A Brief History
On June 2, 1835, American showman and huckster Phineas T. Barnum began his first tour of the US with his circus, later called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and then “Barnum and Bailey’s Circus,” “Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth,” and finally “Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus.”
Digging Deeper
The legacy of perhaps America’s greatest showman of all time finally went out of business on May 21, 2017, when the last performance of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus ended at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.
Barnum ran a variety of businesses as a young man, and campaigned against “Blue Laws” promulgated by rigid Christians (Calvinists) that sought to limit how much fun people could have. (These laws persisted for decades that ran into centuries, such as “No liquor on Sunday,” “No Hunting on Sunday,” anti-gambling laws, and similar laws.) As a businessman, Barnum learned to “haggle” and in a word, lie, to get his way, either buying or selling something. The art of scamming people came naturally to PT, and deception became his stock in trade.
Barnum became a showman in 1835 after his lottery business was shut down, ending a lucrative racket. He went to New York (where else?) and started showing his first exhibit, an elderly, blind, black woman he touted as being 160 years old and formerly the nurse of George Washington. (The woman died the following year, age about 80.) Barnum toured with a variety troupe, and then bought his famous museum in 1841. Barnum’s American Museum displayed animals, curiosities, performers, and outright hoaxes such as the “Feejee Mermaid,” a fake sewn together monkey and fish combination. Barnum never really said “A sucker is born every minute” which is often attributed to him, but he did say, “I don’t believe in duping the public, but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them.” He justified his hoaxes by claiming they were merely a way to attract paying guests. Barnum sometimes toured with his prize acts, including Colonel Tom Thumb, a diminutive midget Barnum claimed as the World’s Smallest Man. With Tom, Barnum met Queen Victoria of England and the Czar of Russia. The museum was so successful it drew 400,000 visitors a year by 1946.
A master showman and master of hype, Barnum employed 26 journalists to travel with him and hype his acts. Barnum bought other acts and museums, branched off into holding beauty and other contests, and ran theaters to show family friendly plays. His autobiography sold over a million copies. Barnum’s success continued during the Civil War (even meeting with Abraham Lincoln), but his museum burned to the ground in July of 1865. A new museum was soon opened, but that one burned in 1868.
Barnum began a real circus in 1870 at the age of 60, and when he merged with James Bailey’s circus in 1881 Barnum and Bailey’s Circus became the largest circus in the world. In 1907, Ringling Brothers Circus bought out Barnum and Bailey and became the American circus until animal rights and dwindling profits spelled its doom in 2017.
PT Barnum, trickster, huckster, and flim-flam artist was surprisingly a famous debunker of hoaxes and false advertising. In his own way, he justified flim-flam (he called it “humbug”) as long as the customer got a good value for his entertainment dollar. Barnum saw scams where the customer did not get a reasonable product as a crime. Appropriate for a huckster, Barnum was also involved in politics, serving in the Connecticut legislature and as mayor of Bridgeport. He lost a bid for a seat in congress to his own cousin. Barnum even established a hospital and performed numerous acts of philanthropy, and his politics were benevolent, being anti-slavery, pro-voting rights, and ethnic toleration. Barnum did sponsor the legislation that outlawed birth control in Connecticut, the law that was overturned in 1965 by the US Supreme Court that made contraception legal throughout the United States.
PT Barnum suffered a stroke in 1890, and died in April of 1891, leaving a rich legacy and a legendary, if somewhat wrong, characterization as a heartless trickster eager to squeeze every dollar out of a guileless and unsuspecting public.
Question for students (and subscribers): Were circuses wrong to use elephants, zebras, and great cats in their acts? Please give us your opinions on the use of circus animals in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Tayor) and Jeffrey Merrow. The Life of P. T. Barnum Written by Himself. Tadalique and Company, 2014.
