How "The Elephant Man" was exploited - updated

 

Not by the sideshow, but by the medical establishment:

There is another story that casts a different light on what happened. The memoirs of Tom Norman, Merrick’s London manager, are surely as biased as Treves’. But as one of the most respected showmen of his day, Norman’s account challenges head on Treves’ claim that Merrick was ultimately better off in the hospital than at the freakshow...

Most Victorian freaks, however, actually earned a comfortable living. Many were free agents who negotiated the terms of their exhibition and could ask for a salary or a share of the profits. They sold souvenirs to the crowds to make extra money. The freakshow was thus an important economic resource for working people whose deformities prevented them undertaking other forms of labour. Indeed, freak performers did not consider their exhibitions to be obscene or degrading. Rather, they saw themselves as little different from other entertainers...

During the two years he was on display in Europe, he was able to save more than £50 – a sizeable sum for a working-class man. In fact, Merrick earned more from his exhibition than his manager. They shared the take evenly, but Norman paid for the rent of the venue, food and lodging...

In the hospital, Merrick was kept largely confined to his rooms. When he ventured too far outside them, he was quickly shepherded back, lest he frighten other patients. Treves said his intention in providing for Merrick was to save him from the humiliation of public exhibition. However, his charge was constantly visited by curious members of high society. Like the masses who attended freakshows, they came out of a prurient fascination with Merrick’s grotesque body rather than merely to “cheer his confined existence”...

The Elephant Man’s hospitalisation sprang from a benevolent desire to help this “poor fellow”. But, for Merrick, it may have been little different from entering the workhouse. As a permanent resident, supported entirely by charitable donations, he was rendered a dependent member of “the deserving poor”. Norman argued that Merrick’s “only wish was to be free and independent”. This could not happen while he remained an inmate of the hospital where, his former manager argued, he must have felt as if “he were a prisoner and living on charity”. Treves maintained that Merrick was “happy every hour of the day”. But Norman’s son unearthed the testimony of a hospital porter who claimed that Merrick asked more than once: “Why can’t I go back to Mr Norman?” 

More information and illustrations at The Public Domain Review.

Reposted from 2013 to add this photo of the skull of Joseph Merrick: