He contacted Sam Torr, the proprietor of a Leicester music hall called the Gaiety Palace of Varieties, and they devised a plan to secure him a spot in a human oddities show. He wore a cape and veil to conceal his deformities in public, but was often harassed by mobs as he traveled.
Merrick was eventually invited by a surgeon named Frederick Treves to visit the hospital to be examined. His head measured 36 inches in circumference and his right hand 12 inches at the wrist.
His body was covered with tumors, and his legs and hip were so deformed that he had to walk with a cane. He was found to be in otherwise good health. Treves presented Merrick to the Pathological Society of London in December of that year, and asked Merrick to visit the hospital for further examination. By , a distaste for freak shows had developed in Britain and Merrick and his managers decided to try to move The Elephant Man exhibit to Belgium.
After finding passage on a ship back to England in June , Merrick was mobbed by a crowd at Liverpool Street Station in London and taken into custody by the police.
Treves examined Merrick at the hospital and found that his condition had severely deteriorated in the previous two years. Future accounts of Merrick's life depict him and Kendal interacting in person and having a deep rapport, though it's believed that this was probably never the case. The actress' husband, however, did visit Merrick, while Kendal herself helped raise money for Merrick's care and sent him several gifts.
Merrick was able to visit the theater on at least one occasion, and made trips to the countryside several times over the next few years. The next year, his father remarried and Merrick left school to begin working. He rolled cigars for a few years until his right hand deformity worsened.
He tried to sell items from his father's haberdashery shop, door to door, but was unsuccessful because customers couldn't understand his speech and were frightened of him. At 17, he left home for the Leicester Union Workhouse after his father beat him for failing to earn enough money. He loathed the workhouse and, after four years, escaped it to work in the world of human oddities where he was exhibited as, "Half-a-Man and Half-an-Elephant. Physicians and surgeons visited Merrick at the shop, including Surgeon Frederick Treves who invited him to the hospital for an exam.
Treves measured Merrick's head circumference at 36 inches, his right wrist at 12 inches and one of his fingers at 5 inches in circumference.
He noted that his skin was covered in warty growths, the largest of which exuded an unpleasant smell. To help bring in extra money, Joseph left school at 13 and began working at a factory rolling cigars. Despite trying hard, people were either frightened of Joseph or unable to understand him.
The money therefore was not coming in fast enough for his father, who one day beat him and kicked him out of the home. Needing money, Joseph contacted a showman named Sam Torr and asked to join his travelling exhibit. He wore a cape and veil to conceal his face in public pictured , but was often harassed by mobs as he travelled. After touring parts of England, Joseph travelled to London where he began living in a penny gaff shop rented by another showman, Tom Norman.
Norman gathered an audience by standing outside the shop and drawing in the crowd with his showman skills. He would then take the crowd into the shop where he allowed the onlookers to see Joseph up close.
Merrick was an excellent writer and found that writing gave him comfort. After Treves examined Merrick and took photographs, the latter returned to his sideshow, having to move on to Belgium after England made his show illegal. The Belgians were no more hospitable and his Austrian manager again not the fictional Ross absconded with his funds and sent him back to his home country.
Merrick found his way to the London Hospital and Treves took him in. In the play and film, Merrick meets the actress Madge Kendal, the first woman to shake his hand and the first outside his mother to treat him with kindness. In reality, the two probably never met. But her husband, W. Kendal, an actor and former medical student, did visit Merrick in his early days at the London Hospital. Leila Maturin. As in the play, the Princess of Wales did meet with Merrick and sent him a Christmas card every year.
One of his chief hobbies was building models of famous sites. His miniature reproduction of Mainz Cathedral, which figures prominently in the play, is on exhibit at the Hospital today. The weight of his head, which would have crushed his windpipe, prevented him from sleeping normally so he had to get his rest sitting up. The death was ruled an accident and Treves concluded that Merrick was experimenting with sleeping.
0コメント