Joseph Merrick

Name: Joseph Merrick aka the elephant man Birthday: August 5, 1862 Height:5'2 Eyes: dark brown Hair: light brown Occupation: Freak show Star

Merrick was born in Leicester and began to develop abnormally before the age of five. His mother died when he was eleven,and his father soon remarried. Rejected by his father and stepmother, he left home and went to live with his uncle, Charles Merrick. In 1879, 17-year-old Merrick entered the Leicester Union Workhouse.In 1884, he contacted a showman named Sam Torr and proposed that he might be exhibited. Torr arranged for a group of men to manage Merrick, whom they named "the Elephant Man". After touring the East Midlands, Merrick travelled to London to be exhibited in a penny gaff shop rented by showman Tom Norman. The shop was visited by surgeon Frederick Treves, who invited Merrick to be physically examined. Merrick was displayed by Treves at a meeting of the Pathological Society of London in 1884, after which Norman's shop was closed by the police. Merrick then joined Sam Roper's circus and was toured in Europe. In Belgium, Merrick was robbed by his road manager and abandoned in Brussels. He eventually made his way back to the London Hospital,[7] where he was allowed to stay for the rest of his life. Treves visited him daily, and the pair developed a close friendship. Merrick also received visits from some of the wealthy ladies and gentlemen of London society, including Alexandra, Princess of Wales. Although the official cause of his death was asphyxia, Treves, who performed the postmortem, concluded that Merrick had died of a dislocated neck.

In addition to his deformities, Merrick fell and damaged his left hip at some point during his childhood. The injury site became infected and left him permanently disabled.Although limited by his physical deformities, Merrick attended school and enjoyed a close relationship with his mother. She was a Sunday school teacher, and his father worked as an engine driver at a cotton factory, as well as running a haberdashery business.Mary Jane Merrick died from bronchopneumonia on 29 May 1873, two and a half years after the death of her youngest son William. Joseph Rockley Merrick moved with his two surviving children to live with Mrs. Emma Wood Antill, a widow with children of her own. They married on 3 December 1874.Merrick left school aged 13, which was usual for the time.His home life was now "a perfect misery",and neither his father nor his stepmother demonstrated affection toward him. He ran away "two or three" times, but was taken back by his father each time.At 13, he found work rolling cigars in a factory, but after three years, the deformity of his right hand had worsened to the extent that he no longer had the dexterity required for the job. Now unemployed, he spent his days wandering the streets, looking for work and avoiding his stepmother's taunts.

As Merrick was becoming a greater financial burden on his family, his father eventually secured him a hawker's licence enabling him to earn money selling items from the haberdashery shop, door to door.This endeavour was unsuccessful because Merrick's facial deformities rendered his speech increasingly unintelligible, and prospective customers reacted with horror to his physical appearance. People refused to open the door to him, and they not only stared at him, but followed him out of curiosity.Merrick failed to make enough money as a hawker to support himself. On returning home one day in 1877, he was severely beaten by his father and he left home for good.

Merrick was now homeless on the streets of Leicester. His uncle, a barber named Charles Merrick, on hearing of his nephew's situation, sought him out and offered him accommodation in his home.Merrick continued to hawk around Leicester for the next two years but his efforts to earn a living met with little more success than before. Eventually, his disfigurement drew such negative attention from members of the public that the Commissioners for Hackney Carriages withdrew his licence when it came up for renewal.With young children to provide for, Charles could no longer afford to support his nephew. In late December 1879, now 17 years old, Merrick entered the Leicester Union Workhouse.

One of 1,180 residents in the workhouse, Merrick was given a classification to determine his place of accommodation. The class system specified the department or ward in which a resident would reside, as well as the amounts of food received. Joseph was classified as Class One for able-bodied people.On 22 March 1880, only 12 weeks after entering the workhouse, Merrick signed himself out and spent two days looking for work. With no more success than before, he found himself with no option but to return to the workhouse. This time he stayed for four years.

Around 1882, Merrick underwent surgery on his face. The protrusion from his mouth had grown to 20–22 centimeters, severely inhibiting his speech and making it difficult to eat.The operation was performed in the Workhouse Infirmary under the direction of Dr Clement Frederick Bryan, during which a large part of the mass was removed.Merrick concluded that his only escape from the workhouse might be through the world of human novelty exhibitions.[34][35] He wrote a speculative letter to Sam Torr, a Leicester music hall comedian and proprietor that he knew.

Torr came to visit Merrick at the workhouse and decided he could make money exhibiting him; although, to retain Merrick's novelty value, he would need to be put on display as a travelling exhibit.To this end, Torr organised a group of managers for his new charge: music hall proprietor J. Ellis, travelling showman George Hitchcock, and fair owner Sam Roper. On 3 August 1884, Merrick departed the workhouse to start his new career. The showmen named Merrick the Elephant Man, and advertised him as "Half-a-Man and Half-an-Elephant". They showed him around the East Midlands, including in Leicester and Nottingham, before moving him on to London for the winter season. Hitchcock contacted an acquaintance, showman Tom Norman, who ran penny gaff shops in the East End of London exhibiting human curiosities. Without the need for a meeting, Norman agreed to take over Merrick's management, and Merrick travelled with Hitchcock to London in November 1884.When Norman first encountered Merrick, he was dismayed by the extent of his deformities, fearing his appearance might be too horrific to be a successful novelty.Nevertheless, he exhibited Merrick in the back of an empty shop on Whitechapel Road. Merrick slept on an iron bed with a curtain drawn around to afford him some privacy. Observing Merrick asleep one morning, Norman learnt that he always slept sitting up, with his legs drawn up and his head resting on his knees. His enlarged head was too heavy to allow him to sleep lying down and, as Merrick put it, he would risk "waking with a broken neck". Norman decorated the shop with posters that Hitchcock had produced, depicting a monstrous half-man, half-elephant. A pamphlet was created, titled "The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick", giving an outline of Merrick's life to date. This brief biography, whether written by Merrick or not, provided a generally accurate account of his life. It did contain an incorrect date of birth, but Merrick was always vague about it.

Norman gathered an audience by standing outside the shop and attracting passers-by with his showman's patter. He would then lead the assembled crowd into the shop, explaining that the Elephant Man was "not here to frighten you but to enlighten you". Pulling the curtain to one side, he allowed the onlookers—often visibly horrified—to observe Merrick up close, while describing the circumstances that had led to his present condition, including his mother's alleged incident with a fairground elephant.

The Elephant Man exhibit was moderately successful, and made money primarily from the sales of the autobiographical pamphlet.Merrick was able to put his share of the profits aside, in the hope of earning enough money to one day buy a home of his own.The shop on Whitechapel Road was directly opposite the London Hospital, ideally situated for medical students and doctors to visit, curious to see Merrick.One such visitor was a young house surgeon named Reginald Tuckett, who, like his colleagues, was intrigued by the Elephant Man's deformities. Tuckett suggested that his senior colleague Frederick Treves should pay Merrick a visit.

Treves first met Merrick that November, at a private viewing that took place before Norman opened the shop for the day.Treves later recalled in his 1923 Reminiscences that Merrick was "the most disgusting specimen of humanity that I had ever seen [...] at no time had I met with such a degraded or perverted version of a human being as this lone figure displayed."The viewing lasted no more than 15 minutes, after which Treves returned to work. Later the same day, he sent Tuckett back to the shop to ask if Merrick might be willing to go to the hospital for an examination. Norman and Merrick both agreed to the request.To allow him to travel the short distance without drawing undue attention, Merrick wore a disguise consisting of an oversized black cloak and a brown cap with a hessian sack covering his face, and he rode in a cab hired by Treves.Although Treves stated that Merrick's outfit on this occasion included the black cloak and brown cap, there is evidence to suggest that Merrick acquired that particular costume a year later, while travelling with Sam Roper's Fair. If that were the case, Treves was remembering the clothing from a later meeting with Merrick.

On examining Merrick at the hospital, Treves observed that he was "shy, confused, not a little frightened, and evidently much cowed". At this point, Treves assumed him to be an "imbecile". He measured Merrick's head circumference at the enlarged size of 36 inches (91 cm), his right wrist at 12 inches (30 cm) and one of his fingers at 5 inches (13 cm) in circumference. He noted that Merrick's skin was covered in papillomata (warty growths), the largest of which exuded an unpleasant smell.The subcutaneous tissue appeared to be weakened, causing a loosening of the skin which, in some areas, hung away from the body. There were bone deformities in the right arm, both legs, and, most conspicuously, in the large skull.

Despite having had corrective surgery to his mouth in 1882, Merrick's speech remained barely intelligible. His left arm and hand were neither enlarged nor deformed. His penis and scrotum were normal. Apart from his deformities and the lameness in his hip, Treves concluded that Merrick appeared to be in good general health.

Joseph Merrick is so overcomed by the kindness of a beautiful woman that he broke into tears.