Author: Nadja Durbach
Publisher: University of California Press, 2010
Price: £27.95
Isbn: 9780520257689

During my first conversation many years ago with sideshow hist­orian James Taylor, he dis­abused me of the notion that the acts – dwarfs, giants, conjoined twins, human skeletons, albinos, leopard boys, and bearded ladies – were exploited. Author Nadja Durbach does the same in the introduction to this volume. “Posterity,” she writes, “is condescending.” Mentally competent freaks saw the exhibit of their bodies as a means of self-support and, in some cases, an alternat­ive to institutionalisation. The work was easier and better paid than other types of relatively unskilled labour. They often used booking agents, they sometimes had a choice between a salary and a share of the profits, and they brought in extra income by selling photographs and biographical pamphlets. Noting the tendency of scholars to misapply curr­ent conceptions of disability to the unus­ual bodies of the 19th cent­ury, some of whose differences (unusual pigmentation, excess hair, extra appendages) would not even be categorised as such today, Durbach rightly moves past the debates about the victimis­ation of the disabled.

Neither does she apologise for her terminology, explaining that the word “freak” was used consistently in the mid-1800s, the same time Punch bemoaned the public taste for freak shows. Showmen had to counter their reputation for providing voyeuristic entertainment by offering “ladies only” shows and catering to families. Freak shows had become staples of popular and elite culture in both entertainment and scientific venues.

People from other cultures had been exhibited since the early 16th century, which was also the point in time when monstrous births stopped being considered omens and became objects of curiosity and wonder. In the ensuing centuries, exotic and anomalous bodies were medicalised – although showmen resisted medical men’s attempts to classify them because they wanted to advertise their acts as “one of a kind”. They did, however, welcome the stamp of authenticity that examination by doctors lent to the acts, and thereby offered up the raw material that scientific medic­ine craved.

This was true of the first case study in Spectacle of Deformity: Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Contrary to the sentimental story of Merrick being “rescued” from the sideshow, he had been making a tidy profit off his own exhibition and had more agency than when he was compelled to exhibit his deformity in a state of undress for the constant stream of visitors at London Hospital after he had been made a permanent resident. Durbach accuses Merr­ick’s “rescuer” and the hospital of commodifying his monstrosity using techniques borrowed from the show, including circulation of his photograph and continued use of his stage name. Merrick never regained his freedom. Rather than being accidental, his suffocation was likely his last intentional act. After his death, his skeleton and a cast of his misshapen body were placed on exhibit  in the London Medical College’s pathological museum.

Another act that the author uses as an example is that of Krao, the Missing Link, a “monkey girl” whose show history claiming that she had been captured in Indochina bought into the 19th-cent­ury narrative that it was a duty to civil­ise the savages. Performing for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey from the age of seven until her death, Krao’s exhibit fed the fascination with Darwinism, imperial­ism, and the primitive body. Krao was adopted, normalised, and westernised, including being educated (she spoke English) and vaccinated, but this was unknown to the paying public. To them, she was a souvenir of imperial conquest placed in erotic poses and skimpy costumes to sugg­est her sexual pre­cocity. She was one of the circus’s highest-paid freaks and, since her success­ful exhibit depended on her authenticity, the crowds were invited to touch her.

Other savages, like the Aztecs, were billed as the last of their race, offering further proof that extinction was the fate of primit­ive peoples who did not evolve. That their race was inferior was shown by their diminutive stature, said to be caused by inbreeding. The Aztecs were depicted in profile to resemble images on South American monuments and later – when the African replaced the Native American in the Victor­ian mind as the quintessential savage – they were paired with the Earthmen, a supposed African Stone Age tribe. The sideshow “wildman” was typically portrayed as a cannibal and easily fit into the hierarchy with the whites at the top. A ceremonial point was made when Queen Victoria herself paid her respects and brought gifts to the Aztecs.

Many factors converged to cause the freak show to reach its heyday in the 19th century, not­ably the emergence of railways and steamships which made it truly international in scope and the fact that it remained cheaper than other entertainment. Another set of circumstances led to the freak show’s decline in the 20th century, including the return of wounded World War I veterans to society (they were valorised and the freaks were demonised), advances in medicine (doctors could correct birth defects and terminate anomalous fœtuses), and the rise of the disability rights movement. But while the freaks still held sway, they served an important social purpose in reinforcing, questioning, and sometimes challenging the classi­ficatory schemes of class, race, sex, species, and nation. By their “otherness”, this book argues, they clarified what it meant to be British.