People have an innate interest in strange objects and happenings. If you study it, you’ll find that encountering these objects and phenomena throughout human history has led to their eventual taming and domestication. It is not shocking that some businessmen have chosen to take advantage of this attraction for their own gain over time. The one of them is Phineas Taylor Barnum.
Early Life and Adolescence
The well-known US entertainer was born in Bethel, Connecticut. That took place on July 5, 1810. Philo Barnum, the boy’s father, ran a hotel and a small chain of stores in Bethel. Little is known about Phineas’s mother, Irene Taylor Barnum, other than the fact that she was most likely descended from Russian Empire immigrants.
Phineas started working part-time in his father’s shop at a young age, and by the time he was 13, he owned it. The future prominent person in the entertainment sector started selling lottery tickets in his store at the same time. The beginning of Phineas’s ideas about how to profit from this came from the guy’s quick realization that individuals spend even their last money on entertainment because they are excited and like it.
These kinds of ideas kept Barnum Jr. from working, which resulted in the store closing. Phineas didn’t want to ask his father for the money he needed to survive. As a result, he started working on a new endeavor and started publishing the publication “The Herald of Freedom”.
Because Taylor Barnum lacked the funds to maintain a staff of news reporters, most of the material published in the Herald was dubious, erratic, and occasionally downright false. Some perceived the pieces as slanderous against them. Phineas was consequently issued a court summons and imprisoned in Danbury for a period of two years. The Herald of Freedom was no longer published.
Phineas discovered about a Mr. R. W. Lindsay, who made a living by displaying a Black slave named Joyce Heth to the public and claiming that she was the nurse of Washington, the founding father of the United States of America, during his twenty-fifth birthday celebration. Phineas was speaking with his old friend Coley Bartram at the time.
This notion inspires Taylor Barnum. He buys elderly woman Heth from Mr. Lindsay using the gift money and some of his own cash. “Washington’s nurse” received a hefty payment of $1,000 (healthy slaves received much less). Phineas travels around America with Joyce Heth. Although the public found the black slave to be successful, Barnum stoked their curiosity with a variety of anecdotes from the “nurse’s” existence.
In February 1836, Joyce passed away. Despite having increased his wealth, Barnum was not happy with how things had turned out. And he managed to get out of it: Phineas staged a gruesome, paid spectacle by inviting experts and students to witness the autopsy of the deceased elderly woman. Although it was a hazardous choice, the transaction went well. This obscurantism session was not overshadowed, not even by the fact that old woman Heth was at least twice as young as the declared age, based on the postmortem results. Following the black slave’s death, Taylor Barnum’s business started to falter once more.
Barnum’s Circus
For a preposterous amount in 1841, Phineas was able to purchase Scudder’s American Museum along with all of its exhibits. Phineas inaugurated Barnum’s American Museum after completing minor cosmetic repairs, reorganizing the exhibits, and upgrading some of them. The establishment was situated at the major junction of Broadway and Ann Street.
The townspeople’s enthusiasm in the museum started to wane after the initial visits. It was necessary to find another non-trivial answer that could alter the circumstances. Charles Stratton, a midget, was discovered by Phineas, who then offered him a job entertaining guests at the museum. The midget concurred. Together, they created the iconic image of General Tom-Tum, which catapulted Stratton to national and international fame. And Taylor Barnum was compelled by this to reevaluate the idea behind his establishment.
Phineas expanded his collection of live specimens with the aid of his Boston friend Moses Kimball, as well as the financial support of James Bailey and James Hutchinson. These added specimens included the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Banner, the Sac Indian dancer Doo-Ham-Mee, Jumbo the elephant, the giantess Anna Swan of Canada, the so-called mermaids of Fiji, and a wolf boy from Russia named Fyodor Yevtishchev, who had hypertrichosis and was covered in thick hair all over his body.
Barnum’s Traveling Circus became the new moniker for Barnum’s museum. Phineas visited America and Europe with his particular troupe. From March 20 to July 20, 1845, he resided in England at Queen Victoria’s personal request. Taylor Barnum intended to retire in 1855, but he was compelled to go back to his previous profession due to financial difficulties.
But Barnum’s fame extended beyond his circus. Apart from his autobiography, he authored and released three more books: “Deceptive Worlds” in 1865, “Battles and Victories” in 1869, and “The Art of Making Money” in 1880. He was successful in setting up the Swedish opera soprano Johanna Maria Lind’s extensive US tour in 1850. In all, 150 performances took place.
His political career started in the 1950s, but he put it on hold to fight in the American Civil War, which broke out in 1861 and continued until 1865. Having having joined the Republican Party, he was appointed deputy for the city of Fairfield following the war. Here, Phineas served two terms. He entered the race for Congress, the nation’s highest legislative body, in 1867.
He was elected mayor of Bridgeport, a port city, in 1875. During his administration, the problem of enhancing the water supply was remedied, and the entire gas lighting system was implemented. Prostitution and alcoholic beverages were also subject to regulations. He was an equalities activist for people of color and white people. He stage-adapted Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in 1853.
Mark Twain, who wrote about Phineas in his diaries, and President Abraham Lincoln became good friends as a result of their friendship. Taylor Barnum left a lasting legacy since top organizations’ marketers and advertising continue to employ his “tricks,” as Phineas himself referred to them. The Barnum effect is the term given to the psychological phenomenon of subjective confirmation, which is employed by various types of psychics, palmists, and horoscope compilers.
Individual Life
Barnum has two marriages. He shared a home with Charity Hallett, his first wife, until
1873. A year after divorcing Charity, he wed Nancy Fish, his second wife, with whom he shared his final years.
One of Phineas’s four children passed away at a young age. Daughters Helen Maria Hurd, D. W. Thompson, and W. G. Bashtel made up the remaining three.
Demise
The businessman passed away on April 7, 1891. It took place in Bridgeport, the same port city. The Mountain Grove Cemetery is where Phineas was interred. In honor of his contributions to the nation and the city, a memorial was built for him in Seaside Park two years later.
Phineas Taylor Barnum appeared in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, which was released in 2002. Actor Roger Ashton-Griffiths portrayed him. Fifteen years later, Hugh Jackman starred in Michael Gracey’s The Greatest Showman, another movie that included Taylor Barnum.