Barnum, PHINEAS TAYLOR

Barnum, PHINEAS TAYLOR, American showman, was born at Bethel, Connecticut, July 5, 1810. His father was tailor, farmer, and tavern-keeper in turn. At thirteen young Barnum was employed in a country store; and about five years afterwards, went largely into the lottery business. When only nineteen, he married clandestinely, and then moved to Danbury, where he edited The Herald of Freedom, and was imprisoned 60 days for a libel. In 1834 he removed to New York, where hearing of Joyce Heth, the reputed nurse of General Washington, he bought her for 1000 dollars, and with the aid of wholesale advertising, exhibited her to considerable profit. He continued in the show business from 1836 to 1839, but reduced again to poverty, he sold Bibles, exhibited negro dancers, and wrote for newspapers, until in 1841 he bought Scudder's American Museum in New York, which he raised at once to prosperity by exhibiting a Japanese mermaid, made of a fish and monkey, a white negress, a woolly horse, and finally, a noted dwarf (Charles S. Stratton, of Bridgeport), styled General Tom Thumb, whom he exhibited in Europe in 1844. In 1847 he offered Jenny Lind 1000 dollars a night for 150 nights, and received 700,000 dollars—the concert tickets being sold at auction, in one case as high as 650 dollars for a single ticket. He built a villa at Bridgeport, in imitation of the Brighton Pavilion, and engaged in various speculations, one of which—a clock-factory—made him bankrupt. Settling with his creditors in 1857, he engaged anew in his career of audacious enterprises, and made another fortune. In 1866 he stood as a candidate for a seat in congress, but was unsuccessful. His Autobiography (1854, since greatly enlarged) has the merit at least of frankness. In 1865 he published The Humbugs of the World; in 1869, Struggles and Triumphs; and in 1883, Money-getting. In 1868 he relinquished the business of showman, resuming it, however, in 1871, when he organised a museum, menagerie, circus, &c., which required 500 men and horses to transport it through the country. For his hippodrome in New York he purchased for £33,000 from Messrs Sanger, London, in 1874, a duplicate of the whole plant for the pageant 'Congress of Monarchs.' His 'Greatest Show on Earth' requires 100 railway cars for its conveyance. In 1879 he estimated the number of his patrons up to date as 90,000,000. In 1882 a day's receipts for his Great Show in Boston amounted to over £3000. The elephant 'Jumbo,' purchased in 1882 from the London Zoo, for £2000, was killed in 1885; and in 1887 Barnum's menagerie was destroyed by fire. In 1889 his show appeared at the Olympia in London. He died 7th April 1891, worth $5,000,000.