It was a shock for RN Morris to discover that PT Barnum, the famous showman, was a people-trafficker. Yet the facts are well documented. For Historia Roger investigates Barnum’s attempt to buy a ‘beautiful Circassian girl’.
One of the things I discovered while researching my novella, The Crimson Child, is that PT Barnum, the famous American showman and humbugger, once tried very hard to acquire – yes, acquire – ‘a Circassian girl’. (Circassia was a country in the Caucasus which ceased to exist after a genocidal war waged by Russia for 142 years starting in 1722.)
Just to be clear, when I say acquire, I mean purchase. Not surprisingly, they left this episode out of the 2017 Barnum-biopic, The Greatest Showman. It doesn’t really fit with the film’s very modern message of empowerment. Barnum the people-trafficker is slightly at odds with Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of him as a hero of inclusion.
It’s well known that Barnum exhibited, that’s to say exploited, the African American enslaved woman Joice Heth. He purchased Heth in 1835, when she was probably in her late 70s or early 80s, though Barnum claimed she was 161 years old.
Whatever her true age, she was very frail, virtually paralyzed and blind. In other words, a vulnerable person, whom Barnum unscrupulously took advantage of.
At the time, slavery was illegal in New York, where Barnum put Joice Heth on show. He was obliged to lie about his ownership of her. When she had the audacity to die barely a year after he had bought her, he tried to recoup his investment by arranging a public autopsy of her remains.
Barnum’s interest in female Circassians was sparked by their reputation for outstanding physical beauty. In fact, they were said to be the most beautiful women in the world. This sexualised racial stereotyping not only dehumanised and objectified the individuals it pretended to flatter, but it also perpetuated an unhealthy prurience on the part of male observers like Barnum. When this was directed towards young girls, it’s particularly disturbing.
We know how much Barnum wanted a Circassian girl from his private correspondence with his agent John Greenwood, who was scouting for human exhibits in Cyprus and Constantinople. As a result of the ethnic cleansing practised by the Tsarist state, many Circassians were exiled to Turkey.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter Barnum wrote in 1864:
“I still have faith in a beautiful Circassian girl if you can get one very beautiful. But if they ask $4000 each, probably one would be better than two, for $8,000 in gold is worth about $14,500 in U.S. currency. So one of the most beautiful would do.” As you can see, there’s little doubt that Barnum is proposing to buy a human being – or two – here. He goes into a lot of detail about what he’s prepared to pay.
It’s chilling to realise that Barnum is being very specific when he uses the word “girl”; it’s not just a vague term for a woman. That he means a female child is made clear with the next instruction he gives Greenwood: “If you can also buy a beautiful Circassian woman for $200, do so if you think best…” $200 is likely to be a slip on Barnum’s part. He probably meant $2,000, which is to say that the going rate for an adult Circassian female is about half the price of a girl.
We can guess why girls would be more highly prized to a certain kind of buyer.
Just to be sure that Greenwood understands what to do, Barnum expands on his earlier instructions: “But in any event have one or two of the most beautiful girls you can find, even if they cost $4,000 or $5,000 in gold. Don’t fail to have rich-appearing costumes for her and the eunuch, & bring one girl alone with eunuch if you think they will be attractive enough to pay.”
It seems that Barnum also wanted Greenwood to pick up a eunuch, or at least someone who could pass for one, while he was at it.
As Barnum makes clear, the whole enterprise depends on Greenwood finding the most attractive girl, or girls, that he can. If she isn’t beautiful enough to fascinate audiences, people won’t come and Barnum would make a loss on his investment. But if she’s beautiful, then as Barnum puts it: “she may take in Paris or in London or probably both.”
The letter ends with a warning. “But look out that in Paris they don’t try the law and set her free.” Barnum advises his employee to lie and say that the girl is free, the same ruse he employed when exhibited Joice Heth in New York.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so shocked to discover that PT Barnum had once tried to traffic children into America. At the time Barnum was writing to Greenwood, slavery had been a fact of life in America for more or less a century. Abolition was a live issue, but not a universally shared aspiration.
The American Civil War was still being fought, in which one side at least still believed in their inalienable right to own other human beings. And yet, Barnum was a Republican, that’s to say a member of Abraham Lincoln’s party. He was supposed to be against this kind of thing.
It doesn’t seem that Greenwood was successful in purchasing either one or two Circassian girls, or any accompanying women and eunuchs. That didn’t stop Barnum exhibiting a number of supposed “Circassian beauties”, such as Zalumma Agra, advertised as the “Star of the East”.
Photographs of Zalumma show her with striking afro-style hair which was apparently achieved by rinsing it with beer. The eccentric hairstyle had nothing to do with actual Circassian customs. It was simply an invention of Barnum’s. And by all accounts, Zalumma had never been anywhere near the Caucasian mountains. When she opened her mouth, she spoke with a soft American accent.
I didn’t know I’d find a connection with PT Barnum when I started researching The Crimson Child. But once I’d discovered it, naturally, I couldn’t resist working it into my story in some way. So I created a fictional agent working for Barnum in St Petersburg, who plays a brief but crucial part in the plot. To find out how exactly, you’ll have to read the book.
The Crimson Child by RN Morris was published on 5 May, 2023. The ebook version is currently on offer at 99p.
See more about this book.
Roger writes about researching his novella at Revisiting St Petersburg?
He’s written two other features for Historia:
Did radicals and reactionaries unite against Tsar Alexander II?
Walter Raleigh: stripping away the cloak of myth
Images:
- Detail from carte de visite of Zalumma Agra by H.R Doane, c1871: Wikimedia (public domain)
- The Greatest Natural & National Curiosity in the World Joice Heth, handbill by J Booth & Son, 147 Fulton St NY, c1835: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Carte de visite of Zalumma Agra, c1865: Wikimedia (public domain)
- PT Barnum, 1855–65: United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division, digital ID cwpbh.02176, via Wikimedia (public domain)
- The beautiful Circassian girl, Barnum’s broadside, c1868: Wikimedia (public domain)
