It was Norman who brought Merrick to London to be exhibited in the shop opposite the London Hospital where Frederick Treves found him. Strangers had always stared at him, so why not get them to pay for the privilege? He contacted music-hall showman and performer Sam Torr who eventually sold his interest in Merrick to exhibitor Tom Norman. He saw only one way out of his miserable existence. With the exception of a brief attempt to find work outside, Merrick remained in the workhouse for five years. He was 17 at the time, not three as the fictional Ross claims in the play. With no other resource, he went into the Leicester workhouse system, a Victorian institution for the poor and destitute marked by cruelty.
Proteus syndrome photos license#
After two years, his license to sell was revoked on the grounds he was terrifying the community.
Merrick was 17 when he went into the Leicester workhouse systemįortunately, Joseph’s uncle Charles Merrick, a barber, took his nephew in, but the deformed young man was still unable to make much of a living peddling gloves. As a result, he ran away - or rather walked away - from home more than once.
Proteus syndrome photos full#
Joseph Senior would often beat his son if he came home empty-handed and the stepmother would deny him full meals unless he had earned enough to pay for them. But his appearance frightened prospective customers and his sales were dismal. In order to earn his keep, his father got Joseph a hawker’s license to sell gloves door to door. Amazingly, despite his growing abnormalities, he found employment at a cigar shop, but his right hand soon became too large to manage the delicate work of rolling cigars. Not only did he lose his closest friend, but his father, now working as a haberdasher, soon married the strict widow Emma Wood Antill who had two children of her own and demanded young Merrick leave school and earn his living. She herself passed away in 1873 of pneumonia. A former housemaid, she was also handicapped and had three additional children, two of whom died at a young age.
The family is said to have believed young Joseph’s condition was caused by Mary Jane being frightened by an elephant at a fairground during her pregnancy.ĭespite his physical appearance, the boy and his mother were close. To add to his troubles, during his childhood he fell and suffered an injury to his hip which left him permanently lame. In later years, his left and right arms began to grow significant differences and both feet were enlarged. But at 21 months, he began developing swelling of his lips, followed by a bony lump on his forehead, which later grew to roughly resemble an elephant’s trunk and loosing of his skin.
Several factual accounts state that Merrick’s deformities were not extreme until about the age of 5 - he was born a seemingly normal baby in 1862 in Leicester to Joseph and Mary Jane Merrick. In the play, Merrick’s manager Ross (a fictional combination of several figures who handled the Elephant Man’s career as a public curiosity) tells Treves the young man’s mother was unable to deal with her physically horrific son and placed him in a Leicester workhouse at the age of 3 where Ross found him and took him on as his exclusive attraction. In real life, Merrick and his mother were closeĪnother major alteration between reality and drama concerns Merrick’s early life.