The Elephant Man Joseph Merrick: A Life Story

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:53

Hearing the phrase "elephant man", many will immediately remember the film about Joseph Merrick, who suffers from a terrifying disease. Not everyone knows that such a person is not a fictional character, but a real person. Who was he, what is his life story?

Family

Joseph Carey Merrick was born in the English city of Leicester in 1862. Looking ahead, I must say that his life was too short - only 27 years old, since he died in 1890.

Merrick's family was the most ordinary, parents came from the lower classes: his father worked as a coachman, and his mother was a servant. They married in 1861 and their first child, Joseph Carey Merrick, was born soon after. In 1866 and 1867, two more children were born into the family, but the youngest son of the Merrick couple died of scarlet fever in childhood, and daughter Marion suffered from epilepsy, which led to her premature death at the age of 24. In 1873, Joseph's mother herself died of pneumonia and bronchitis. The father soon remarried, but the stepmother did not love her stepson because of his deformity and began to survive from home.

Appearance

At first, nothing in the boy's appearanceforeshadowed trouble, but at the age of five, the first symptoms of the disease began to appear. The skin in some places became flabby, and in others - rough, rough. Its color began to change, it really began to resemble the surface of an elephant's skin. In addition to all this, Joseph Merrick injured his hip in a fall as a child, and this trouble provoked a limp from which he suffered until the end of his days.

His illness progressed constantly, and shortly after his death, Merrick's head looked like this: there was a huge bone growth in the frontal part, and the skin hung down in rough folds on the right and behind, almost covering the right eye. It looked like a huge tumor. In general, the head had a diameter of 92 cm. The surface of the skin in its texture resembled cauliflower inflorescences. There was almost no hair. The tumor on the right side of the head dragged both the nose and lips along, they were terribly deformed. This made Joseph's speech slurred.

From the back, rough skin also hung in huge folds. The right hand was several times larger than the left: only the wrist was 30 cm in circumference, and the thumb was 12 cm. Merrick himself wrote that it resembled an elephant's trunk in shape. He could only work with his left hand, as the right hand eventually became inoperable. The legs also had growths and skin folds.

Recently, anatomists made a computer reconstruction of his appearance. This is what Joseph Merrick would have looked like if he had been born he althy.

Why was Merrick called"elephant man"?

At the end of the 19th century, many prejudices were still alive, in particular, people believed that some kind of emotional stress of a woman during pregnancy could affect the appearance of the child. And since the mother of Joseph Merrick, being in position, was frightened of an angry elephant, his deformity was attributed to this very reason. Unfortunately, at that time they did not know anything about genetic diseases, so both doctors and Merrick himself believed in this version.

But what was this unfortunate man really suffering from?

Diagnosis

Modern doctors have identified several genetic ailments that disfigured the appearance of Joseph Merrick. First, it is type I neurofibromatosis (or Recklinghausen's disease). It is characterized by tumor-like sac-hanging formations and the presence of large age spots. Also, the symptoms of neurofibromatosis include asymmetry of the limbs and parts of the face, as was observed in Merrick. In simple words, this is a general pathology of the development of the skin, bones and nervous system. Unfortunately, medicine even now has almost no means to combat this disease, but if the “elephant man” Joseph Merrick were born in our time, he could at least have all the growths and saccular formations of the skin surgically removed.

The second disease is the Proteus syndrome. It is described as a very rare genetic disorder characterized by excessive and abnormal growth of bone and skin. This disease is also incurable, but doctors today are still able to prolong the life of patients with this condition.diagnosis.

Job Search

How did poor Merrick manage to earn his living when there were no disability benefits back then? Due to bullying and ridicule, Joseph left school at 13 years old. His father arranged for him to be a street vendor, but all passers-by shied away from his appearance. Therefore, Merrick went to a tobacco factory, but soon had to leave this occupation too, because the deformation of his right hand did not allow him to fully perform his work. Both his father and stepmother constantly humiliated and often beat Joseph, so he left home at the age of 17.

Freak Circus

Tired of the vagrant way of life, in 1884 he went to perform in the Tom Norman show. It was the only way for people like Merrick to earn a living. In this show, various injuries were demonstrated. He was treated well in the troupe, especially since there he met people with a similar fate.

The work included weekly performances. The inquisitive public constantly came to gawk at human deformities, in particular, at the "elephant man". His role was to demonstrate his own body to the terrifying cheers of the crowd. It was humiliating, but there was no other way to feed yourself. Joseph Merrick even managed to save up a good amount of £50. At that time, he would have lived comfortably for about 2 years on this money.

But soon the freak show was banned throughout England, and Tom Norman was forced to sell Joseph Merrick to an Austrian circus owner. But he turned out to be dishonestman and took away all the accumulated money from Merrick. Without a penny in his pocket, Joseph returned to his homeland. He had nowhere to go.

Meet Dr. Treves

Right at one of the London Underground stations, Joseph had an asthma attack. Passers-by called for a doctor whose business card happened to be in Merrick's pocket. It was a physiotherapist, a member of the London Pathological Society named Treves, whom Joseph met while performing in the circus. He, of course, came and provided the necessary assistance. She and Joseph later became friends.

In his memoirs, Dr. Frederick Treeves recalls that, when he first saw the "elephant man" on stage, he thought that he was probably weak-minded and, fortunately, did not realize the horror of his situation. But it wasn't. Joseph was very smart. Moreover, behind the disgusting shell, Treves managed to see a kind and sensitive person.

Since at that time Joseph Merrick was already in need of care, Treeves got in touch, and he was assigned to the Royal London Hospital. There he was given a separate room where he could live. The medical staff, who at first treated the strange patient with disdain, quickly fell in love with Joseph for his meek and humble disposition.

Treeves supported Joseph as much as he could until the end of his days. He took him out in a carriage with closed windows to nature, where he loved to spend time. Merrick became interested in collecting herbariums. He also began to frequently attend theatrical performances. He has a new circle of friendsmost of them were dignitaries.

The fact is that the "elephant man" became a member of the elite society, because all of London learned about him thanks to the press. They wrote about him, and many wanted to see and talk with such a disfigured person with their own eyes. Even Princess Alexandra of Wales herself often visited Merrick in the hospital. Of course, all this diversified his meager existence.

Inner Peace

Usually, people whose life is similar to the fate of the "elephant man" become angry at God, people and everything around. Merrick Joseph, whose biography did not leave him a single reason for optimism, was, surprisingly, not like that. Although all his life he was the object of cruel ridicule, he did not hate either people or God. In addition, he retained his own dignity. A close friend of Treeves marveled at how kind, sympathetic and even slightly romantic Merrick was.

Joseph was a creative person. He expressed his emotional experiences in poetry and prose. A pamphlet with his autobiography was also published. Although Merrick could only work with his left hand, he enjoyed building small models of cathedrals while at the Royal Hospital.

Death

Here is his short biography. Joseph Merrick died young: at the time of his death he was not even 28 years old. It happened in 1890 at the Royal London Hospital.

In the last years of his life, Joseph could not sleep on a pillow, but only sitting,because he was disturbed by tumors and growths on his head. But one day he wanted to sleep lying down, like all normal people. This experiment ended in failure: Joseph died of asphyxia, because his head bent his fragile neck. His death was as tragic as his whole life.

Joseph Merrick ("elephant man"): quotes, aphorisms

The most popular is a poem written by Merrick himself. Here he speaks about the sore:

Yes, I know I look more than strange, But by blaming me for this, you are also blaming God.

If I could reinvent myself, I would not disappoint you.

If I went from pole to pole, If the ocean scooped up a handful, Then my soul would be appreciated

And the mind of a normal person.

Another of Joseph's famous sayings: "Never… no, never… nothing disappears. A breath of wind, raindrops, white clouds, heartbeats… Nothing dies." Having experienced the brunt of human alienation, Merrick summed it up in one sentence: "People fear what they can't understand."

Trace in cinema

Joseph Carey Merrick, known as the "elephant man", became the hero of several films. In the movie "From Hell" in 2001, he appears episodically, in the British television series "Ripper Street" Treves and Merrick became characters in several episodes. But the full story of his whole life is shown in the David Lynch film "The Elephant Man", where the main character was played by John Hurt, and his friend -doctor - Anthony Hopkins.

It's unfortunate that Joseph Merrick's life turned out this way and not otherwise, but he provided a wonderful example of how you can always remain human.