The most fascinating things to read about in the old newspapers are the stories about the sideshows and circuses. The people involved in these businesses are fascinating to learn about, both good and bad.
In the 1893 article below, we learn of an attendant whose job it was to care for the living skeleton. Unfortunately for the attendant, the living skeleton was abusive and things did not end well for the sideshow “freak.”
Getting Square
How a Circus Attendant Got Even with a Cranky Skeleton
The general public is not acquainted with the manner in which some employees are hired for a circus. Some of the situations in the “side show” are irksome, and in order to retain the right man in a place he is hired with what is called a “hold back” – that is, he is to receive, for instance, fifty dollars a month salary, but gets only fifteen dollars a month. The other thirty-five dollars is retained until the close of the circus season, when it is always paid to him in a lump.
Messrs. Hagar and Henshaw, the managers of the “side show” of the Barnum circus have always had considerable difficulty in getting a man to stay the season out and take care of the living skeleton, owing to the general “cussedness” of all such “freaks.” In the case of the skeleton, he had to be carried to and from every performance, to meals, etc., in storm, rain, and hot weather, and the attendant was compelled to bear all the grumblings and complaint of the skeleton with the added phases of ill temper and abuse.
One season when the show closed and the attendant of the skeleton had received all the money due him for the season’s work, including his “hold back,” he felt as if he would like to square accounts with the skeleton; so after the last performance, taking the skeleton in his arms, he carried him, not to the sleeping car, but away off in the fields, and placing him beside a fence left him there with the remark: “There! You have abused me all summer, and now, darn you, I’ll get square. You can stay where you are until I come for you next season.”
After an hour or two the skeleton was missed, and all hands were sent in search of him, when at 4 o’clock in the morning he was found lying in the wet grass chilled to the marrow, as it was an easy thing to chill him to the bone, owing to the absence of flesh.
Source: Brookings register. (Brookings, S.D.), 24 Feb. 1893.
