P. T. Barnum

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with James Anthony Bailey. He was also an author, publisher, and philanthropist, although he said of himself: "I am a showman by profession ... and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me." The adage "there's a sucker born every minute" has frequently been attributed to him, although no evidence exists that he had coined the phrase.

Barnum became a small-business owner in his early twenties and founded a weekly newspaper before moving to New York City in 1834. He embarked on an entertainment career, first with a variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", and soon after by purchasing Scudder's American Museum, which he renamed after himself. He used the museum as a platform to promote hoaxes and human curiosities such as the Fiji mermaid and General Tom Thumb. In 1850, he promoted the American tour of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, paying her an unprecedented $1,000, equivalent to $38,700 in 2025, per night for 150 nights. He suffered economic reversals in the 1850s from unwise investments, as well as years of litigation and public humiliation, but he embarked on a lecture tour as a temperance speaker to emerge from debt. His museum added America's first aquarium and expanded its wax-figure department.

Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican for Fairfield, Connecticut. He spoke before the legislature concerning the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude: "A human soul, 'that God has created and Christ died for,' is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit." He was elected in 1875 as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he worked to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets and enforce liquor and prostitution laws. He was instrumental in the inception of Bridgeport Hospital in 1878 and was its first president. The circus business, begun when he was 60 years old, was the source of much of his enduring fame. He established P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome in 1870, a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks" that adopted many names over the years.

Barnum was married to Charity Hallett from 1829 until her death in 1873, and they had four children. In 1874, a few months after his wife's death, he married Nancy Fish, his friend's daughter and 40 years his junior. They were married until 1891 when Barnum died of a stroke at his home. He was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, which he designed himself.

Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of innkeeper, tailor and storekeeper Philo Barnum (1778–1826) and Philo's second wife, Irena Taylor. Barnum's maternal grandfather Phineas Taylor (known as Uncle Phin) was a Whig, legislator, landowner, justice of the peace, lottery schemer, and practical joker who had a great influence upon his grandson.

Barnum began school at the age of six, despite his family's minimal resources. Throughout his years of schooling, Barnum's mathematic skills strongly advanced, leading him to strategically get out of his farming chores. At just 12 years old, Barnum made money by selling cherry-rum to soldiers and was even employed to assist a cattle drive from Bethel, Connecticut to Brooklyn, New York.

Barnum ran several businesses, including a general store, a book-auctioning trade, real estate speculation and a statewide lottery network. Concerned about the Congregational Church's interference in political affairs in Connecticut, he started a weekly newspaper in 1831 called The Herald of Freedom in Bethel. His editorials against the elders of local churches led to libel suits and prosecution, and he was imprisoned for two months. While incarcerated, Barnum sought the help of Rev. L. F. W. Andrews, publisher of the Gospel Witness from Hartford. Barnum and Andrews then published a joint paper, the Herald of Freedom and Gospel Witness. They dissolved their partnership a year later in October 1833. Barnum then moved the publication of the paper to neighboring Danbury, Connecticut.

In November 1834, after publishing 160 issues of the Herald of Freedom, Barnum passed control of the paper to his brother-in-law, John W. Amerman, who published the paper for another year in Norwalk, Connecticut. When Amerman sold the paper to Mr. George Taylor, the Barnum family's connection to the Herald of Freedom ended. Barnum sold his store in 1834.

He began his career as a showman in 1835 at the age of 25 with the purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralyzed enslaved woman named Joice Heth, whom an acquaintance was billing around Philadelphia as George Washington's 161-year-old former nurse. Slavery was already outlawed in New York, but Barnum exploited a loophole that allowed him to lease Heth for a year for $1,000, borrowing $500 to complete the sale. Barnum forced her to work for 10 to 12 hours per day, and she died in February 1836 at no more than 80 years of age. Barnum hosted a live autopsy of Heth's body in a New York saloon to demonstrate her actual age before spectators paying 50 cents each.

Barnum had a year of mixed success with his first variety troupe, Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater, followed by the Panic of 1837 and three years of difficult circumstances. He purchased Scudder's American Museum in 1841, located at Broadway and Ann Street in Manhattan. Barnum renamed the building to Barnum's American Museum and transformed it into a hotspot for entertainment. The museum became an extremely popular showplace and was New York City's most popular attraction for 23 years.

He added a lighthouse lamp that attracted attention up and down Broadway and flags along the roof's edge that attracted attention in daytime, while giant paintings of animals between the upper windows drew attention from pedestrians. The roof was transformed to a strolling garden with a view of the city, where Barnum launched hot-air balloon rides daily. A vast series of live acts and curiosities were exhibited at the museum, including albino performers (such as the Lucasie family), "giants", little people (such as Charles Stratton), magicians, conjoined twins (such as Chang and Eng Bunker or Millie and Christine McKoy), and exotic animals.

In 1842, Barnum introduced his first major hoax: a creature with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish known as the "Feejee" mermaid. He leased it from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston who became his friend, confidant and collaborator. Barnum justified his hoaxes by calling them advertisements to draw attention to the museum. He said, "I don't believe in duping the public, but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them."

He followed the mermaid act by exhibiting the four-year-old actor Charles Stratton, billed as the 11-year-old General Tom Thumb. Stratton was taught to imitate famous figures such as Hercules and Napoleon.

In 1843, Barnum hired the Native American dancer Do-Hum-Me, the first of many Natives that he would present. During 1844–45, he toured with General Tom Thumb in Europe and met Queen Victoria, who was amused but saddened by Stratton, and the event was a publicity coup. It opened the door to visits with royalty throughout Europe, including the tsar of Russia, and enabled Barnum to acquire many new attractions, including automatons and other mechanical marvels. During this time, he bought other museums, including artist Rembrandt Peale's Philadelphia Museum (the nation's first major museum), and the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts. By late 1846, Barnum's American Museum was drawing 400,000 visitors per year.

Barnum did not enter the circus business until he was 60 years old. He established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome" in Delavan, Wisconsin in 1870 with William Cameron Coup. It was a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks" that assumed various names: "P. T. Barnum's Travelling World's Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show on Earth", and "P. T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth, and the Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie and the Grand International Allied Shows United" after an 1881 merger with James Bailey and James L. Hutchinson, soon shortened to "Barnum & Bailey's". This was the first circus to display three rings.

The show's first primary attraction was Jumbo, an African elephant that Barnum purchased in 1882 from the London Zoo. The Barnum and Bailey Circus still contained acts similar to his Traveling Menagerie, including acrobats, freak shows and General Tom Thumb. Barnum persisted in growing the circus in spite of more fires, train disasters and other setbacks, and he was aided by circus professionals who ran the daily operations. He and Bailey parted ways in 1885, but they rejoined in 1888 with the "Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth", later the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which toured the world.

Barnum was among the first circus owners to move his circus by train, a suggestion by Bailey and other business partners, and probably the first to own his own train. He became known as the "Shakespeare of Advertising" because of his innovative and impressive ideas. In this new business venture, Barnum leaned on the advice of Bailey and other business partners.

Barnum wrote several books, including Life of P. T. Barnum (1855), The Humbugs of the World (1865), Struggles and Triumphs (1869), Forest and Jungle, or, Thrilling Adventures in All Quarters of the Globe and The Art of Money-Getting (1880).

Barnum was often called the Prince of Humbugs and felt that entertainers and vendors perpetrating hoaxes (or "humbugs") in promotional material were justified if the public received value in return. However, he was contemptuous of those who accrued money through fraud, especially the spiritualist mediums popular in his day. He testified against noted "spirit photographer" William H. Mumler in his trial for fraud, and he exposed the tricks employed by mediums to cheat the bereaved. In The Humbugs of the World, Barnum offered $500 (equivalent to $10,516 in 2025) to any medium who could prove the power to communicate with the dead.

Barnum was significantly involved in politics. He mainly focused on race, slavery and sectionalism in the period preceding the American Civil War. He opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which supported slavery, and left the Democratic Party because it had endorsed slavery. Barnum joined the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

Barnum claimed that "politics were always distasteful to me", but he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1865 as a Republican representing Fairfield. He hired spies to acquire insider information on the New York and New Haven Railroad lines and exposed a secret that would raise fares by 20 percent. He said during the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: "A human soul, 'that God has created and Christ died for,' is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit." He acknowledged that he had owned slaves when he lived in the South: "I whipped my slaves. I ought to have been whipped a thousand times for this myself. But then I was a Democrat—one of those nondescript Democrats, who are Northern men with Southern principles."

Barnum was elected for the next four Connecticut legislature sessions and succeeded senator Orris S. Ferry. He was the legislative sponsor of an 1879 law that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" and criminalized acting as an accessory to the use of contraception. This law remained in effect in Connecticut until it was overturned in 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Griswold v. Connecticut decision.

Barnum campaigned for the U.S. Congress in 1867 and lost to his third cousin William Henry Barnum. In 1875, he served as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets and enforce liquor and prostitution laws. He was instrumental in the inception of Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and was its first president.

Barnum enjoyed what he publicly dubbed "profitable philanthropy", saying: "If by improving and beautifying our city Bridgeport, Connecticut, and adding to the pleasure and prosperity of my neighbors, [and] I can do so at a profit, the incentive to 'good works' will be twice as strong as if it were otherwise." He was appointed to the board of trustees of Tufts University prior to its founding. He extended several significant contributions to the school, including a gift of $50,000, equivalent to $1,727,679 in 2025, in 1883 to establish a museum, later known as Barnum Museum of Natural History, and hall for the department of natural history. Tufts made Jumbo the Elephant the school's mascot. Tufts students are known as Jumbos.