On May 19, 1884, the Ringling Bros. Circus opened for business, capitalizing on the extreme to earn a profit. And it worked: for years, the most popular component of the circus was the “freak show.” The Ringling Bros. were building on a much older tradition of exhibiting people with deformities and, alongside P.T. Barnum, “freak shows” became highly popular. So who were the sideshow performers who appeared in them?
Wikimedia Commons The Ringling Bros. sideshow lineup in 1924.
Some sideshow performers had been kidnapped and were forced to go onstage against their will. Others, with few other options, chose to become sideshow performers, and often found that displaying themselves could be a lucrative career. But many were mistreated by abusive circus staff, and some were merely “manufactured” by greedy circus entertainers.
As Clyde Ingalls, the manager of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey sideshow in the 1930s, once remarked, “Freaks are what you make them. Take any peculiar-looking person… play up that peculiarity and add a good spiel and you have a great attraction.”…