Kathy Maher

Director, Barnum Museum

2/9/12

Kathy Maher, Director of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport was our speaker last week. She spoke so fast and so encyclopedically about the great man, it was hard to keep up. However, apart from the bit about the oysters, I got .. some of it.

The title of her talk was PT Barnum the Man, the Myth, the Legend. She began by informing us that the Barnum Museum had been damaged by the 2010 tornado and the dome had shifted. The museum was therefore closed but was being restored by Richard Hayden who restored the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Central Station ceiling.

PT Barnum was born in Bethel in1810. He was one of 11 and worked on his family’s farm which was what most people did in those days. When he was 12, he was given the opportunity to travel to Brooklyn with a herd of cattle and this was an eye opener into the world of the deal. He was married at 19 – too young he said – and wrote editorials for newspaper that resulted in his being sued for libel 3 times. He began to put on shows in New York City including one that featured a certain Joice Heth whom he introduced as a former slave of George Washington, aged 161. When she died, a public autopsy was performed and Barnum eventually admitted that she was a hoax.

One of his biggest ventures was the American Museum in downtown Broadway. To raise the funds for it, he pledged a piece of worthless swamp property called Ivy Island in the middle of Bethel that he had inherited but that was in reality worth nothing. However, adding it to the collateral he offered for the loan he was able to build the Museum. It consisted of 5 floors and displayed freaks of all manner and size, one of the most famous being Tom Thumb. But they were never described as freaks, just “natural wonders”. Barnum took Tom Thumb to London in 1844 where he was very popular and he subsequently met the crowned heads of Europe. Tom Thumb would stand on a table and re-enact the likenesses of people such as Bonaparte and Queen Victoria herself.

Another wonder was the Fejee Mermaid that was the body of an orangutan to which the tail of a fish had been added. He built himself magnificent houses including the Iranistan Palace that was modeled on the Brighton Pavilion. Sadly it burned down in 1857.

While in England, Barnum heard of the Swedish nightingale Jenny Lind and introduced her to the United States where they pioneered ticketed seating, women in the audience and matinees. The tour was a huge success netting Barnum and Jenny Lind $250,000 each – a huge sum in those days.

Barnum was interested in politics and began his public life as a Jacksonian Democrat. He was an idealist – for example putting on Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Museum with a happy ending and Romeo and Juliet in which nobody died. But the main attraction were curiosities, the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, the bearded lady (almost certainly a man), a living whale – that didn’t do too well as they kept it in fresh water, unaware of the whale's need for salt water - and a living hippopotamus that died when it was hit by a train.

In his early days Barnum was a drinker and rabble rouser but he became quite puritanical in his beliefs and founded a movement known as the Platform for Social Awareness. He wanted to change the Connecticut constitution and changed parties to become a Republican. He knew Abraham Lincoln and became Mayor of Bridgeport where his motto was “temperance” and “civility”. 

He built a second down town Museum that was burned down. His first wife having died, he married the daughter of an English friend, Nancy Fish, who was 40 years his junior. His “Greatest Show on Earth” was visited by thousands but he did not, apparently, coin the phrase "There’s a sucker born every day”.

He died in 1891 and wrote his own simple obituary.

Q and A the question was asked. When will the Barnum museum re-open? Not for another couple of years and the cost will be $15 million.  

Was his sign that read “This way to the egress”, as if it were a strange animal, true? Yes, it was a way to keep the people moving.

Why was he run out of New York as Martin Scorsese’s the gangs of New York” suggested? He wasn’t.

Finally, Kathy recommended we read Barnum’s book the “Art of Money Getting” – similar in many ways, she said to the “Disney Way”. On the Peter Knight scale of 1-10, this was a rapid fire, informative and entertaining 9.