This is a cabinet card by J. Gurney & Sons of a midget actor in full theatrical costume. I wish I knew the identity of the actor. He must have been famous in the day, because he had Gurney photograph him. Going to Gurney would be somewhat akin to having Richard Avedon or Annie Liebowitz photograph you today. Well, maybe not Richard Avedon, as he’s dead now. But you get the idea.
Another CDV of a circus freak, this is Landon Middlecoff, “The Kentucky Giant”, as photographed by Charles Eisenmann, “the Popular Photographer” and documentarian of the theater trade.
Here are two more recent acquisitions- another in the same series of Nellie Keeler on the sideboard at Bogardus’ studio in New York-
And one of the Rice Family (“two sisters and a brother, born Germany, aged 35, 24, 33” [from left to right in the image])
Betcha thought I had quit collecting! Nah, it’s just in hiatus – makes for a good winter pastime when you’re cooped up in the house. But I found a couple more images that were interesting enough to add.
First up – another Tom Thumb and his Wife. I love this one not only because it shows them in their advancing years, but it demonstrates that they remained culturally relevant throughout their lives. I also love the handwritten notes on the back – in this case it gets things wrong about them (they were NOT 18th century performers, and I’m not aware that they were musicians – Tom Thumb’s main performance was as a comic impersonator, doing skits where he portrayed Napoleon and Cupid).
Here’s another circus performer pair – the hand-written label says “Gullie and Lottie Tarkinton”. I was unable to find any reference to who they were. They’re not listed on Olympians of the Sawdust Circle. I’m guessing they are sisters, perhaps even twins. The one is dressed and posed in a very masculine way, quite in contrast to the other, which is its own kind of interesting. And I’m a sucker for a photo that you can see the head clamp stands in.
This is another Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren image, this time by Masury, of Boston.
Mr. Lowande doesn’t look particularly happy to be having his picture taken. But that combination of tights and skirt not only look uncomfortable, I suspect wearing them outside the carnival tent would tend to challenge the masculinity of all but the most self-confident of men. This CDV is probably by D.J. Wilkes of Baltimore – although there is no identification on this card, the image is identical in all but pose (same outfit, same props) to another one I found online with the photographer’s imprint. I’m having a devil of a time finding more specific information about Mr. Lowande – most of the references I find for that name refer to an equestrian performer (that may be the same Tony Lowande, but I’m not sure), and the dates would seem to be later (that Tony Lowande was born in 1869 according to Olympians of the Sawdust Circle) and part of a famous family of Brazilian-American circus performers. Or it could be just that everything else about the photo aside from the name and photographer’s ID is wrong – Tony Lowande might just have been a five year old boy in this photo, and not a midget. I could also not find any reference to Siegrist’s Midgets, but that doesn’t mean anything per se.
Here is the Bowen family; Eli, his wife and child. The man with feet but no legs!
Sorry folks, but I’m just too tired today to put out any effort to research Mr. Bowen and say anything meaningful. Just enjoy the carte?
In my online shopping peregrinations, I came across another Nellie Keeler CDV, so of course I had to add the second varietal to my collection. The captions have it that these are one year apart. Who knows the truth of such things, as so many facts about the circus freak sideshow performers were grossly exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Here is the first one I collected, for comparison:
And somewhat ironically, here is a larger size (roughly 5×7) Cabinet Card of a much larger woman, seated in front of the same dining room sideboard on which Nellie Keeler is posing. When I saw that, I had to grab it just for that cool factor of coincidence. I’d read a lot about how work of battlefield photographers could be connected if not identified by the use of the same backdrops, furniture and even prop weapons/uniforms in Civil War tintypes. While not exactly the same thing, this is my first instance of finding the same props in two different photos of two VERY different subjects by the same photographer.
And last but not least (well, maybe least, based on the factoids on the front of the card) is Admiral Dot – yet another Barnum embellishment with an exalted military rank for someone of restrained stature. A contemporary of General Tom Thumb, Commodore Nutt, Major Atom, Count Rosebud and Baron Littlefinger, he also performed in sideshows.
As the photographer is not credited, it may well have been one of the lesser-known New York studios specializing in the theatrical trade who was able to work a deal with Anthony to distribute their cards.
Here is a cdv of a sideshow family. Father has an extraordinarily long beard, mother is a dwarf, and daughter seems relatively normal except her hands look HUGE in comparison to the rest of her (and even compared to dad’s hands).
The scrap of paper at the bottom of the scan is from the album page that once held this image. It appears to suggest that this sideshow family was part of an extended family and not a trio of social outcasts, as circus folk are often portrayed.
The photograph is marked on the back “Strong & Root, Aledo, Ills”. This may have been where the family was from, or it may have been just another stop along the circus circuit. One wonders what it must have been like to be a family of sideshow freaks, and if the daughter did not have any distinguishing trait that would have qualified her to perform alongside her parents, what that must have been like – a tougher branch of an already tough road to follow.
Well, I don’t know if she ever sang, or if she had any kind of performance at all. But her name was Madame Sherwood, and according to the bio on her CDV, she had an 84″ waist and was 675 lbs. Given the Victorian (and specifically Barnum-esque) penchant for exaggeration, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was more like a 60″ waist and 400 lbs but you never know. This CDV has been trimmed, rather significantly, but again this doesn’t detract from the image so I don’t find it terribly objectionable. It definitely impacted the value of the card, but I was not unhappy with the price paid. This is another C.D. Fredericks image. The simplicity of the backstamp not only in terms of the design but also the pomposity (or lack thereof) of the advertising slogan leads to some confusing dating for the image, as “Specialité” was his slogan in the 1850s and 60s, but the subject would have this date from the early to mid 1870s. Fredericks was another New York photographer who, like Gurney (whom he studied under and worked for for a time) and Eisenmann, did significant trade with the theatrical and performing professions.
For more information about C.D. Fredericks, there is a succinct but interesting blurb at Historic Camera
I suppose in a way you could term all these circus freak photos as also being occupationals in that they do show the sitters enacting their profession, which in a way was merely existing as who they were. It’s not like it mattered what outfit Tom Thumb or Madame Sherwood or Isaac Sprague (the Human Skeleton) wore, they were not performing a role, and even if they did, their audience was not coming to see them be Hamlet or Viola or Caliban, but to see the midget/fat lady/human skeleton.
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