Joseph Merrick
Joseph Carey Merrick[Early biographies of Merrick inaccurately give his first name as "John"; an error repeated in many later versions, including the 1980 film The Elephant Man and in the BBC 2 television programme I'm Alan Partridge. The stage play calls him Adam throughout, except for a brief acknowledgement of his name as "Joseph" after his death, when Treves "corrects" a person who wants to call him "Joseph".] (
5 August,
1862 â€"
11 April,
1890), known as
"The Elephant Man" gained the sympathy of
Victorian era Britain because of the extreme deformity of his body.
Born in
Leicester to
Mary Jane Merrick and
Joseph Rockley Merrick, he had a younger brother and sister. He began showing signs of deformity at age two or five (Sources differ).
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3084483.stm. In an autobiographical note which appeared on the reverse side of his 'Freak Show' pamphlet, Merick mentions that his deformity begun developing when at the age of five [1].] His mother died when he was 11. According to family accounts, she too was "crippled." His father remarried, but his stepmother did not want the younger Joseph. She gave her husband an ultimatum: "Joseph, or me," and her husband responded by throwing Joseph out of the house.
He was forced to earn a living by selling shoe polish on the street where he would be constantly harassed by local children. For the better part of his life he was unemployable, so as a last resort he took a job as a
sideshow attraction. He was treated decently, and made a small amount of money. However, when sideshows were outlawed in the United Kingdom in
1886, he travelled to
Belgium to find work. There, he was mistreated and abandoned by a showman.
After making his way back to
London, Merrick had the good fortune of befriending the well-known Victorian doctor,
Frederick Treves, who discovered him at
Liverpool Street train station suffering from a severe bronchial infection. In his role as physician at
London Hospital, Treves enabled Joseph to be given a permanent home at the hospital. There, Merrick thrived. He became something of a celebrity in High Victorian society, eventually becoming a favourite of
Queen Victoria. Although numerous people, including a few women, came to visit him, he never found love. Treves later commented that Joseph always wanted, even after living at the hospital, to go to a hospital for the blind so that he could find a woman there who would not be frightened of his appearance. In his later years, he found some solace in writing, composing both prose and poetry.
He was cared for at the hospital until his death at the age of 27 on
11 April,
1890 from suffocation while sleeping, which was apparently accidental. Merrick was unable to sleep horizontally due to the weight of his head, but he may have intentionally tried to do so in this instance in an attempt to imitate normal behaviour.
Merrick's preserved skeleton is on permanent display at the
Royal London Hospital.
He returned to popular attention in 1979 and 1980 when two high profile productions made Merrick their subject. His life story became the basis of a
1979 Tony Award-winning play, and in the following year an
Academy Award-nominated film. Each production took a different approach to the story.
See
The Elephant Man (play) and
The Elephant Man (film) for more information on these productions.
In
1971 Ashley Montagu suggested that Merrick suffered from
neurofibromatosis type I, a genetic disorder also known as
von Recklinghausen's disease. This disease is still connected with Merrick in the mind of the public. However, in
1979, Michael Cohen first identified a condition which came to be named
Proteus syndrome by
Rudolf Wiedemann in
1983. In
1986 it was argued that Proteus syndrome was the condition from which Merrick actually suffered
[Tibbles JA, Cohen MM Jr The Proteus syndrome: the Elephant Man diagnosed. British Medical Journal (Clin Res Ed). 1986 Sep 13;293(6548):683-5.]. Unlike neurofibromatosis, Proteus syndrome (named for the shape-shifting god
Proteus) affects tissue other than nerves, and is a sporadic rather than familially transmitted disorder. In
July 2003, Dr. Charis Eng announced that as a result of
DNA tests on samples of Merrick's hair and bone, she had determined that Merrick certainly suffered Proteus syndrome, and may have had neurofibromatosis type I as well. His PTEN gene (often mutated in the Proteus syndrome) appears to have been healthy (i.e., not mutated). As it stands, many people still mistakenly refer to his condition as
elephantiasis (sometimes misspoken as "elephantitis.").
In
2002 a television research team, along with
genealogists, put out a
BBC appeal to trace the Merrick family line. In response to the appeal, a
Leicester resident named Pat Selby was discovered to be the granddaughter of Merrick's uncle. A research team took her
DNA samples in order to try to diagnose the condition that caused his deformities. The TV crew also discovered that Merrick's sister, Marion Eliza, also suffered from a crippling disease called
myelitis. Marion Eliza died at the age of 24.
|
Michael Jackson dancing with a depiction of Merrick's skeleton in the video for "Leave Me Alone". |
* In the mid-1980s, singer
Michael Jackson attempted to purchase Merrick's remains from the London Hospital Medical College. A press release on
May 29 1987 from Jackson's manager,
Frank DiLeo, stated that the singer "has a high degree of respect for the memory of Merrick. He has read and studied all material about the Elephant Man, and has visited the hospital in London twice to view Merrick's remains. His fascination with their historical significance increased with each visit, along with hopes to add them to his collection of rare and unusual memorabilia at his California compound." He went on to claim that Jackson had no intentions to exploit the remains for profit and only wished to treat them as art or antiques. Michael Jackson's offer of US $1 million was turned down. He went on to extensively deny that he had tried to obtain the Elephant Man's bones. In
1993, during an interview at his
Neverland Ranch, he told
Oprah Winfrey that it was "another stupid story. I love the story of the Elephant Man, he reminds me of me a lot, and I could relate to it, it made me cry because I saw myself in the story, but no I never asked for the... where am I going to put some bones? And why would I want some bones?"
[http://www.rotten.com/library/sideshow/elephant-man/][http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103448,00.html][http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1107191939457_102601139] In a
1989 music video for the song "
Leave Me Alone", Jackson could be seen dancing alongside a
claymation version of the Elephant Man's Bones.
[http://www.fast-rewind.com/elephantman.htm] This was most likely a self-parody, as other parts of the video dealt with how he felt he was unfairly portrayed by the press.
* According to the band's story,
deadboy and the Elephantmen frontman Dax Riggs found his faith in God's benevolence tested so much after viewing the Elephant Man documentary as a child, that he left his life with a devout
Jehovah's Witness practicing family to live with his father. He later created the band, aptly named after his childhood catharsis.
*
Heavy metal band
Mastodon have ended their past three albums with a track about the Elephant Man.
Leviathan's "Joseph Merrick",
Remission's, "Elephant Man", and
Blood Mountain's "Pendelous Skin".
* The Avant-Garde guitarist
Buckethead makes numerous references to The Elephant Man including a song on the album Bucketheadland 2 called "The John Merrick Elephant Man Bones Explosion" and an album called "The Elephant Man's Alarm Clock". During live performances he will sometimes play a sampling of dialogue from the 1980 film.
Following are books about or inspired by Joseph Merrick
*
Ashley Montagu,
The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity* Michael Howell and Peter Ford,
The True History of the Elephant Man * Christine Sparks,
The Elephant Man! (based on the movie)
*
Frederick Drimmer,
The Elephant Man* Bernard Pomerance,
The Elephant Man (the stage play)
* P. W. Graham and F. H. Oehlschlaeger,
Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters*
Alan Moore and
Eddie Campbell,
From Hell - (Merrick makes a cameo in book and movie)
* Tom Baker,
Joseph: A Victorian Fairy Tale (horror novel featuring Merrick as a main character)
* Kenneth Sherman,
Words for Elephant Man (the story of Merrick told in poetic form)
*
A BBC story about the results of DNA tests on Merrick's body*
Proteus syndrome*
Merrick seems to have a healthy copy of the PTEN gene*
Joseph Merrick tribute site*
Skull Photo on Discovery.com
