Joseph Merrick: Elephant Man

About nine months after Joseph Merrick, our fourth great grandfather* (see relationship note below), fought at the Slaughter Pen at Fredericksburg, Virginia (link), another Joseph Merrick was born across the pond. He lived a tragic life.

Joseph Merrick c. 1889

Early Life 

Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), often incorrectly called John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities. He was first exhibited at a freak show as the 'Elephant Man,' and then went to live at the London Hospital after he met Frederick Treves." 

Read more: Wikipedia

Dr. Treves may be the only person that cared for Joseph. This is the story of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

According to a 1930 article in the Illustrated Leicester Chronicle, he began to develop swellings on his lips at the age of 21 months, followed by a bony lump on his forehead and a loosening and roughening of the skin. As he grew, a noticeable difference between the size of his left and right arms appeared and both his feet became significantly enlarged. 

The Merrick family explained his symptoms as the result of Mary's being knocked over and frightened by a fairground elephant while she was pregnant with Joseph. The concept of maternal impression - that the emotional experiences of pregnant women could have a lasting physical effect on their unborn children - was still prevalent in 19th-century Britain. Merrick held this belief about the cause of his affliction for his entire life.

When he was ten years old, his mother died from bronchopneumonia. Joseph Rockley Merrick moved with his two children to live with Mrs. Emma Wood Antill, a widow with children of her own. They married on 3 December 1874."  

Read more: Wikipedia

He would later write of his step-mother,

I was taunted and sneered at so that I would not go home to my meals, and used to stay in the streets with a hungry belly rather than return for anything to eat, what few half-meals I did have, I was taunted with the remark—that's more than you have earned.'   

The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick

Employment

His step-mother made him get a job at a cigar factory. It didn't work out.

Merrick left school aged 13, which was usual for the time. His home-life was now 'a perfect misery'. At 13, he found work rolling cigars in a factory, but after three years, his right-hand deformity had worsened, and he no longer had the dexterity required for the job. Eventually, his father secured him a hawker's license, which enabled him to earn money selling items from the haberdashery shop, door to door."

 

He had a 'bag' made to put over his head but still frightened people. No one would answer the door for him. Eventually, the Commissioners for Hackney Carriages withdrew his hawker's license when it came up for renewal.

He found some success as a 'human oddity.' Although 'freak show stars' were considered lower class, Merrick considered himself a legitimate 'entertainer.' The theater where he was 'on display' is in the White Chapel district, made famous by Jack the Ripper in 1888.

Elephant Man display location

Merrick refused to collect money after his shows. He managed to save money, but his 'career choice' was in jeopardy.

The dampening of public enthusiasm for freak shows and human oddities continued, and the police and magistrates became increasingly vigilant in closing shows down. Merrick's group of managers decided that he should go on tour in Continental Europe. The Elephant Man was no more successful there than in Britain, and similar action was taken by authorities to move him out of their jurisdictions. In Brussels, Merrick was deserted by this new manager, who stole Merrick's £50 (2018 equivalent £5,400) savings. 

Read more: Wikipedia

Doctor Frederick Treves

"By 1884, the display of human oddities was becoming unpopular, and the Elephant Man display at Whitechapel was shut by the police just a few weeks after it opened. One of the visitors, before it was closed, was the 31-year-old Frederick Treves, who had been urged to visit by a younger surgeon friend.

He described first seeing Merrick in his 1922 memoirs The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (published at the end of his life, they contain numerous errors which many put down to old age, including Treves stating that Merrick’s first name was ‘John.’)

The whole of the front of the shop, with the exception of the door, was hidden by a hanging sheet of canvas on which was the announcement that the Elephant Man was to be seen within and that the price of admission was two-pence. Painted on the canvas in primitive colors was a life-size portrait of the Elephant Man. This very crude production depicted a frightful creature that could only have been possible in a nightmare. It was the figure of a man with the characteristics of an elephant. The transfiguration was not far advanced. There was still more of the man than of the beast. 

This fact—that it was still human—was the most repellent attribute of the creature. There was nothing about it of the pitiableness of the misshapened or the deformed, nothing of the grotesqueness of the freak, but merely the loathsome insinuation of a man being changed into an animal. Some palm trees in the background of the picture suggested a jungle and might have led the imaginative to assume that it was in this wild that the perverted object had roamed. 

When I first became aware of this phenomenon the exhibition was closed, but a well-informed boy sought the proprietor in a public house and I was granted a private view on payment of a shilling. The shop was empty and grey with dust. Some old tins and a few shrivelled potatoes occupied a shelf and some vague vegetable refuse the window. The light in the place was dim, being obscured by the painted placard outside. The far end of the shop—where I expect the late proprietor sat at a desk—was cut off by a curtain or rather by a red tablecloth suspended from a cord by a few rings. 

The room was cold and dank, for it was the month of November. The year, I might say, was 1884. The showman pulled back the curtain and revealed a bent figure crouching on a stool and covered by a brown blanket. In front of it, on a tripod, was a large brick heated by a Bunsen burner. Over this the creature was huddled to warm itself. It never moved when the curtain was drawn back. 

Locked up in an empty shop and lit by the faint blue light of the gas jet, this hunched-up figure was the embodiment of loneliness. It might have been a captive in a cavern or a wizard watching for unholy manifestations in the ghostly flame. Outside the sun was shining and one could hear the footsteps of the passers-by, a tune whistled by a boy and the companionable hum of traffic in the road. 

The showman—speaking as if to a dog—called out harshly: “Stand up!” The thing arose slowly and let the blanket that covered its head and back fall to the ground. There stood revealed the most disgusting specimen of humanity that I have ever seen. 

In the course of my profession I had come upon lamentable deformities of the face due to injury or disease, as well as mutilations and contortions of the body depending upon like causes; but at no time had I met with such a degraded or perverted version of a human being as this lone figure displayed. He was naked to the waist, his -feet were bare, he wore a pair of threadbare trousers that had once belonged to some fat gentleman’s dress suit.

Treves arranged with Norman to examine Merrick at the hospital opposite the following day – but there was a problem.

I became at once conscious of a difficulty. The Elephant Man could not show himself in the streets. He would have been mobbed by the crowd and seized by the police. He was, in fact, as secluded from the world as the Man with the Iron Mask. He had, however, a disguise, although it was almost as startling as he was himself. It consisted of a long black cloak which reached to the ground. Whence the cloak had been obtained I cannot imagine. I had only seen such a garment on the stage wrapped about the figure of a Venetian bravo. 

The recluse was provided with a pair of bag-like slippers in which to hide his deformed feet. On his head was a cap of a kind that never before was seen. It was black like the cloak, had a wide peak, and the general outline of a yachting cap. As the circumference of Merrick’s head was that of a man’s waist, the size of this headgear may be imagined. 

From the attachment of the peak a grey flannel curtain hung in front of the face. In this mask was cut a wide horizontal slit through which the wearer could look out. This costume, worn by a bent man hobbling along with a stick, is probably the most remarkable and the most uncanny that has as yet been designed. I arranged that Merrick should cross the road in a cab, and to insure his immediate admission to the college I gave him my card. - Darkest London

The Royal London Hospital 

After Merrick found himself robbed of his life savings, Doctor Treves' business card was all he had. He used it. The Doctor had Merrick admitted to the Royal London Hospital.

Merrick photographed 1889
The last picture was taken of him

"Joseph Merrick spent four years in the hospital, and for the first time, he started enjoying life as it is. Yet, as ruthless as life itself can be, Merrick was found dead in his hospital bed on the morning of April 11, 1890. The young man had tried to sleep horizontally on the bed; however, his head had fallen at a wrong angle, causing his neck to dislocate. The official cause of death was recorded as asphyxia." 

Read more: Sad Life of Joseph Merrick

His last known photograph was taken a few months after The Ripper started his killing spree in Merrick's old White Chapel neighborhood.

10 Sad Facts About
“The Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick

*Note: Relationships, such as grandmother, 2nd great, etc., are expressed from the perspective of the grandchildren of Leon Arthur and Anna Grace (Fuller) Merrick.

Terms of relationship - grandmother, uncle, aunt, cousin, etc.  - are used here generically to include relatives such as fourth great grandfathers, great grand uncles, second cousins twice removed, etc.