: sale to George Washington's father for her. So like he
18:58
Speaker 1: was saying, like, this is legitimately hundred and six year
19:00
Speaker 1: old woman, so in this autopsy that he charged for.
19:03
Speaker 1: When when it was exposed that she was actually half
19:06
Speaker 1: that age, um, it was there was a bit of
19:10
Speaker 1: disgrace there and he had to learn to roll with
19:12
Speaker 1: the punches. And it was about this time that that
19:15
Speaker 1: he basically said to himself, you can you can take
19:20
Speaker 1: this as a lesson and go on the straight and narrow,
19:23
Speaker 1: maybe get back into clerking, or you can double maybe
19:28
Speaker 1: triple and quadruple down on this and and see where
19:32
Speaker 1: that goes. And he chose the ladder of the two
19:34
Speaker 1: for sure, that's right. He sure did. The next thing
19:38
Speaker 1: that he did the next person that he kind of
19:40
Speaker 1: took under his wing. Was his greasy greasy wing? Was
19:45
Speaker 1: someone called signore senior? Is that senior? Yeah? Was it
19:52
Speaker 1: spelled that way? Uh? That is the Italian spelling of senor.
19:56
Speaker 1: Oh well, let me turn it on then, s an
20:00
Speaker 1: Daniel Antonio. Antonio had an extra bit in there. Senor
20:07
Speaker 1: Antonio is another way to say, well, sure, if you're
20:12
Speaker 1: a dullard, I'm a bit of a dullard. Chuck. I
20:14
Speaker 1: think you know that after ten years, So this guy,
20:18
Speaker 1: we're really milking that tenure thing. Huh. I've got my
20:22
Speaker 1: s y s k ten your army short. I see that.
20:24
Speaker 1: It's very nice, thank you. I've been working on my bucksomeness.
20:29
Speaker 1: You're quite bucksom. So. Senor Antonio was a balancer. He's
20:34
Speaker 1: he's one of these guys like a plate spinner, walked
20:36
Speaker 1: on stilts, juggles. Um. He could throw things in the
20:40
Speaker 1: air and catch them very fast. Yeah, he's like a hippie.
20:44
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. He would be on tour with he'd had
20:47
Speaker 1: those little sticks what are those called, devil sticks? Devil
20:50
Speaker 1: sticks or a hackey sack, any of those things. You
20:53
Speaker 1: pull a hackey stack out of his ear at any moment.
20:56
Speaker 1: So this guy, he said, all right, you need to
20:57
Speaker 1: be my newest client. I will make you famous. Change
21:01
Speaker 1: your your stage name from Senior Antonio to Senor Viva
21:06
Speaker 1: La because that's a little more I don't know, exciting.
21:11
Speaker 1: I guess Senor Antonio. Yeah, it's a lateral move. Uh.
21:16
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, is there were a lot of
21:19
Speaker 1: dudes out there spinning plates. So he it wasn't like
21:21
Speaker 1: he was so unique, but uh, Barnum thought, you know what,
21:26
Speaker 1: I think you're better than the rest. So here's what
21:28
Speaker 1: I'll do. And again this is just another example of
21:31
Speaker 1: how how good he was at promotion. He said, I'll
21:35
Speaker 1: do a free performance for a theater. Uh, and I'll
21:38
Speaker 1: even be your assistant on stage. And people came, and
21:42
Speaker 1: so the theater said, all right, I guess if people
21:45
Speaker 1: come for free, they'll pay. I think I think what
21:48
Speaker 1: he was saying was he Yeah, I think that's exactly.
21:51
Speaker 1: I think you're right. He just wild them enough. I
21:53
Speaker 1: think that's that's the impression I have. Yeah. But even still,
21:57
Speaker 1: despite Vivala being genuinely good, he was I think head
22:01
Speaker 1: and shoulders above most of his contemporary spinners. Yeah, I
22:06
Speaker 1: think people saw in the press. Oh there's a really
22:08
Speaker 1: good plate spinner. We saw a plate spinner at you know,
22:11
Speaker 1: the at the office last week. So I'm not gonna
22:14
Speaker 1: go anywhere to see another plate spinner. I'm certainly not
22:16
Speaker 1: gonna pay. So Barnum had a pretty good idea, but
22:20
Speaker 1: it actually came out of um an uncomfortable situation that
22:24
Speaker 1: fell into his lap with Robert's another plate spinner. Yeah,
22:30
Speaker 1: so this is a rival plate spinner who apparently would
22:33
Speaker 1: go to prove West Coast. Yeah, he was. He was
22:36
Speaker 1: a crip and he would go to uh Vivalo's performances
22:41
Speaker 1: and heckle him. I guess you call that plate spinning boo,
22:45
Speaker 1: terrible plate spinning stuff like that. And so uh p T.
22:49
Speaker 1: Barnum cooked up a thing where he was like, all right,
22:51
Speaker 1: I'll of for one thousand American dollars to anyone who
22:55
Speaker 1: can perform Vivalo's act in public. Roberts accepted. But here's
23:00
Speaker 1: what really happened. As he got together with Roberts and
23:03
Speaker 1: they all three hatched a plan to do these kind
23:07
Speaker 1: of staged competitions, right, So they promoted in the spinning
23:11
Speaker 1: competitions East Coast, West Coast plate spinning rivalry is going
23:15
Speaker 1: on right now. Everybody's gonna come see this, and everybody did.
23:19
Speaker 1: And in that first performance, Roberts as was staged, conceded
23:24
Speaker 1: he could not replicate Vivala's act. It was too good.
23:28
Speaker 1: But I would love to see Vivola replicate my act.
23:32
Speaker 1: And I challenge you, Senor Vivola, to replicate my act
23:36
Speaker 1: tomorrow night at this same theater. And they kept going
23:40
Speaker 1: back and forth like that, Um, with this staged rivalry
23:44
Speaker 1: that they they they made some cash off of thanks
23:47
Speaker 1: to Barnum's ingenuity. They did. Finally, in eighteen thirty six,
23:51
Speaker 1: the circus comes into the picture. He joined a traveling circus.
23:55
Speaker 1: Barnum did as a ticket seller, which I take it
23:58
Speaker 1: to mean he doesn't sit in a booth and sell tickets,
24:00
Speaker 1: but he goes around town selling tickets. Yeah, like chambers
24:03
Speaker 1: of commerce or something like that. Yeah. And of course
24:06
Speaker 1: he got a little uh commission off this thing, so
24:09
Speaker 1: he was making some dough. Favola joined the same circus
24:12
Speaker 1: as a performer. Of course they were attached at the
24:15
Speaker 1: hip at that point. That was Chang and Ang bunker
24:18
Speaker 1: you're thinking of. That's a dad joke. It totally um,
24:26
Speaker 1: and this one I thought was a little bit weird.
24:29
Speaker 1: Apparently the circus proprietor, a guy named Turner, was into
24:33
Speaker 1: practical jokes, and not very good ones. Because this practical
24:38
Speaker 1: joke was he convinced the crowd that Barnum was the
24:42
Speaker 1: reverend from Avery who had been acquitted of murder. But
24:46
Speaker 1: everyone thought that this guy had committed murder, and back
24:48
Speaker 1: then no one knew anyone looked like So he said,
24:50
Speaker 1: this guy is from Avery, and he almost got lynched. Apparently, yeah,
24:55
Speaker 1: like from Avery's name was not very well liked in
24:59
Speaker 1: the area. He was at the very least he, through
25:03
Speaker 1: having an adulterous affair with a young woman, had induced
25:06
Speaker 1: her to kill herself, or at worst, had murdered her
25:10
Speaker 1: to prevent her from having his illegitimate child. But he's
25:13
Speaker 1: gonna quit it, right, Andy's a reverend, did we mentioned Um?
25:17
Speaker 1: So yeah, the crowd, like, according to Barnum, almost killed him.
25:21
Speaker 1: That's a real funny joke, I know. But then later on,
25:24
Speaker 1: Jane says that Um that Barnum got got even with
25:28
Speaker 1: him with his own practical joke. I could find nothing anywhere,
25:32
Speaker 1: including in Barnum's autobiography that that mentions that I think
25:36
Speaker 1: he covered his toilet and seran rep cruads. That's so nasty.
25:43
Speaker 1: Uh No, No, he gave him an upper decker grows.
25:47
Speaker 1: That's even worse. So apparently these guys got into business
25:51
Speaker 1: together and it became a thing where people would go
25:55
Speaker 1: see the circus, where the two ringmasters would would kind
25:58
Speaker 1: of go at each other with these practical jokes, right,
26:01
Speaker 1: that became a thing. So so there's a transition going on,
26:05
Speaker 1: another transition now he is he started out store clerking,
26:10
Speaker 1: lottery ng when got into show business where it's like
26:13
Speaker 1: basically a Colonel Tom two different performers, and then now
26:19
Speaker 1: he's transitioning into the circus. But by now he's been
26:22
Speaker 1: like married to the road about as much as he's
26:25
Speaker 1: been married to Charity as as well. And from all accounts,
26:28
Speaker 1: um like he was very much in love with her
26:31
Speaker 1: and they were like he was faithful and they were
26:34
Speaker 1: they were a real couple. But he was on the
26:36
Speaker 1: road a lot. There's just no if and or butts
26:38
Speaker 1: about it. He was out there on the road quite
26:40
Speaker 1: a bit. So transitioning to a circus was basically the
26:44
Speaker 1: same thing. It was just a little bigger of an outfit,
26:46
Speaker 1: so it was like a step up. But you got
26:48
Speaker 1: to also keep in mind here that he's spending a
26:51
Speaker 1: lot of time on the road at a time when
26:53
Speaker 1: travel was really long and really tough. That's right, And
26:57
Speaker 1: so he eventually decides working for when else's circus is
27:00
Speaker 1: for the birds, I'm gonna start my own. You buy
27:03
Speaker 1: some horse and wagons. I'm gonna get a clown. You
27:06
Speaker 1: gotta have a clown. Uh. I think he still had
27:09
Speaker 1: Vivala at the time. Yeah, and started Barnum's Grand Scientific
27:15
Speaker 1: and Musical Theater toward all over the place for a
27:18
Speaker 1: little while, and then they disbanded. Right, Nothing never seemed
27:23
Speaker 1: to work out for very long. No, I think that
27:26
Speaker 1: Um he got fed up and says with some of
27:29
Speaker 1: the rivalries with other showmen, Um that they, you know,
27:34
Speaker 1: you would build your whole circus around like an act,
27:37
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the act would be like,
27:38
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sick of this, I'm sick of being on
27:40
Speaker 1: the road. I'll see you later, and all of a
27:42
Speaker 1: sudden your circus would fall apart. I think they were
27:44
Speaker 1: kind of tenuous outfits, right, but he he The thing
27:49
Speaker 1: about Barnum was like something about this called to him
27:52
Speaker 1: like he would when his circus collapsed and he was
27:55
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the country on the road
27:57
Speaker 1: and he had to go back home. The first thing
28:00
Speaker 1: you would do is start figuring out his next circus
28:02
Speaker 1: or his next act, or whatever it was. He would
28:05
Speaker 1: go back out again. He he was into fact indefatigable
28:10
Speaker 1: and into fatiguablele in that sense. Uh. Yeah, so I
28:16
Speaker 1: mean we'll quickly speed through the next couple of years.
28:18
Speaker 1: He did a little steamboat circus for a little while
28:22
Speaker 1: along the Mississippi River. Um, that didn't come along. He
28:25
Speaker 1: tried to do a respectable business again. Uh, went into
28:29
Speaker 1: business with a guy who manufactured grease paste and cologne.
28:35
Speaker 1: That did all right for a little while, but then
28:37
Speaker 1: that failed. Uh. And then this whole time, he still
28:41
Speaker 1: feels that pool to the tent. Right. He sold illustrated
28:45
Speaker 1: bibles for a little while. Finally, here's the thing he
28:50
Speaker 1: wanted stability, Like being out on the road was tough,
28:54
Speaker 1: as Steve Perry, right, but he wanted this this to
29:01
Speaker 1: be tied to show business in some way. Finally, one day,
29:05
Speaker 1: and I think the eighteen forty one, he um he
29:11
Speaker 1: had another big break or another big vision. There was
29:14
Speaker 1: a there was a place in New York museum and
29:18
Speaker 1: what you would call today a museum that was up
29:22
Speaker 1: for sale in I'm not sure where it was, but
29:25
Speaker 1: it was in New York, right, and it was called
29:27
Speaker 1: Scudder's American Museum. And Barnum heard that um Scudder wanted
29:31
Speaker 1: to get out and was putting the whole collection up
29:35
Speaker 1: for fifteen grand, which is a substantial amount of money
29:38
Speaker 1: and definitely more money than than Barnum had. But he said,
29:41
Speaker 1: that's it right there. I can have a permanent place
29:44
Speaker 1: where people come to me, and I can be home
29:47
Speaker 1: with my wife and daughters, but I can still have
29:50
Speaker 1: this daily interaction with show business. I gotta buy that
29:54
Speaker 1: thing well, and it will also accomplish this is um.
29:58
Speaker 1: I can still have my freak show performers. But because
30:03
Speaker 1: it's a museum, somehow it has a little bit more
30:06
Speaker 1: respectability because apparently at the time, theaters weren't like they
30:11
Speaker 1: are today. It wasn't like we're going to the theater.
30:14
Speaker 1: Theaters could be a little bit like a a second
30:17
Speaker 1: tier entertainment, right. It was like hoi POLOI tawdry. Crowds
30:22
Speaker 1: went to the theater that was associated with like burlesque
30:25
Speaker 1: or something like that, or even like um human oodities
30:29
Speaker 1: exhibition stuff like that that was theater stuff. A museum
30:32
Speaker 1: like Scudder's, like respectable people could go there. So what
30:36
Speaker 1: Barnum did was he he bought a museum and then
30:39
Speaker 1: dragged it down into the mud, right And this this
30:42
Speaker 1: whole the way he financed the museum, I didn't fully understand,
30:46
Speaker 1: to be honest. Do you want me to explain it
30:48
Speaker 1: if you want, or we could just say he ended
30:51
Speaker 1: up with the museum in eighteen forty one through a
30:53
Speaker 1: lot of work, and I think that's that's fair enough
30:57
Speaker 1: because it is a little bit like you know, Robin
30:59
Speaker 1: Peter to pay Paul. It wasn't just a straight up purchase.
31:02
Speaker 1: Let's just say that, right. But so one thing that
31:04
Speaker 1: you can say about this museum, which he renamed Barnum's
31:07
Speaker 1: American Museum, it was a big success. And one of
31:11
Speaker 1: the reasons it was a big success was because he
31:16
Speaker 1: was he tirelessly worked at finding new and interesting ways
31:20
Speaker 1: to market the thing, right um, and by I'm not
31:26
Speaker 1: sure exactly when, but by a very short time after
31:30
Speaker 1: he opened it, I think that same year, in one
31:33
Speaker 1: um he he was charged. He charged twenty five cents
31:38
Speaker 1: a person for admission. He had something like four thousand
31:42
Speaker 1: visitors a day. And he took this thing, like I
31:46
Speaker 1: say that he dragged the word museum down in the mud.
31:49
Speaker 1: He definitely added and expanded to the definition of museum.
31:53
Speaker 1: And then he also had this lecture hall where he
31:55
Speaker 1: had like performances that you would see like in a
31:58
Speaker 1: circus or something like that. And he turned this place
32:01
Speaker 1: into an emporium just something huge in a an enormous spectacle.
32:06
Speaker 1: And something like eight hundred and fifty thousand pieces were
32:10
Speaker 1: on display in his museum. So you definitely got your
32:13
Speaker 1: quarters worth for sure. Yeah, and those are just the
32:16
Speaker 1: pieces he also, I mean as far as the circus element,
32:19
Speaker 1: he had everything covered. He had dancers, musicians, plate spinners, ventriloquists.
32:26
Speaker 1: Well you gotta have the plate spin He had little people,
32:29
Speaker 1: he had big people. He had ladies with beards, and
32:32
Speaker 1: robots and puppets and animals. He had drafts and grizzly bears.
32:37
Speaker 1: Like he really had everything humming on all cylinders at
32:41
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, he really did um. And again there
32:44
Speaker 1: was still there was that whole thread of like you know,
32:47
Speaker 1: there are people being exploited. There were people who were
32:51
Speaker 1: complicit in that. There were people who were Um. Anyone
32:56
Speaker 1: who came to the museum was gawking at, you know,
33:01
Speaker 1: the weirdness of these other people or whatever, which again
33:04
Speaker 1: today is very odd to us, but at the time
33:07
Speaker 1: um was still odd. Like that's the thing that I
33:10
Speaker 1: think it's lost on people. Like there were sideshows and
33:13
Speaker 1: things like that, but Barnum took it to an extraordinary
33:18
Speaker 1: degree and really ran with it and became extremely rich
33:22
Speaker 1: as a result. Actually, should we take a break. I'm
33:26
Speaker 1: ready to all right, the museum's coming along. We're gonna
33:28
Speaker 1: take a break. We'll be back right after this. If
33:31
Speaker 1: you want to know you're in luck, just to chuck, Okay,
33:57
Speaker 1: we're back. Yeah. So we mentioned earlier about the humbug
34:01
Speaker 1: Um this kind of hucksterism in his biography there or autobiography,
34:06
Speaker 1: which was rewritten by himself, by the way, after people
34:09
Speaker 1: read the first version and said, what a jerk. Yeah. Yeah,
34:13
Speaker 1: he was like just openly boastful and braggart about how
34:17
Speaker 1: much he exploited people and how much he duped the
34:19
Speaker 1: American public. He turned it down a little bit in
34:22
Speaker 1: this in the revision, but he he did talk a
34:26
Speaker 1: little bit about being slightly embarrassed about kind of how
34:29
Speaker 1: shameless he was. But then again in the next line
34:32
Speaker 1: he would say, but you know what, this is how
34:34
Speaker 1: everyone is in my business. I'm just better at it
34:37
Speaker 1: than them. Basically, yeah, he said, Um, he said, oh,
34:43
Speaker 1: there's a great quote. I can't find it anywhere though
34:45
Speaker 1: where Basically if he if he oh, here it is um.
34:50
Speaker 1: If his advertising was quote more audacious than his competitors,
34:54
Speaker 1: it was not because I had less scrupled than they,
34:57
Speaker 1: but more energy, far more ingenuity, and better foundation for
35:01
Speaker 1: such promises. He thought a lot of himself. He definitely did.
35:04
Speaker 1: But he also worked pretty hard at it, for sure.
35:06
Speaker 1: And I think if you, if you compared apples to
35:09
Speaker 1: apples at the time, Barnum's jam was way better than
35:13
Speaker 1: anybody else's jam. Yeah, for sure. So uh. He had
35:18
Speaker 1: three really big successes in a row with his with
35:22
Speaker 1: his museum here. The first one was called the Fiji
35:25
Speaker 1: Mermaid f E j E and um and this was
35:31
Speaker 1: a big, big deal. He got a man named Levi
35:33
Speaker 1: Lyman or Levy Lyman. He was an old colleague of his,
35:39
Speaker 1: and he said, here's what I'll do. You're gonna you
35:41
Speaker 1: are now, Dr J. Griffin. You're a naturalist for the
35:45
Speaker 1: British Lyceum of Natural History, which was not a real place,
35:50
Speaker 1: and you were the you're an ownership of what we'll
35:54
Speaker 1: call the Fiji mermaid, which was a uh what do
35:59
Speaker 1: we call it in a taxidermy? Rogue taxidermy. Yeah, it
36:03
Speaker 1: was rogue taxidermy. It totally was. It was like a jackalope,
36:06
Speaker 1: except what was it. It was a head of a
36:08
Speaker 1: baboon torso and orange and tang and a fish tail
36:13
Speaker 1: just for good measure. Yeah, And as far back as
36:15
Speaker 1: they can tell, it was probably made by a Japanese
36:19
Speaker 1: sailor in the eighteen twenties and it passed through a
36:22
Speaker 1: few hands before Barnum finally leased it and put it
36:25
Speaker 1: on display. I wonder where that thing is now. I looked.
36:28
Speaker 1: I I don't know there are other Fiji mermaids out there.
36:32
Speaker 1: There was it was like kind of a thread of
36:34
Speaker 1: rogue taxidermy in the mid nineteenth century, and I think
36:37
Speaker 1: Harvard has went on display. But I looked to find
36:39
Speaker 1: out where P. T. Barnum's is, and um, I can't find.
36:43
Speaker 1: It's probably like on Richard Branson's headboard or something. It
36:47
Speaker 1: may have actually burned up in one of the many
36:49
Speaker 1: fires that plagued PiZZ Barnum's life. Things are going to
36:52
Speaker 1: get fiery here in this last bit too. Yeah well, ay, well,
36:56
Speaker 1: let's get back to the Fiji mermaid though. Okay, so
37:00
Speaker 1: Dr J. Griffin is touring, touring with this supposedly touring
37:05
Speaker 1: with this mermaid, right sure, and Barnum, but the guy's
37:09
Speaker 1: actually not out there touring. Barnum basically creates out a
37:12
Speaker 1: whole cloth tour of this mermaid, writes letters about how
37:16
Speaker 1: great this thing is uh in different people's names, and
37:20
Speaker 1: then mails them two friends that live around the country
37:23
Speaker 1: and asks them to mail those letters in to two
37:27
Speaker 1: newspapers in New York, talking about how this thing has
37:30
Speaker 1: to be seen to be believed. Yeah, so people came
37:33
Speaker 1: far and wide to see this piece of taxidermy. Yeah.
37:37
Speaker 1: And by the way, this whole Jay Griffin thing, like
37:41
Speaker 1: this guy was posing as him. He was giving public
37:44
Speaker 1: lectures made up as a naturalist, British naturalist, and he
37:49
Speaker 1: was an American promoter. He had nothing to do. He
37:53
Speaker 1: was just making all this stuff up. But he would
37:55
Speaker 1: give like public lectures on it, like the audacity. It's amazing.
38:00
Speaker 1: Uh So the second big victory was when he met
38:03
Speaker 1: up with a four year old named Charles Stratton. Uh
38:06
Speaker 1: he was a little person, his cousin actually, and he
38:10
Speaker 1: stopped growing when he was two ft tall and he
38:13
Speaker 1: changed his name, rebranded him as General Tom Thumb and
38:17
Speaker 1: that name probably rings a bell. They became very famous together.
38:20
Speaker 1: He said, he was eleven years old, and they were
38:24
Speaker 1: a a media and ticket selling sensation. Yeah. They would
38:28
Speaker 1: be like invited in to meet like royalty whatever country
38:32
Speaker 1: they toured. Um, he was a huge hit at the museum.
38:36
Speaker 1: It was like a big deal for both barnol Man
38:40
Speaker 1: and Charles Stratton. The sensation, that's the best way to
38:44
Speaker 1: put it. In The final big victory of of the
38:46
Speaker 1: trifecta when he was in Europe with UM with Stratton,
38:50
Speaker 1: he heard of Jenny Lynn. He was a Swedish opera
38:53
Speaker 1: singer and this was the kind of thing where he
38:55
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, she doesn't have a beard.
38:59
Speaker 1: She's all she is as a talented singer. But she's
39:03
Speaker 1: amazing and this would really legitimize me if I did
39:07
Speaker 1: like a straight up act for a change. So even
39:11
Speaker 1: though she's big over here, they don't know about her
39:13
Speaker 1: in America and she could blow up there. So I'm
39:15
Speaker 1: gonna offer her a thousand dollars per performance, which was
39:18
Speaker 1: a ton of money and a big risk, but he
39:21
Speaker 1: made about a half a million dollars with her or more.
39:24
Speaker 1: We branded the Swedish Nightingale by trotting her around the
39:28
Speaker 1: United States. And uh, she was like beyond a sensation
39:33
Speaker 1: in the United States. Yeah, that was another thing too.
39:35
Speaker 1: I mean, like she was pretty big in Europe, but
39:38
Speaker 1: I don't think she was well known, if known at all,
39:40
Speaker 1: in America. But by the time she showed up for
39:43
Speaker 1: the tour starting in eighteen fifty, he had managed to get,
39:47
Speaker 1: like you said, just turned her into a national sensation.
39:50
Speaker 1: Like people had like beat a beatlemania for this lady. Um.
39:55
Speaker 1: This article says that she was not a very nice person.
39:59
Speaker 1: I didn't see that anywhere else, and I actually saw that.
40:02
Speaker 1: So after the contract between her and Barnum was up
40:06
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one, she continued to tour America with
40:10
Speaker 1: like an actual orchestra, I believe um. And she made
40:14
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars in eighteen fifties money Um from
40:18
Speaker 1: this whole American tour and donated every single penny of
40:22
Speaker 1: it to Sweden's public school system, which burgeoning at the time. Yeah,
40:27
Speaker 1: so I don't know what Jane was talking about, but
40:30
Speaker 1: I think she just kind of didn't find America very cultured,
40:34
Speaker 1: is what I get. But apparently Jane didn't like that
40:38
Speaker 1: America probably wasn't very cultured, right, But I thought that
40:42
Speaker 1: was pretty neat man. She took all that money and
40:44
Speaker 1: donated it to the public school system in Sweden. That's crazy.
40:48
Speaker 1: But yeah, so, so Barnum was not legitimized thanks to that.
40:51
Speaker 1: I think it actually didn't go all that well. But
40:54
Speaker 1: he did enrich himself thoroughly through Jenny Lynn, for sure,
40:58
Speaker 1: that's right. But he go broke again because he's P. T.
41:01
Speaker 1: Barnum and that's what he does. On the eighteen fifties,
41:05
Speaker 1: he bought up a lot of land near Bridgeport, Connecticut,
41:08
Speaker 1: because he wanted to make east Bridgeport. That happened in place. Uh.
41:13
Speaker 1: He invested in a in the Jerome Clock Company wanted
41:15
Speaker 1: to relocate it to east Bridgeport. It was not a
41:18
Speaker 1: smart thing to do. The company went bankrupt and all
41:22
Speaker 1: of a sudden he was broke again, and this is
41:25
Speaker 1: fire number one. He moves out of his mansion because
41:28
Speaker 1: he's broke, and then when after he had moved out,
41:31
Speaker 1: the mansion burned down. Right, But if he had to
41:34
Speaker 1: move out, you would think that he had relinquished ownership.
41:37
Speaker 1: So why does it matter as far as his life goes,
41:42
Speaker 1: unless he had a bunch of money stuffed into the
41:44
Speaker 1: insulation or something. I don't know, making bad thing going on.
41:48
Speaker 1: It might have just been a footnote or something, or
41:50
Speaker 1: he maybe maybe he did no I guess if he
41:53
Speaker 1: had moved out then I didn't known it. It's I
41:56
Speaker 1: just thought that was a little weird. Yeah, so he Um,
42:00
Speaker 1: he was in debt like big time, like broke bankrupt,
42:03
Speaker 1: in debt um because of this terrible clock company thing,
42:07
Speaker 1: which you should always take as a reason to never
42:10
Speaker 1: put all of your eggs in one basket, which I
42:13
Speaker 1: guess is what he did. But he managed to um
42:17
Speaker 1: emerge from debt after I think five years UM, and
42:21
Speaker 1: he ended up during this time, he pawned his museum,
42:27
Speaker 1: but he also put the name of the museum in
42:31
Speaker 1: his wife's name, who was not bankrupt, and so they
42:34
Speaker 1: were able to make some income off of the lease
42:37
Speaker 1: for the museum, and then when he managed to buy
42:40
Speaker 1: the museum back after five years, he just went like
42:44
Speaker 1: right back to it, like like like he didn't miss
42:46
Speaker 1: a beat. Yeah, I mean this this tenure period from
42:49
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eighteen sixty he went broke. He did the
42:52
Speaker 1: smart thing, like he said, with his wife. He started
42:54
Speaker 1: giving lectures about making money. He went on tour again
42:58
Speaker 1: with Tom Thumb. He got a dead whale. He bought
43:02
Speaker 1: a dead whale and said, surely people will pay money
43:06
Speaker 1: to see this. So he was still doing all this
43:08
Speaker 1: crazy stuff. Um, he bought a hippopotamus, he bought two
43:14
Speaker 1: beluga whales. Like, it's just crazy the things that he
43:18
Speaker 1: was doing. Also, Chuck, we have to say that the
43:21
Speaker 1: title of the lecture tour the Art of money getting.
43:27
Speaker 1: It's not even the art of making money, the art
43:28
Speaker 1: of money getting. Yea. So um so the the he's
43:35
Speaker 1: his stars starting to rise again at the very least,
43:38
Speaker 1: his fortunes are reversing from from you know, just doing
43:41
Speaker 1: any kind of work he can get his hands on.
43:43
Speaker 1: And then all along this way, like Barnum was a
43:47
Speaker 1: pretty he was what's known as the jackson Ian Democrat.
43:51
Speaker 1: Jack Andrew Jackson was a populist president, and um he
43:55
Speaker 1: was Uh I think, didn't we lay? Uh? He was
44:01
Speaker 1: the one who was responsible for the Trail of tears. Right,
44:04
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that was Andrew Jackson. It was remember
44:08
Speaker 1: our two part on Trail of Tears. Okay, so he
44:11
Speaker 1: was he was um P. T. Barnum was of this
44:14
Speaker 1: man's party. He was Jackson supporter. And then the Civil
44:18
Speaker 1: War breaks out and all of a sudden, Um Barnum
44:24
Speaker 1: has this like total conversion. He was not like an
44:28
Speaker 1: outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans enslaved,
44:36
Speaker 1: worked as a Confederate sympathizer anything like that. He was
44:40
Speaker 1: fairly unremarkable and pretty normal, like for example, at his
44:43
Speaker 1: at his museum, Um, if you were black, you couldn't
44:46
Speaker 1: come in. It was a segregated museum. But that was
44:49
Speaker 1: like a lot of businesses at the time. So he
44:51
Speaker 1: was a very normal pedestrian person as far as his
44:53
Speaker 1: politics go, and and and socially as well. But something
44:59
Speaker 1: happened and around the time of the Civil War and
45:01
Speaker 1: he converted and actually became an abolitionist, huge union supporter,
45:06
Speaker 1: and um just basically became patriotic and dedicated this idea
45:11
Speaker 1: of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. Yeah, and he
45:15
Speaker 1: used that museum as a sort of ground zero for
45:19
Speaker 1: his cause. Uh. He had speeches, he had plays that
45:23
Speaker 1: sort of endorsed this. He had Southern copper heads that
45:27
Speaker 1: were protesting outside. They threatened his life. And then he said,
45:32
Speaker 1: at this point, you know what, I might as well
45:33
Speaker 1: just get into politics, um, legitimately. And in April of
45:37
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, he actually won an election to the
45:40
Speaker 1: Connecticut General Assembly, where he worked really hard to ratify
45:44
Speaker 1: the thirteenth Amendment and supported another cause to allow the
45:49
Speaker 1: rights of black people to vote in Connecticut. Yeah. So
45:53
Speaker 1: like he was, he was legitimately dedicated to the cause
45:56
Speaker 1: of abolition, which is totally bizarre. Right. And about this time, too,
46:00
Speaker 1: is when the revisions to his autobiography are starting to
46:03
Speaker 1: get much more contrite, much less boastful, um, and even
46:07
Speaker 1: more apologetic. Uh so he he like he something happened
46:12
Speaker 1: and he was converted to um the right side of history.
46:15
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it, you know. Yeah, So
46:17
Speaker 1: here's where fire number two comes in. After a few
46:20
Speaker 1: months after this election, his museum burned down along with
46:24
Speaker 1: the animals in the exhibit, which is super sad is
46:28
Speaker 1: the first of like two animal fires. Uh. He opened
46:31
Speaker 1: a new museum a couple of months after that. Three
46:34
Speaker 1: years later that museum burned down. Didn't want to rebuild
46:38
Speaker 1: that one. Uh. And then finally in the eighteen seventies,
46:43
Speaker 1: like it took a long long time before he became
46:46
Speaker 1: the P. T. Barnum that most people know as the
46:49
Speaker 1: big circus guy, right, the greatest show on Earth guy. Yeah,
46:54
Speaker 1: he um hooked up with Barnum and Bailey after hooking
46:57
Speaker 1: up with a guy named William Cameron or Coup I'm
47:01
Speaker 1: not sure which one it is, Um, But he had P. T.
47:04
Speaker 1: Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Circus. That was
47:10
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one. And then, Um, did you cover the
47:14
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two fire. No, there was another fire that
47:19
Speaker 1: killed circus animals that the winter at the winter Um
47:23
Speaker 1: uh camp, which is on the site of where Madison
47:27
Speaker 1: Square Garden is right now, there's a horrific fire in
47:30
Speaker 1: the winter Camp in eighteen seventy two killed a bunch
47:33
Speaker 1: of other circuits animals, which this is this is why
47:37
Speaker 1: this is one of the reasons why years later Um
47:40
Speaker 1: Barnum and Bailey's Wrinkling Brothers Circus went away was because
47:45
Speaker 1: of animals. Yeah, and he, I mean he was by
47:48
Speaker 1: the time this uh fire happened. That the what was
47:51
Speaker 1: it called the Hippo Theatron? I think so he uh,
47:56
Speaker 1: he was very successful with that circus circus he started
48:00
Speaker 1: with Coupe or coup. Uh. They've made about four grand
48:04
Speaker 1: in the first year, and it was the very first
48:05
Speaker 1: circus to kind of do the traditional thing that we
48:08
Speaker 1: all think of is travel by train, acrobats, clowns, exotic animals,
48:12
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh. And that's when it officially was
48:16
Speaker 1: called the Greatest show on Earth. So the Hippo Theatron,
48:22
Speaker 1: such a strange word, burns down and then he's visiting
48:26
Speaker 1: his friend in England, uh, John Fish. And this is
48:29
Speaker 1: when his wife, Charity passes away. And as Jane put it,
48:34
Speaker 1: he was supposedly to grief stricken to return for her funeral,
48:38
Speaker 1: But the grief must have subsided quickly because he secretly
48:41
Speaker 1: married Fish's daughter at sixty three years old. He married
48:45
Speaker 1: twenty two year old Nancy Fish about three and a
48:48
Speaker 1: half months later after his wife passed. No word about
48:51
Speaker 1: her teeth no no, or her brass eyes. So um,
48:56
Speaker 1: they got married secretly fourteen weeks after Charity died, and
49:00
Speaker 1: then and when they came to the US, they had
49:02
Speaker 1: a public wedding nine months after that. So um, yeah,
49:08
Speaker 1: he married her, and I guess he was with her
49:11
Speaker 1: until his death, right, Well, yeah, in eighteen sixty or
49:14
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, seventy five, he took a break from the circus,
49:18
Speaker 1: got back into politics and became the mayor of Bridgeport
49:22
Speaker 1: for a little while, not US Bridgeport, though he's talking
49:25
Speaker 1: trash about the Bridgeport And apparently he gets a little
49:29
Speaker 1: on his high horse now because even though he was
49:31
Speaker 1: a drinker, pretty heavy drinker for a while, he quit
49:35
Speaker 1: drinking and then campaigned against um like Sunday sales and
49:40
Speaker 1: saloons and kind of got a little self righteous, it
49:43
Speaker 1: seems like. Yeah. He also sponsored the Comstock Law in Connecticut,
49:48
Speaker 1: which banned contraception, which puts a lot of onus onto
49:53
Speaker 1: the ladies. Um. And it was in place apparently until
49:57
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and was a really important word in
50:01
Speaker 1: their chuck sponsored like that means you're the person who
50:05
Speaker 1: brought it to the General Assembly, not you didn't just
50:09
Speaker 1: vote yes on it, Like you're the one who said, everybody, everybody,
50:13
Speaker 1: let's ban contraception for a hundred years and it was successful. Actually,
50:17
Speaker 1: so yeah, he was. He was a weird dude with
50:21
Speaker 1: a lot of different weird um thoughts about things and
50:24
Speaker 1: that were sometimes very contradictory over time. And then finally,
50:29
Speaker 1: ironically here at the very end of this podcast, in
50:33
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty he partnered with one James A. Bailey for P. T.
50:37
Speaker 1: Barnham's Great London Combined. It's it's a terrible name for
50:41
Speaker 1: a circus, worst circus name ever. Then he had the
50:44
Speaker 1: word circus in there, and uh, this is when he
50:48
Speaker 1: got Jumbo the Elephant, which it was. Jumbo was a
50:52
Speaker 1: legendary attraction until eighty five when Jumbo was killed by
50:57
Speaker 1: a train and probably caught fire too. And did you
51:00
Speaker 1: know we were just in Boston that Toughs University their
51:04
Speaker 1: mascot is Jumbo the Elephant. No, I didn't know that. Yeah,
51:07
Speaker 1: my buddy Robert explained that to me. And um, apparently
51:11
Speaker 1: Barnum was one of the early Um what do you
51:16
Speaker 1: what do you call the people who give universities a
51:18
Speaker 1: lot of money? Uh, endowment and donors grand person. Sure,
51:24
Speaker 1: he was all of that. What is that word? I
51:26
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. He was all that two
51:28
Speaker 1: toughs and so Jumbo the elephant became their mascot. And
51:32
Speaker 1: I think because it does say in here he he
51:35
Speaker 1: displayed Jumbo's preserved hide and skeleton. I think it was,
51:39
Speaker 1: or maybe is on display at toughs Um. I'm not
51:43
Speaker 1: sure if it still is, but I think at one
51:44
Speaker 1: time it was. So wait a minute, this guy also
51:47
Speaker 1: gave a substantial amount of money to help found a university.
51:51
Speaker 1: I don't know found, but to the university. That's a benefactor.
51:54
Speaker 1: Is that the word benefactor? Yeah? Maybe the found found it.
51:56
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure the timeline there. Man, that's that's
51:58
Speaker 1: really crazy. He did lot of stuff. So go jumbos, Yeah,
52:03
Speaker 1: the fighting jumbos or the passive aggressive jumbos or the
52:06
Speaker 1: stomping jumbos. Yeah, that's a pretty kid. So Barnem and
52:11
Speaker 1: Bailey weren't together for too long. Initially they parted ways
52:14
Speaker 1: but then again joined in seven ultimately finally for the
52:19
Speaker 1: Barnum and Bailey circus. Yep, they broke up and then
52:23
Speaker 1: they got back together, and then it stayed that way
52:25
Speaker 1: until two thousand and sixteen, I think, and then the
52:28
Speaker 1: circus finally closed down. I went to that thing as
52:30
Speaker 1: a kid. I think we talked about that. Sure I
52:32
Speaker 1: did too, um and now we will only go to
52:35
Speaker 1: the Big Apple Circus, as you know. And I took
52:38
Speaker 1: a long break because Emily and I were tired of going,
52:42
Speaker 1: and then uh, now we got a kid. My mom
52:45
Speaker 1: was like, you know, you gotta start going again. You
52:47
Speaker 1: have to. So we went this year. How was it. Oh,
52:52
Speaker 1: it's okay. You know, I'm not the biggest circus guy.
52:55
Speaker 1: I've realized. Are you afraid of clowns? No? Not these?
52:59
Speaker 1: Are you afraid of acro bat? I could take these clowns.
53:02
Speaker 1: Um No. And actually the acrobats at the Big Apple
53:05
Speaker 1: Circus or the the what's it called, it's the famous ones.
53:09
Speaker 1: The family, Oh, the Flying Zamboni's Yeah, or was it
53:13
Speaker 1: Zamboni's not Zamboni's, I don't remember. It's something like that,
53:17
Speaker 1: but it's them. It's still still that family. Wow, that's
53:20
Speaker 1: really that's something. And they you know, they did a
53:22
Speaker 1: great job. But at the end of the day, I'm
53:24
Speaker 1: just kind of about a third of the way through,
53:27
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my watch you know. Oh, I got you.
53:31
Speaker 1: I've seen a couple of circus so lates. Those are
53:33
Speaker 1: the last circus as I saw. Those are okay. But
53:35
Speaker 1: we saw the Michael Jackson one in Las Vegas and
53:38
Speaker 1: man Alive was good. Yeah, there's a Michael Jackson cirque. Yes, dude.
53:42
Speaker 1: And I have to tell you, like, I'm not some
53:45
Speaker 1: die hard Michael Jackson fan, but you don't have to
53:49
Speaker 1: be this to appreciate this. It is amazing, like like
53:53
Speaker 1: it's worth going to Vegas to go see, turning around
53:56
Speaker 1: and going home. I don't know. There's probably a few
54:00
Speaker 1: I bet we hear from some Michael Jackson anti Michael
54:02
Speaker 1: Jackson fans. Uh. Finally, p T. Barnum has a stroke
54:09
Speaker 1: during a performance. He has one weird, strange wish at
54:13
Speaker 1: the end of his life is to have his obituary
54:17
Speaker 1: published before he dies. Yeah. I don't know why I
54:20
Speaker 1: did that, maybe too, I don't know either. I think
54:23
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's a heck of a way
54:25
Speaker 1: to end this podcast. And so maybe he wanted to
54:27
Speaker 1: feel the public outpouring or something. Uh, it could be that,
54:31
Speaker 1: or he wanted to proof read it or something. I
54:34
Speaker 1: don't know, but if he wanted. If that was what
54:36
Speaker 1: he was after, why didn't they just um send it
54:40
Speaker 1: to him ahead of time to actually published it. Yeah,
54:43
Speaker 1: it's weird. Well, we'll find out one day when we
54:48
Speaker 1: die and go to heaven and meet P. T. Barnum. Agreed,
54:53
Speaker 1: So are you got anything else? Nope, there's probably tons
54:57
Speaker 1: more that we missed. And if you know something about
54:59
Speaker 1: Pete Barnum that we didn't know, let us know. We'll
55:03
Speaker 1: just add to this guy's story over time. Okay. Uh.
55:06
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to read this great
55:08
Speaker 1: article by Jay McGrath, type im P. T. Barnum in
55:12
Speaker 1: the search bar. How stuff works. Since I said search bars,
55:15
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this
55:19
Speaker 1: Uni Bomber follow up. Okay. I was into that one,
55:24
Speaker 1: The UNI Bomber. Yeah, yeah, that was a good episode.
55:27
Speaker 1: That was a good tenth anniversary episode. Milk. Hey, guys,
55:33
Speaker 1: congratulation on ten years milk, Milk. I look forward to
55:36
Speaker 1: many more listen to Uni Bomber and thought it would
55:38
Speaker 1: share something that covers a related, if somewhat different, aspect
55:41
Speaker 1: of the story about ten years ago when I was
55:43
Speaker 1: still a wee law student taking a legal ethics course.
55:46
Speaker 1: One of the situations we discussed was Ted Kazinski and
55:49
Speaker 1: the ethical dilemma his lawyers faced. Criminal defendants had the
55:53
Speaker 1: absolute right to dictate certain aspects of their representation, like
55:57
Speaker 1: whether or not flee guilty, but there are other aspects
56:00
Speaker 1: of the representation that the lawyer controls, the most notable
56:03
Speaker 1: being trial strategy. While lawyers should always listen to the
56:06
Speaker 1: clients overall goals, sometimes as necessary to override a client's
56:10
Speaker 1: wishes on how to achieve their goals, but because the
56:14
Speaker 1: client's desired strategy is either legally incorrect, unethical, or simply
56:18
Speaker 1: ill advise, Kazynski's case presented an interesting ethical problem for
56:22
Speaker 1: the attorneys because he refused to allow them to pursue
56:25
Speaker 1: what they perceived to be his best defense and his
56:28
Speaker 1: only hope of avoiding the death penalty, namely claiming he
56:31
Speaker 1: was not guilty by reason of mental disease, known as
56:35
Speaker 1: the insanity defense. The conflict was that, on one hand,
56:39
Speaker 1: his attorneys had a duty to zealously represent him, but
56:42
Speaker 1: Kazinski objected so vehemently to the chosen defense. At at
56:45
Speaker 1: one point he attempted to go pro say a k
56:49
Speaker 1: a represent himself, which would have been an utter disaster. Uh.
56:53
Speaker 1: As you noted, he pled guilty, so we'll never know
56:56
Speaker 1: what they would have decided to do had he conned
56:58
Speaker 1: a trial. But his case is one which most lawyers
57:01
Speaker 1: thought about or discussed at some point in their careers.
57:05
Speaker 1: That is good Fordham Walk go Rams And that is
57:09
Speaker 1: from Deb. Thanks Deb, appreciate that. Yeah, I remember what
57:14
Speaker 1: kind of saying like this whole thing was. He didn't
57:16
Speaker 1: he played guilty because they didn't want to plead insane
57:20
Speaker 1: because his ramblings would have been the ramblings of a
57:22
Speaker 1: convicted insane mad man. Very interesting. Uh again, thanks Deb.
57:27
Speaker 1: We always love hearing from lawyers out there. That whole
57:30
Speaker 1: joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea being
57:33
Speaker 1: a good start. We have always found it tasteless. So
57:36
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can via Twitter. I'm
57:39
Speaker 1: at josh Um Clark and at s y s K podcast,
57:43
Speaker 1: and Chuck is at movie Crush, Chuck's on Facebook dot com,
57:48
Speaker 1: Slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant and slash stuff. You should
57:51
Speaker 1: know you can send us and Jerry an email to
57:54
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
57:57
Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the Web Stuff
58:00
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
58:06
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com.
58:16
Speaker 1: Mhm m