Who Was P. T. Barnum?

P. T.  Barnum was an American showman, businessman and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes (also called "humbugs") and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was also an author, publisher, politician, and philanthropist. While controversial by today's standards, much of what he did was ground-breaking in terms of promotion and public relations.

He promoted human curiosities such as the Fiji mermaid and General Tom Thumb. However, it was the circus business, begun when he was 60 years old, was the source of much of his enduring fame. He established "P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome" in 1870, a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks" that adopted many names over the years.

In this episode, Alex and Kelly explore whether his exploitation of people with disabilities was abhorrent or simply "show business" during that time. We also look at the way in which P. T. Barnum, despite being alive in the nineteenth century, shaped entertainment in the twenty-first century.

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Transcript

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Nap City. The show about interesting dead people. I'm Alex. I got my friend Kelly here. Hey, Kelly. What's up, man?

Alex, man, I'm just glad to be back in the back in the old recording booth here with you

I had a fun one today. I got a fun one today. Not a 20th century person, but somebody who kind of shaped, you know, I think you learn by now that I'm interested in people that still have an imprint today.

And I think this this person definitely still has an imprint today, even though this was a 19th century cat

Yeah, I think I think at one person he was the most famous person or definitely the most famous American. And and pretty much lived the his entire life in the 19th century.

Born in 1810, died in 1891. I like the ones that are born in a in a year ending with zero because and we can always figure out how old they are as we as we progress. But born in 1810, died in 1891 in Connecticut as one of Connecticut's most famous residents, specifically Bridgeport, Connecticut.

No. And he was actually a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, although he's not known as a politician. But he was in the in the state house. He was beaten by his cousin. His cousin was named seven Mule.

he was the most famous American in the world, like I said. And at the end of the 19th century, there were more copies of his book published than any book other than the New Testament.

Wow. Okay.

is also not known as an author

so Benjamin Franklin would have been a lot sooner than that. Like earlier than that?

right. I'll give you more clues. We've actually talked we invoke this guy's I don't know if we talked about him directly or indirectly or indirectly when we did our episodes on Houdini and on Jerry Springer.

Gosh, I'm thinking about Jerry Springer and all the. All the crazies we talked about.

He was a businessman, a politician and author, a philanthropist and a showman.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Greatest
P.T. Barnum. P.T. Barnum. Yeah.

Isn't that crazy? He was. It was in Connecticut, House of Representatives. Yeah, he was. He was actually kind of politically active. You know, he was

where he was really famous was during the Civil War. You know, he was he was trying to entertain a nation that was at war. And so he he actually switched parties. He switched from the Democrats to the Republicans because he was he was an abolitionist, but he was very politically active.

He was both an abolitionist, but also big on temperance. Mean he was he was anti-alcohol into alcoholism. I think just what he would say. But he was so he was politically active. There's a phrase that's attributed to him that I don't think there's any evidence that he ever said, you know what that is

sucker born every minute. There's no evidence that he ever said it.

He did say a couple of cool things, though, that he said Every crowd has a silver lining. I think that's pretty funny. Yeah. And that's one that that I'll tell you now. And then maybe at the end we can kind of double click on it and and unpack it a little more. But nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.

Underestimating the taste of the American public. So think about that for a little bit. I think the most amazing thing, you know, I think when I think of P.T. Barnum, I think of just the circus guy. Right. Turns out he didn't even get into the circus business until he was 60 years old. He had this whole life before that where he was already very popular guy.

Very well-known guy. But but didn't get into the circus business till he was 60. You know, there was a movie that came out in 2018 called The Greatest Showman. And that's that's what it was a. Yeah. So it. Hugh Jackman played him and I did not see this movie and I was planning on seeing it in the past few days until I started reading about how inaccurate the movie was.

And then I didn't want to see it because I didn't want to bring that into this. But just the fact Hugh Jackman isn't 60 years old and the movie portrays him kind of as a young guy getting in the circus, I think that's just one of many errors. So I have not seen this movie, but apparently it's very fictionalized and from a historical perspective, probably better off not not seeing this.

Hmm.

What what's funny in the in the trailer for the movie and again, I have not seen this movie. He says to a young Zac Efron. He says he says, Kid, you got something in you. I think you're going to be great in show business. Zac Efron says, Show business. What is that? And he goes, I just made it up.

So I don't know if that term either. Sure, sure. So let's go through P.T. Barnum's life here. I think he's he's pretty much is the definition of interesting dead person, that's for sure. He had a really interesting life. Yes, I do. Phineas Taylor.

that's how, you know, we're talking about an old guy, Phineas.

like that name. Phineas, actually

Yeah.

I think even like Billie Eilish's brothers is named Phineas, but he starts with an S. Yeah, Yeah, I think that was with AP, but Phineas Taylor Barnum. We had Phineas back. But then you end up calling him Finn.

Right, Right. And that in that case, it should be a fish.

So let's talk about P.T. here. He was the son of an innkeeper and his father died when he was 15. And he. He was poor. He had to borrow a pair of shoes to wear at his dad's funeral. And then all of a sudden, he was stuck having to take care of four kids under seven years old. So had to grow up pretty quickly and figure out how to how to make money and and provide for the for the family.

So he ran a lot of different businesses just like his his grandfather had had done. And one of the business he had he had a store and he was not really clear what he was trying to sell, but he bought a bunch of green glass bottles and tin at bulk. Somebody had come round and said, Hey, I see a bunch of green bottles.

He thought, Well, I can make stuff. And it was just always make try to make stuff and sell it right and just anything for a buck. Well then he was stuck with all these glass bottles. So then he decided he was going to make a lottery out of it. And he had to for his customers. He had a lottery.

This is so this was in the, you know, 1830s, right. The 1820s. And he had a lottery where the top prize was $25 store credit shades of today. Right. 50 prizes of $5 store credit, a hundred prizes of a dollar, 100 prizes of $0.50 and 300 prizes at $0.25. And everybody who didn't get one of those prizes got a green glass bottle or some tin.

So he had to get rid of this inventory and figure out this lottery system. Later on, he actually became a lottery agent for the state when they started the Connecticut State Lottery. And and started yeah, started selling lottery lottery tickets.

They had the lottery back in the 1830s, 1840s.

Yeah. And yeah and of course nowadays you can't just start your own lottery. You know, all lotteries have to be run through.

It's illegal to run a lottery like in a store. You know? I don't know. Tell me. Oh, the lottery. Well. Well, he started his own newspaper at the age of 19. It seems like whenever we're talking about people from the 19th century, they just, like, start something huge, like a newspaper as a teenager. Yeah, right. It seems like that's a common thing to.

But part of the the thing that he did with his newspaper was he would write editorials and he would write editorials against the elders of local churches. He was kind of the community people and he was really against a lot of the stuff they were talking about in their sermons. And he got fined a hundred bucks and imprisoned for two months for libel once for writing again bad stuff against us.

Well, that kind of kicked off his mystique because he was viewed as a martyr and the subscriptions increased while he was in jail. And then when he was released from jail, there was a three mile parade with 40 horsemen and 60 carriages kind of celebrating his release. He was a very famous guy in his 19 years old, and he just kind of became this cult hero for speaking out against against these these bad church guys.

Yeah. Yeah, it was church, church stuff, you know, It was

I don't think it was anything that it was the way they were handling the church money maybe, or whatever. I mean, it was this was a town, local town, you know, Bridgeport. And there was these were the town folks. And Bridgeport wasn't a small town, but it wasn't a large town either.

I was just that mix where you're large enough to have a newspaper, but still, you know, small enough where everyone kind of knows who you are. But he became this this guy that everybody he I think he was very charismatic. I think he had a lot of charisma and he and people wanted to be around him and see what he would do next.

And I think he had this insatiable appetite to entertain people, but also make a buck off of people, you know, Well, this is the thing. And when you see people, this is one of the legacies that I think this guy left. We'll talk about some of the legacies that he left. But back then, there was no entertainment options for lower and middle class Americans.

Entertainment was for upper crust people to go to the opera and go to, you know, fancy museums. And it was inaccessible to a lot of yeah, there was no kind of middle class version of any of that. And he brought entertainment to the masses. Now, the entertainment was very crass by today's standards. And and we'll talk about that and maybe I should give a disclaimer here that a lot of the things that we'll be talking about

are, by today's standards,

probably not very appropriate and maybe even offensive, you know, the kind of things that they considered entertainment back then.

But again, this was his kind of idea of bringing entertainment, affordable entertainment to the masses.

And not unlike our friend Jerry Springer. Right.

Well, I mean, this is this is the theme of of this episode, the kind of things that the kind of people that he put on display. Did he exploit them or was he putting them to work at a time where people with disabilities couldn't get work and were.

No, not too much of that. It was what they were called at the time. Freak shows was very much a pejorative thing. Today, we wouldn't call these people freaks, a lot of people. It was a lot of people with disabilities. But again, people with disabilities back then, you know, a hundred years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, a lot of times were institutionalized and certainly not hirable for a lot of jobs.

And one of the very complicated things about P.T. Barnum, I mentioned that he was an abolitionist, but earlier in his life, in fact, in 1835, so he's 25 years old, he bought a slave named Joyce, had no slavery, was not this was he lived in New York by then. Slavery was not legal in New York, but he found a loophole.

Joyce Heth was a black woman who was old, and she was being put there was a

person that was putting her on display in New York as the 160 year old, 161 year old former nurse of George Washington.

So they looked really old. They Carter out there. She was blind, almost completely paralyzed. And they trotted out and people would pay money and they'd say, this is George Washington's former nurse.

She's 161 years old. Come and see the world's oldest person. Now, slavery was illegal, but he found a loophole where he leased her for $1,000 a year, I suppose. I guess that was a loophole of slavery. So he I think he did exploit her. Right. He just trotted out this blind lady. I'm I'm sure that she didn't get paid very He made her work 10 to 12 hour days.

I'm sure she didn't get paid very much. I think sitting there and probably talking about George Washington and just telling lies about that.

obviously, she wasn't 161 years old. It turns out she was 80.

And you know how we know that is because she died a year after she died, like he only had her for like a year.

He had this show for like a year. And we know that she was 80 because when she died, he did an odd he had an autopsy done and he charged spectators $0.50 to attend the autopsy so the doctors could determine how old she was. So this gives he's 25 years old. It's gives you an idea of how everything is entertainment.

Everything is content, as we would say today. Right? I don't know. I don't know. But I don't think he cared. I yeah, Again, the the the phrase you hear today is everything is content. And I think back then everything was content. Specifically. He was really into things called humbugs. You know, what a humbug is. So humbugs were hoaxes.

Anything that was a hoax was called a humbug. And they called him the Prince of Humbugs.

Like Kurt, like, like Joy Seth, like, here's the 161 year old woman. It's a hoax. She's not 161. He said he he these were advertisements. He said, as long as you as long as people are entertained and they receive some sort of value, that he is not duping the public.

He's just he's he he would probably liken it to what magic is. You know, magic's not real, but people come and they get entertained. And so you're not doing anything unethical when they come in. And if you're telling them, this lady's 161, you're attracting them and pleasing them, they're getting value in return.

it's an end justifies the means mentality that what you're talking about here?

I think he was in the entertainment business.

And the truth to him wasn't what he was. He was after. Now, there were people at the time that were duping people and did have like psychic mediums. You know, I think we've talked a little bit about those. When we talked about Houdini, Houdini was always trying to expose these people. Right. And Barnum was also trying to expose them.

He hated mediums that would defraud the audience. And he was always trying to expose the mediums because he thought that was true exploitation, saying that you're communicating to a loved one. He thought that was just cruel and not entertaining. And he actually offered $500 to anyone who could prove that they could communicate with the dead and nobody took him up on that offer as

So he saw a real distinction there between exploitation and entertainment. Right. And his point would be, as long as they're having a good time, who cares? Let me tell you, some of these other humbugs that he used to get down with. Yeah, yeah. Especially since Trump has kind of taken that word hoax and bastardized it. I think we should go back to Humbugs.

So in 1842. So now he's like 32. He started showing off the Fiji Mermaid. Fiji Mermaid was a creature that had the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish.

So, you know, you would pay your money and you'd stand in line and you'd go and you'd and he would have some kind of a creature. I don't know what it actually was, but it was the body of a monkey in the tail of a fish.

It was probably a carcass, and it was probably obscured by a lot of glass. And it was probably something that he had made. And people, like I say, you pay your $0.50 and you stand in line and you're right, probably no

from Texas to Arizona

driven to El Paso from Houston. No. You were disappointed, huh? Hmm. Hmm hmm mm mm.

But if you're ever driving, if anybody has ever stopped

No.

Not at dirt nap sitcom.

Send a picture to Mm mm. Yeah. The Fiji Mermaid. Yeah. So one of his famous humbugs was General Tom Thumb. I'm sure you've heard of General Tom Thumb before and kind of folklore. So General Tom Thumb was a four year old dwarf little person who used to imitate different historical figures like Napoleon and Hercules and Cupid. And he would dress them up in these different outfits and he would say he was 11 years old when he was really four.

And he would they toured Europe together and he would take and it turns out that this guy, this this guy, Tom Thumb, ended up being very famous person. He ended up being very smart, very talented. He could sing, he dance. He was very well educated. He was two foot five when he was 18 years old. He ended up being, I think, maxing out at two foot ten by the time he was 21, where this guy, Tom Thumb, made a ton of money.

In fact, he even bailed out P.T. Barnum when he fell on hard times. He ended up making a lot of money and died at the age of 45. And P.T. Barnum made a life sized statue on his grave like there's a life sized statue of the. That's pretty cool. It's only two for ten, but it's a life size statue.

And that statue was actually smashed in 1959, but rebuilt. You can only you could still go in Bridgeport and see this grave. But 20,000 people attended the funeral of Tom Thumb when when he died, he was a very famous person, just like P.T. Barnum. These characters were very famous people of the 19th century in America. Yeah. I mean, they were they were big stars.

There was no television back then. And and radio was a, you know, a an auditory medium. But these were people that you'd seen pictures of, and they would probably come to your town. You know, they were they were tours around. And even if you were in Europe, they tour Europe in general. Tom Thumb Right. General Tom Thumb. So in 1841.

So he's now 31 years old. He he bought this museum called Shutters American Museum, and he renamed it Barnum's American Museum. And he wanted this to be an affordable place for $0.25 that anybody could come and see all kinds of cool stuff. And like I said, museums at the time were kind of for the upper crust people. So he would have hot air balloons.

And balloons were huge in the 19th century. It would launch hot air balloons daily from the roof. They would have a really good view of New York City. They had there was a lighthouse lamp on the top of this building. It was a real attraction to go to. We had stuffed animals, not toys, but like real, you know, taxidermied animals that you could go and see.

And then he'd have a live act and what he'd call curiosities or freak show. So you would have albinos, you'd have giants, little people, magicians, exotic women. I think that just means women from other countries. He would have models, full scale models of of of of city different cities around the world.

The first aquarium in the U.S. was in this in this museum.

It was in in New York City. Yeah. A barnum's American museum in the the Siamese twins are what we know now as conjoined twins. But that was big back then. The Siamese twins, Chang and NG, they came out of retirement for six weeks to join this museum. A zipped the pinhead, which was a African American guy with them with the like encephalitis and and a swan who was a seven foot 11 inch woman.

this was just a zip. Zip was zip. His name was Zip the pinhead. Yeah. Commodore Nutt. Commodore Nutt was similar to Tom Thumb. He was another little person and he wore naval uniforms and then he went around in a carriage that was shaped like a walnut pulled by Shetland ponies. This was a show, man. I mean, this was a thing that people wanted to see.

And actually Commodore Nutt was actually in a love triangle with Tom Thumb and his girl that there was this, this other little person and she was she had met a nut, commoner nut, and she gave him a I think P.T. Barnum gave her a ring. And she said he said, Hey, give this ring to the Commodore. Not everything was for a show, you know, And she gave it to him and he thought it was for love.

And she meant it was just for friendship. And it broke his heart. Well, then he since Tom Thumb was so famous, he Barnum had these two get married. And it was a big event. And people paid money to come see this. Well, it was horrible for commoner nut couldn't stand this. And he was dragged into this. He actually got in a fistfight and beat the crap out of Tom Thumb for kind of taking his woman.

But I don't know if that's true or not. But this wedding was really important to P.T. Barnum, that they have this wedding to distract Americans from their troubles of this. It was the heart of the Civil War was going on. And he thought if we just have this wedding and make people forget about this was entertainment,

right.

So he had this huge wedding and and he fixed these two up and they got married. And of course, this broke commoner and nuts heart. He had to be the best man I saw. There's a there's a photograph of him standing there kind of watching.

This whole thing is awful. I feel bad for the commoner nut and this and because Barnum was such a notable guy, but also a union. A union guy, right. I mean, very much a Lincoln supporter. He switched parties so he could be a Lincoln supporter, Confederates soldiers burned down this museum in 1864. And during the Civil War, they burned down the American Museum.

You know, that was when they first first met up. That was in the it was in the 1840s when he met up with Tom Thumb. So it was like 20 who were together. But occasionally they would get fixed up by Barnum. So like that. Anna Swan She was seven foot 11. She got fixed up with Martin Van Buren Bates who was seven foot nine, and they had a wedding.

You know, I mean, they ended up loving each other, but this was the crew that hung out. This is the crew that would travel well. They weren't traveling at this point. They were part of the museum. But they were. Yeah. Before it got burned down. So that burned in 1864, 1870, he bought he bought a circus or he established a circus.

I think he had bought some kind of circus that was existing. So that was a circus. He called P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum Menagerie Caravan and Hippodrome in Wisconsin. And the idea was to bring this American Museum to the masses and actually travel by train. And it was the first circus to ever travel by train. He also would call it the Traveling World's Fair great Roman Hippodrome and the greatest show on Earth and and the circus.

You know, by 1881, they merged with another circus, James Bailey Circus, and they called a Barnum and Bailey Circus. It was the first circus to have three rings. He kind of revolutionized the three ring circus. And the primary attraction was an elephant he bought from the London Zoo named Jumbo, the elephant. And they would move even the elephant around by by train.

So by then this guy, he had the name recognition. It wasn't the circus that gave him the name recognition. Everyone knew who Barnum was. So by calling it Barnum Circus or Barnum and Bailey's, he was the one time he was talking to President Grant during the war. And President Grant, I guess he had been. He was former president by now, and they were kind of reminiscing.

And President Grant told him and he said, I think you're the best. I think Barnum said, you know, Grant, you're probably the best known American living. And Grant said, you know, whenever when I was president, I would go to China, Japan, I'd go to the Indies. And the one thing everybody asked me was, do you know P.T. Barnum?

So I think you're more famous than I am.

There was actually a real grizzly Adams. Did you know that?

I did not know that. I knew it was a TV show.

Do you remember the teeth? I never used to watch that TV show that you used to watch it. What do you think the premise was? It took place in like the 1860s. Yeah. So it was this guy. I think he was actually from Massachusetts.

He was like a shoemaker. But he used to go he one day just decided to kind of as we'd say, now get off the grid. And he moved to the mountains in California. He kind of made friends with his with the animals. And he used to, you know, travel around and just kind of not domesticate them, but they would just follow them around and he would just live amongst the animals.

And he, you know, two of his best friends were grizzly bears. And they just hung out with him. And as he got older and started running out of money, he joined P.T. Barnum Circus. And he would they would try him out as this guy, you know, the the mountain man from California. Well, that was at the very end of Grizzly Adams life, actually.

He got attacked by one of his bears,

you know. Yeah. Siegfried and Roy, you know, you make friends with bears. And, you know, I would just say the the the word yet comes into mind when you say they don't they've never attacked me. And you go no yet but there's wild animals right. Yeah. So he was attacked by one of his bears.

The bear gave him a head wound and then because he was in the circus, now a monkey bit into the head wound and gave him meningitis and he died like that. You hang out with the, you know, what's the phrase? You lay it up with the monkeys and who knows if he hadn't joined P.T. Barnum, I mean, this bear had never attacked him before, but he was probably the bear was prime B probably being provoked by a half monkey, half fish.

He was probably bit by a headless man or something. It was complete chaos. They tried to provoke him. Yeah, exactly. A tasty head wound that, you know. So that was the end of the real Grizzly Adams, which they didn't call the real grizzly was He was just Grizzly Adams back then. Now, I never used to watch that show with Dan Haggerty, but I'm guessing that's not what the last episode was.

Final series finale, was it? By a monkey? So, uh, P.T. Barnum died in 1890 in a cemetery that he actually designed. That was another thing that he would do is design these like some. He was really interesting outside of trying to make a buck. He was an interesting guy who's a philanthropist. But in typical P.T. Barnum fashion, too, he asked the local newspaper.

He knew he was dying and he asked the local newspaper if they could print his obituary before he died so he could read it. Yeah. Yeah, of course. You know, I mean, he knew he was at the end, so. But his, his he's kind of his P.T. Barnum ness lived on after he died. I want to tell you a little bit about the quote, unquote, greatest bachelor party on Earth.

So, no, this was P.T. Barnum, his grandson. You know, you can imagine this guy had made a little bit of money and passed it down. And so he, you know, had some Tommy boy kind of idiot kids and grandkids, Herbert Barnum Seeley. So his yeah. And it was probably not her last. I think he had only daughters or something.

So I think they were all they had to use it as well.

Yeah, I think that would be if you had that name, you're kind of destined to, to, to live big.

Sure, sure, sure. But. But not in the Barnum style. So Herbert Barnum Seely was kind of a numbnuts, as we would say today. And his brother, Clinton Barnum Seely, was getting married. This was 1896. So this was, you know, years after well, about six years after Pete died.

But they had his money, right? So he said, I'm going put on the greatest bachelor party on earth, the biggest, the most extravagant bachelor party on earth.

And so they had this this was in the Gilded Age, right? The Gilded Age where fancy people would just, you know, show up and do fancy things. You know, the kind of the great, Great Gatsby era right. He had a 17 course meal. I don't even I can't even comprehend a 17 course meal, a 17 course meal. Then they had lots of drinking.

And and, you know, remember, Barnum was a, you know, temperance guy, right? Sure. You wouldn't have been cool with this. Scantily clad women handed out gifts for every guest. And the guests were like gangsters. But the offspring of gangsters, right? The offspring of robber barons and all the fancy people. There was a famous belly dancer at the time named Little Egypt.

She invented the hoochie coochie dance. I don't know if you know it's a future turned out city episode all to itself on Little Egypt, probably, but Little Egypt. She used to do the hoochie coochie dance and go the country and do the hoochie coochie dance. And she they paid her to do it naked for the party. And she had never done that before.

So yeah. Yeah. That's the only time you've heard about the hoochie coochie.

Really. They mention it quite a bit as music. Hoochie coochie. Yeah, sure. Well, I don't I think. I can't tell you. I'm like in polite society. I don't know. I don't think, I don't think it actually is dirty. But she was going to do it naked.

I don't know. She was going to do it. She was a belly dancer and that was her thing. Like hoochie coochie dance in 1896. In 1896, a naked Gucci coochie dance was was not was like, yeah. In fact,

Teddy Roosevelt was the governor of New York. And and the

the NYPD. Teddy Roosevelt got wind of the party told the NYPD and they shut it down at 130 in the morning and Herbert Barnum Celia got charged with indecency and his wife divorced him over this.

So for his brother, Clinton Barnum seal. HERBERT Yeah, Yeah. His wife wouldn't go with that. I mean, I think it was a big scandal at the at the time. So let's go through his legacy. You know, I mentioned that before, P.T. Barnum, an entertainment was only for the upper class, and he brought affordable entertainment to the masses, right, with the museums and the circuses and $0.25.

And you could come by and you could see these. Now, the entertainment was a little crass, little what we call lowbrow today. Right. But similar to Jerry Springer, he was just going, wow, Is that what you think we're doing here? Also, you know, by today's standards, I think his treatment of people of color and disabled people is probably pretty abhorrent if we judged him by today's standards.

But like I said, maybe he provided opportunities for people who couldn't get a job elsewhere in society and gave them more money than they could ever dream of. And in an environment where they there was no. But I mean, I don't know if you're a seven foot 11 woman back then, I don't know what options you really have.

And he
right. Tom Thumb ended up being a millionaire because of this guy.

underpay a young employee, you know, are you doing kind of the same thing? Like, you know, okay, you're giving him a start, you're giving

Yeah and I think the idea of knowing your value is even maybe not even a 20th century thing, but more of a 21st century thing of encouraging people to understand their value and go and fight for it.

I think prior to the last 20 years, I think people would take what they could, you know, it was given to them and be grateful for it. And that's not really how we look at today. The other legacy that I think that we should maybe think about is the the public relations. Just the the how He was a pioneer of public relations.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, he would he used an elephant to plow his front yard. So then the news people would come out and they'd be like, what's going on? And he'd say, well, you know, we got a circus. Every time the circus would come to town, he'd come, you know, they'd come and buy the train.

And every morning of the circus, they'd have a parade in that town for free that you could just come and watch the elephants and all the performers walk by.

And of course, you're thinking, Oh, I got to go to this. I mean, this is the biggest thing going on in town right? The other thing that he did, I think, is that you see a lot of today is that he would go to his two reporters and tell them news about his performers. He would have like these social lives and these, like I said, with Tom Thumb.

And and he would he give as if, you know, their personal lives were stories were newsworthy. Sure. He would just yeah. And did you hear that the Commodore Nutt and Tom Thumb got into a fistfight, you know, and that would make them interesting, what we call today's celebrities. The idea of celebrities probably didn't really exist too much back then.

The only people that were really famous at that time were, you know, politicians, probably. But back then, these were people that were kind of and because they were so odd, you were interested in in I guess at Tom Thumb, 20,000 people came to his funeral, a very famous person. So he would use public relations to kind of get drum up, you know, from a marketing perspective to drum up information about these people.

When I started, I said that my quote that he had was nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public. What do you think that means? What do you what do you think about underestimating the taste now that you know what he considered entertainment?

do you think? That's a condescending attitude about the American public.

Do you think they thought he thought that they were just kind of lowbrow and crass, or do you think that he thought there was something charming about that, that they think so?

what do you think Jerry Springer would say about that? Because it didn't seem like when you played those clips about Jerry Springer, it didn't seem like he thought that way about his audience.

He thought he might have thought not not the guests, but the audience. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Now, we've also on this show, we've talked about three people on the performers side, maybe more than that. But I can think of Andre the Giant, Evel Knievel and Houdini. There were on the performers side of this American public lowest common denominator thing.

Do you think that they would agree about nobody else ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public? Or do you think they were more endearing of their fans or were they part of the freak show?

I guess I feel if if P.T. Barnum never existed, somebody else would fill that void right around the same time.

And it was inevitable that somebody was going to come around and make entertainment for the masses. Right? Mm hmm. Oh, yeah.

Mm hmm. Yeah. It's it's interesting because like I said at the beginning, he's not a 20th century figure, but I think he kind of paved the way for a lot of the stuff that ended up happening in the 20th century.

A lot of the defining maybe tastes of a lot of a lot of lower, lower middle class. We don't call it working class in this country, but yeah, blue collar entertainment, that kind of kind of defined that. And it didn't have to be like in other countries. I think there are poor people that enjoy more cultured type of entertainment.

But. Mm hmm.

I think goes back to the Roman days, actually, the like the Hippodrome and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Now, just as an aside, the circus, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus sold off to the Feld Entertainment Group, the same group that runs the Harlem Globetrotters and all and lots of other those kind of things in the eighties, early eighties, 1980s and, and shut down in I believe it was 2018 shut shut their doors.

People were well they're about to make a comeback I think next year but people were less and less okay with some of the animal acts that were going on. And there was a lot of of thought talks about the way they mistreated some of the animals, particularly the elephants. And even though they would put money towards like animal sanctuaries, people didn't like the way they were in order to train animals to do things sometimes, you know, just scientifically, in order to make that happen, you negative reinforcement.

Exactly. So people became less and less okay with that. And they ended up having a kind of they got a lot of bad publicity and kind of shut down. But I've read recently that they're going to try to make a comeback in 2024 with a different style. Maybe.

really was someone that was fascinated by that sort of entertainment.
But I have to say, the times that I have gone to see a traditional circus or something that involves like trapeze or acrobatics or, you know, people on motorcycles doing tricks in a small space. I've always been very fascinated and impressed, like, you know what I mean? It's like one of those things where I it's not something I would seek out, but when I see it, I'm like, Wow, that's pretty cool.

Even even some of the people that do did stuff with the animals I thought was really neat the way they became a at one and trusted it, you know, and kind of had that relationship and communication. But you also think about what it took to

Yeah, we used to go to the circus when my son was growing up.

We probably went five or six years in a row and I felt like the animal part was really less and less. Every year there was less and less of a feature. There was a tiger park that was, you know, a few minutes long where they would, you know, have like a lion tamer, I guess. Yeah. And even the trapeze part was like that for me.

Like I'm afraid of heights. So I do not like the trip Like that to me is more exhilarating and anxiety provoking. And they would have this cage. They would have like a their motorcycles where they would have like six motorcycles going upside down and running in circles and all that. That kind of all that death defying stuff is, is is pretty much what they see in the animals.

Not so much. They'd have a bunch of elephants and they'd walk around in a circle holding each other's tails with their with their trunks. But they would never like they by then they weren't even having them like walk on or go up on two legs or anything like that. No. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the circus will live on and or some other kind of banner and they'll still use the name Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey because that's the name recognition.

Yeah, exactly. But, but I think this is one of those guys that we have inadvertently been kind of talking around for the last two seasons, and we'll probably continue to talk about him. Ghost of him in a lot of the different people that we talk about, because I think the kind of people were fascinated with or the kind that like to entertain and do a little odd oddity kind of shows, Definitely an interesting dead person.


Well, thanks for listening, Kelly.

Yeah. All right, man. Take it easy by everybody.