PHINEAS

TAYLOR

See also:

• PHINEAS TAYLOR BARNUM (1810-1891)

BARNUM (1810-1891)  , American show-man, was born in Bethel, Connecticut, on the 5th of July 1810, his father being an inn- and store-keeper . Barnum first started as a store-keeper, and was also concerned in the lottery mania then prevailing in the United States . After failing in business, he started in 1829 a weekly paper, The Herald of Freedom, in Danbury; after several libel suits and a prosecution which resulted in imprisonment, he moved to New York in 1834, and in 1835 began his career as a showman, with his purchase and exploitation of a coloured woman, Joyce Heth, reputed to have been the nurse of George Washington, and to be over a hundred and sixty years old . With this woman and a small company he made well-advertised and successful tours in America till 1839, though Joyce Heth died in 1836, when her age was proved to be not more than seventy . After a period of failure, he purchased Scudder's American Museum, New York, in 1841; to this he added considerably, and it became one of the most popular shows in the United States . He made a special hit by the exhibition, in 1842, of Charles Stratton, the celebrated " General Tom Thumb " (see DWARF) . In 1844 Barnum toured with the dwarf in England . A remarkable instance of his enterprise was the engagement of Jenny Lind to sing in America at $I000 a night for one hundred and fifty nights, all expenses being paid by the entrepreneur . The tour began in 1850 . Barnum retired from the show business in 1855, but had to settle with his creditors in 1857, and began his old career again as showman and museum proprietor . In 1871 he established the " Greatest Show on Earth," a travelling amalgamation of circus, menagerie and museum of " freaks," &c . This show, incorporated in the name of " Barnum, Bailey & Hutchinson," and later as " Barnum & Bailey's " toured all over the world .

In 1907 the business was sold to Ringling

Brothers . Barnum wrote several books, such as The Humbugs of the World (1865), Struggles and Triumphs (1869), and his Autobiography (1854, and later editions) . He died on the 7th of April 1891 .